Happy birthday, Adriano Olivetti

It is the birthday of Italian industrialist Adriano Olivetti (1901), who is credited with transforming his father’s business machine company from a shop environment into an efficient manufacturing operation. Shortly after graduating from Polytechnic University of Turin, Olivetti visited a Remington plant in the United States and returned with ideas for reorganization that eventually doubled his company’s output. Olivetti typewriters, calculators, and computers are known and used around the world. Adriano Olivetti was devoted to utopian philosophy and put it into practice by reinvesting profits in increased salaries, fringe benefits, and services. In the late 1950s, Olivetti workers were the most productive in the industry and the highest paid.