Adriano Olivetti was born in April 1901 in Ivrea. From a very young age, he began working at the family business. He graduated in Chemical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin. He structured Olivetti according to a factory system divided into departments and divisions, convinced that the success of a company comes from an orderly organization of work. In 1933, half of the typewriters used in Italy were sold by his factory. After the war, the company experienced a wave of success but nearly went bankrupt towards the end of the 1950s due to the demand for computers and the popularity of calculators.
Adriano Olivetti died suddenly in February 1960 during a train journey from Milan to Lausanne, Switzerland. His ideas are recognized as the foundation of the transformation of businesses from workshops to modern factories.
Italy still proceeds with compromise, in the old systems of political transformism, bureaucratic power, grand promises, grand plans, and modest achievements
Young Adriano Olivetti, during his apprenticeship at Olivetti, was not enthusiastic about the monotonous work that took place in the factory. "In the distant August 1914, I was thirteen years old, my father sent me to work in the factory. I soon learned to know and hate assembly line work: a torture for the spirit that was imprisoned for hours that never ended, in the black and darkness of an old workshop... For many years I did not set foot in the factory again, firmly deciding that in life I would not wait in my father's industry." He introduced many work innovations including reduced working hours, very high wages for those times, and three weeks of summer vacation per year.
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