Olivetti 1908 - 1958

Publisher: Ing. C. Olivetti & C. S.p.A. [stampa: Tiefdruckanstalt Imago AG - Zürich, Svizzera] 1958 (ottobre), Ivrea
Publication Date: 1958

copertina illustrata a colori di Giovanni Pintori, impaginazione di Max Huber, numerose fotografie in nero e a colori. A cura di Giorgio Soavi. Testi di Adriano Olivetti, Libero Bigiaretti e Franco Fortini. Fotografie di D. Arden, A. Ballo, E. Hartmann, L. Lionni, J. Maltby, U. Mulas, W. Miller, F. Roiter, A. Rossi, E. Scheidegger, E. Schulthess, M. Zanuso. Prima edizione, versione in lingua inglese (traduzione di Milton Gendel). Formato in centrimetri 28,5x23 190 (2)pagine Legatura legatura editoriale cartonata, dorso in tela, sovraccopertina.

Open publication - Free publishing - More history

The Olivetti Portable Typewriter That Stopped New York

It's just a week more than 56 years since Life magazine came out with its three-page spread of a typewriting version of Candid Camera.In May 1954, Olivetti set up a Lettera 22 portable typewriter, bolted to a stand on the sidewalk outside its new New York City showroom on Fifth Avenue, near 47th Street. Within 10 months, 50,000 people had stopped to use the machine. Life photographer Michael Rougier set up a screen through which he could snap the people who stopped to try out the Olivetti. Let's start with a Messenger who, like me, couldn't type:

These two photographs appear in the Olivetti company 1908-1958 history book (in the top one, you can make out people typing outside the building). Both are taken from inside the showroom, which Olivetti claimed had "become a landmark on Fifth Avenue ... [it] was designed by Belgiojoso, Peressutti and Rogers."