The Olivetti M1
This is a Olivetti M1, from 1914.
It’s the first Olivetti typewriter, and also the first typewriter produced industrially in Italy.
The project is from the founder of Olivetti, the engineer Camillo Olivetti. He made some trips in USA, where he learned about the technology of building typewriters.
He visited the Underwood factory, and indeed this first typewriter is very similar to Underwood and Remington models.
But he couldn’t use the already patented simply solutions they used. He had to create his own mechanisms, and since the simpler ones were already patented, he had to use more complicated solutions. Otherwise he would have to pay the royalties for the solutions already used by other producers.
And in 1904 Olivetti founded his company, in Milan, then moved it to Ivrea, near to Turin, in Italy. He bought lathes and mills in USA and started to build his Olivetti typewriters.
The original concept of this typewriter, stated by Olivetti, is a typewriter who doesn't have to be an ornament, overloaded with decorative elements. It must have a sober and at the same time functional and elegant look. Of course since it’s an Italian typewriter it’s advertised like this, here we see a famous old Italian poet, Dante, who point this typewriter.
Olivetti had also to fight with the idea that German and USA typewriters were better than Italian ones.
In total from 1911 to 1920 were built around 5500 of these typewriters, many of these didn’t survived during the troubled last century, with two world wars. In 1914, the year of this typewriter, were built only 490 typewriters M1.
It’s a little number, but the typewriter was made of around 6000 pieces, with hundreds of different screws, and every screw had to be placed at his specific point. It’s quite a record of complexity.
After production, a long series of adjustments had to be made. So, no wonder that to build only one of this typewriter it took 25 days, and the production was no more than 10 per day.
After one hundred years, its 6000 parts still work together perfectly! And no wonder, she is the queen of Olivetti.
