A nice long read here with some great photos. Olivetti (the company, named after the founder Camillo Olivetti) start with typewriters and move into calculators and computers. Always with great design aesthetics.
Notably the Programma 101 was eventually advertised as a computer but had to be disguised as a calculator in order not to be included in a (somewhat forced) sale of the computer business to General Electric.
The total initial production run of the Programma 101 was 44,000 units. The public unveiling of this “calculator” was at the World’s Fair in New York City during the Fair’s second season in 1965. The intended star of Olivetti’s showing was the Logos 27, another of their mechanical calculators. The P101 was in a small backroom, and Olivetti’s management hadn’t really thought it’d receive much attention. The presenter of the P101 informed the audience that he’d be calculating the orbit of a satellite, put the card in the machine, and after a few seconds the computer began printing the result. There was quite a bit of excitement. The P101 was moved to the front of the booth. Fair attendees assumed that there must be hidden wires connecting it to a mainframe offsite, and thus the Olivetti representatives began allowing people a closer look. Following the fair, Olivetti sold 40,000 units in the USA alone. Some of these went to NASA where the humble little machines were used for Apollo 11…
Edit: also notable, of course, is Olivetti’s purchase of a major stake in Acorn, becoming a controlling share quite soon, and eventually diminishing to a small proportion.
See also previously
Rediscovering the Remarkable Engineers Behind Olivetti’s ELEA 9003
The Italian Computer: Olivetti’s ELEA 9003 Was a Study in Elegant, Ergonomic Design