Programma 101, first personal computer ever
by Constantino Ceoldo
Personal computers have become
increasingly popular and have an irreplaceable role in business and
everyday life. Whether it's a version of a desktop or laptop, modern
computers combine features for flexibility, power and ease of use making
themselves indispensable for various activities. Their price has
dropped so much over the years that personal computers have gone from a
working tool reserved for highly professional environments with
significant economic resources to something within the reach of
virtually everyone. In many families it is easy to find more than one
computer, and all the companies have supplied at least one computer for
each employee or worker.
Officially, the date of birth of the
personal computer is considered to be 1981 when IBM, the famous American
international company, launched the first of a successful series of
computers that could fit comfortably on the desk in an office: the model
5150.
Even without a mouse, the IBM 5150 was
equipped with a green phosphor monitor, keyboard, up to two floppy
drives and numerous software applications and this allowed it to spread
rapidly, thanks to the powerful network of sales and service of the U.S.
multinationals.
It was thus the entry of computers was definitely laid into areas from which they had been previously excluded.
However, the personal computer was born
conceptually much earlier, in 1962, and certainly not due to the work
of some lone genius in secret, in an American laboratory. On the
contrary, it was in Italy, and by the work of an engineer of a company
which until then had dealt with other concerns.
The company was Olivetti, with their
headquarters in Ivrea, near Turin. Since its founding in 1908 by the old
Camillo, it had always specialized in the production of typewriters and
mechanical accounting machines, making huge profits and building a
reputation for quality and reliability in Italy and worldwide.
The engineer was Pier Giorgio Perotto,
hired by Olivetti, when the founder Camillo was succeeded by his son
Adriano. The engineer Perotto began working on some innovative ideas
simply because he happened to be little used by the company that paid
his salary every month.
Shortly before that, the sale was
completed to General Electric of Olivetti's electronics division. It had
always attracted many bad feelings in some circles inside Olivetti
itself and, unfortunately, also in other Italian companies that had
nothing to do with electronics. The young Perotto had openly questioned
the foresight of such a choice, and General Electric refused to take on a
person who, after considering the views expressed during the
negotiations, could prove himself as a potential source of troubles.
The semi-clandestine efforts of engineer
Perotto and a few of his other associates, that were also at Olivetti
in a unhappy research and development department, took shape in Program
101: an electronic calculator with a conditional jump instruction. i.e.
that "if ... then..." allowing the choice between two or more logical
alternatives.
Program 101, or P101, or more simply
still, very informally, Perottina, was a user-programmable electronic
calculator and the first real personal computer!
Data and instructions were entered
through an alphanumeric keypad. It was not like the display devices for
all the computer at that time, but the results of processing were
readable on a strip of paper with a small printer built into the machine
body. The most important accessory in the eyes of a simple user,
however, was certainly the integrated magnetic card reader.
These cards, a stiff card with two
strips of magnetic tape pasted on, were the real forerunners of the
floppy disk and served the same function. They could be written and read
in sequence, one card after another, allowing data and programs to be
saved for later use.
Program 101 was designed to be modular,
so as to be easy to assemble as well as to repair. It was quiet when
compared to mechanical accounting machines sold at the time, that were
noisy, bulky and having a growing number of gears, sprockets, harpoons.
It weighed about 30 kg, with the
dimensions of a professional typewriter, and proved itself easily
transportable. It was simple to use and allowed for obtaining required
results in seconds instead of minutes or tens of minutes, if not hours,
by a gear machine.
The engineer Perotto presented his
creation to the New York Fair in 1965 in a small pavilion on the
sidelines with respect to the main one where Olivetti showed the final
mechanical office products. On these products, and not on the Program
101, the company hoped, ironically, to gain additional market share and
revive the glories of the past.
Olivetti, in fact, suffered from the
effects of some industrial purchasing mistakes done in previous years
and of the economic crisis of the early '60s that ended the Italian
economic miracle. The Fair in New York was then a natural opportunity
for a new leap forward.
The success of Perottina was such that
it soon proved necessary to set up a service in order to regulate the
influx of visitors who neglected the most traditional products in order
to concentrate on that amazing invention, the potential of which was
illustrated in demonstrations, and the public was invited to
participate.
Program 101 was obviously much less
powerful than the first mainframe computers, with tubes or transistors,
but sold at a price of about $3,000 at the time. It cost infinitely less
than the enormous machines that still covered entire walls and had no
need of teams specialists for its use or a room with air-conditioning to
work.
The market was immediately supportive
and very receptive to Program 101 to the point that, in the years
immediately following, it pretty much sold on its own, with hardly an
advertisement needed. Sales were based on word of mouth from one to
another.
They all units produced were sold, but
many orders were not processed because of the inadequacy of the sales
network in the United States and around the world.
NASA bought several copies of P101 for
the calculations of Project Apollo and also scientists and engineers in
the Soviet Union appreciated the features of Perottina, using it for
their research.
The Program 101 was also sold to those
who did not belong to the categories provided in the home: plumbers and
tailors were among those who bought the P101 for their daily work.
One wonders why the invention of
engineer Perotto was greeted with skepticism and hostility within the
same company that produced and marketed it with a good margin of profit.
Olivetti, in fact, was never able to
exploit the initial advantage against other companies. From a position
of absolute, albeit unexpected, advantage in computing, the company
gradually fell into a limbo where it still stands, effectively
disappearing from the national and international scene too.
That was and is a textbook case of all
those things that a good company's management must not do if it wants to
preserve the success of good ideas and the profits that may result.
The reasons for the progressive failure of
The reasons for the progressive failure of
Olivetti was the object of a plot
organized by some powerful business and industry in American circles who
did not appreciate the achievements of the Italian company.
Perhaps there is some truth in this, but
the unfortunate fate of Olivetti is due, most probably to the
characteristics of Italian society.
In Italy, there is what is commonly
called "Italian genius" and the ability of some individuals to create
wonderful things that nobody before them had imagined could exist. But
this is rather an expression of the weakness of the Italian society and
not of its strength.
It's a cultural weakness that prevents
the full understanding of the creative efforts of a few and then
transfer them to industrial production, relegating the invention to
explosive, but episodic occurrence, rather than continuous and daily
progress.
The Italians, sorry to say, can also be
masters of partisanship and controversy, the same situation against
which George Perotto found himself having to collide with in his long
tenure at Olivetti. The figure of Adriano Olivetti, in some ways a
visionary like Steve Jobs, but with a higher civilization and humanity,
was not sufficient to mitigate the most negative features of national
character, although Olivetti was already a center of excellence in
production, research and design.
The premature death of Adriano Olivetti,
and economic crisis of the early '60s, did not allow the consolidation
of a totally new industrial policy in the Italian industrial landscape.
Adriano's son, Roberto, did not prove himself capable of reversing or at
least monitoring the more traditional trends of the company leadership,
even when it was confronted with the successes of P101.
The arrival of external partners to
Olivetti, implemented with the help of national financial circles in
order to balance the books of the company, still forced attention on
mechanical devices. This proved fatal for the most innovative ideas, and
contributed to stagnation and the loss of the initial advantage that
should have been obtained due to the work of Perotto and a few others.
In some ways, the Italian industrial
history is made by eagles, thinking like chickens: they self-censor and
don't understand the true extent of the most innovative ideas that
sprout around them.
The companies end up losing any initial
advantage to more receptive and resourceful competitors. This is
precisely what happened at Olivetti, ignoring the coming electronic
revolution, and continuing to develop obsolete mechanical products
despite the innovation that Program 101 offered.
