Newsgroup: it.comp.retrocomputing
Titolo: [libro] The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti: IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World's First Desktop Computer

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/544552/the-mysterious-affair-at-olivetti-by-meryle-secrest/
 
 
«
ABOUT THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT OLIVETTI
The never-before-told true account of the design and development of the first 
desktop computer by the world’s most famous high-styled typewriter company, more 
than a decade before the arrival of the Osborne 1, the Apple 1, the first Intel 
microprocessor, and IBM’s PC5150.
 
The human, business, design, engineering, cold war, and tech story of how the 
Olivetti company came to be, how it survived two world wars and brought a 
ravaged Italy back to life, how after it mastered the typewriter business with 
the famous “Olivetti touch,” it entered the new, fierce electronics race; how 
its first desktop compter, the P101, came to be; how, within eighteen months, it 
had caught up with, and surpassed, IBM, the American giant that by then had 
become an arm of the American government, developing advanced weapon systems; 
Olivetti putting its own mainframe computer on the market with its desktop 
prototype, selling 40,000 units, including to NASA for its lunar landings. How 
Olivetti made inroads into the US market by taking control of Underwood of 
Hartford CT as an assembly plant for Olivetti’s own typewriters and future 
miniaturized personal computers; how a week after Olivetti purchased Underwood, 
the US government filed an antitrust suit to try to stop it; how Adriano 
Olivetti, the legendary idealist, socialist, visionary, heir to the company 
founded by his father, built the company into a fantastical dynasty–factories, 
offices, satellite buildings spread over more than fifty acres–while on a train 
headed for Switzerland in 1960 for supposed meetings and then to Hartford, never 
arrived, dying suddenly of a heart attack at fifty-eight . . . how eighteen 
months later, his brilliant young engineer, who had assembled Olivetti’s superb 
team of electronic engineers, was killed, as well, in a suspicious car crash, 
and how the Olivetti company and the P101 came to its insidious and shocking 
end.
»
 
Giusto un pelino sensazionalistico e cospirazional-dietrologistico ^_^;;
Non che non lo abbiamo pensato tutti, prima o poi :D
 
Qui pubblicano un estratto, che narra della comparsa della P101:
 
https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/09/hitting-the-books-The-Mysterious-Affair-at-Olivetti-Meryle-Secrest/
 
 
Una cosa non mi suona giusta:
«These cards were made of plastic, with a magnetic coating on one side and a 
writing area on the other.»
 
Credevo che le "cartoline" fossero di cartoncino... ?_?
 
CYA


"massivan"
 
Purtroppo questo tipo di "complottismo" non si basa sulle sole 
suggestioni, ancora negli anni '70 ai tempi delle prime radio FM
per comprare i transistors di potenza per TX da 150 W serviva
il permesso del consolato USA, me lo disse Lovisolo, ingegnere
della Selenia poi in messo proprio, che costruiva TX FM a Milano,
poi in Libano.
 
Anche la storia del quadrimotore progetto Zappata e realizzato in
un solo esemplare, (somigliante al Constellation Lockheed) fu ostacolato
proprio per favorire l'industria degli "Alleati", e, nel 1946 c'era
preoccupazione perché facilmente trasformabile in bombardiere.
 
Insomma, perdere una guerra non e' come vincerla, si subiscono ostacoli
per molto tempo.
 
 

 
https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/09/hitting-the-books-The-Mysterious-Affair-at-Olivetti-Meryle-Secrest/
 
 
Hm...
Noto casini con pubblicità o nonsoche...
 
In questi casi provo a fare il giro largo:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191111122000/https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/09/hitting-the-books-The-Mysterious-Affair-at-Olivetti-Meryle-Secrest/
 
 
CYA

 per molto tempo.
 
Il punto di base è che si temeva (a torto) il fortissimo PCI (che gli 
ammeregani non avevano mai capito bene la sua natura...) e i danni non 
sono limitati all' economia.
 
mi fermo qua per non scendere nell' OT storico-politico.
 
Saluti,
dott. Piergiorgio.
 
 

 
Le ho sempre viste di cartoncino, anche per consentire la scrittura a penna
dei nomi dei programmi, ma non escluderei esistessero delle versioni “long
lasting” con su incisi i programmi venduti dalla casa madre