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Hitting the Books: Did the advent of the first desktop computer lead to murder?
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti: IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World's First Desktop Computer
by Meryle SecrestThe world's first desktop computer didn't take shape in a Menlo Park garage or the bowels of a corporate production facility. It was created in a workshop in Northwest Italy owned and operated by the Olivetti family. Already renowned for their mechanical typewriters, the Olivetti pioneered electronic calculation a decade before Apple or IBM, which (as you'll read below) debuted at the New York World's Fair in 1964. The first of its kind, the P101, became an instant smash hit -- everyone from NASA to the US military was clamoring for these highly sought after "super-calculators."
But was the Olivetti family's fortune actually a curse? Shortly after the P101's debut, Adriano Olivetti, the head of the family suffered a mysterious and fatal heart attack at the age of 58, just 18 months before the company's talented engineer, Mario Tchou, died in an equally suspicious car accident. In The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti, author Meryle Secrest reveals the incredible behind-the-scenes story of the first desktop computer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:17PM (1 child)
https://johnwolff.id.au/calculators/Olivetti/Olivetti.htm [johnwolff.id.au]
When I was a boy, I bought one of those heavy mechanical machines in a pawn shop. The price was so ridiculous and I realized if it's electric, I'll get a motor for that price. It was a must have. My peers, of course, did laughed at me. Soon, I decided to take the contraption apart to see how it works. It was a fascinating enjoyment of engineering, providing insight of how complex thinking those engineers had to do to make it work. I still keep the motor module somewhere here, to remind me about perfect ancient technology which was lost and forgotten.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 12 2019, @06:39PM
My grandmother owned / worked in a beauty shop. In the 1960s she bought one of those mechanical adding machines for checkout work - motor whirred all the time and the keypresses would setup for the calculation to clack through and print out on the receipt. It saw daily use for 10+ years.
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