Camillo Olivetti biography

Camillo Olivetti was born in Ivrea in August, 1868. He attended the Politecnico di Torino, where he studied under Galileo Ferraris.
An eclectic and original personality, after graduating in engineering Olivetti spent some time in London, where he gained experience as a factory worker. He joined the socialist party and developed a keen interest in federalism, local autonomy and democratic institutional reform.

In 1893, he accompanied Galileo Ferraris to the electricity congress in Chicago. He attended courses in physics at Stanford University and became professor's assistant in electrical engineering. On his return to Ivrea, he established the C.G.S. (centimetro, grammo, secondo) company, a manufacturer of electrical measuring equipment, which subsequently moved to Milan.

Olivetti returned to Ivrea in 1907, where, on 29 October 1908, he established the "Ing. C. Olivetti e C." company to manufacture typewriters, which were built entirely in Italy. Production was handled by a group of twenty people trained by Camillo Olivetti himself at courses held in his house, the "Convento", located near the factory.

During the First World War, the Olivetti company largely converted to war production: artillery fuses and magnetoelectric aircraft equipment. Typewriter production resumed with the M20 model. In 1922, Camillo Olivetti set up the foundry and in 1926 the OMO company (Officina Meccanica Olivetti) for the production of machine tools, designed by Olivetti himself. The first product, a "sensitive drill", was followed by milling machines, grinders and other special equipment for the production of typewriter parts.

Together with his son Adriano, who had returned from a period of study in the USA, Olivetti reorganised the factory's production operations and strengthened the sales network with the formation of branches and subsidiaries in and outside Italy. In 1929, the Olivetti company opened its first overseas subsidiary, in Barcelona, Spain. The success of its growth strategy enabled it to resist the Depression that followed the 1929 crisis without resorting to job cuts.

During the 1930s, Camillo Olivetti gradually gave Adriano greater managerial responsibility, but continued to be a major figure in the company's intensive design and production work, with projects for new typewriters, the first office furniture - the Synthesis range - the first teleprinters and the first adding machines.

In 1938 Camillo Olivetti resigned as company chairman in favour of his son Adriano, but continued to follow production, sales and administration, paying particular attention to improvements in employee social services. He retained direct responsibility for the management of the machine tool facility.

During the Second World War, Olivetti wrote and published a clandestine pamphlet proposing radical social, financial and industrial reforms. After the armistice on 8 September 1943, he was forced to leave Ivrea and go into hiding in the Biella area.

He died in Biella hospital in December 1943.