Brand · Italy · 1908–1990s

Used Olivetti typewriters

Camillo Olivetti founded his company in Ivrea in 1908, and under his son Adriano it became famous for treating office machines as industrial design. Marcello Nizzoli's Lettera 22 (1950) won the Compasso d'Oro, entered MoMA's collection and was named the best-designed product of the previous century by the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1959. Its successor, the Lettera 32 (1963), was built for about twenty years in Italy, Spain and other plants. The Studio 44 is the larger semi-standard portable, and Ettore Sottsass's red Valentine (1969) is the design icon, a Lettera 32 mechanism in a plastic shell. The Lettera machines and the Valentine take Olivetti Lettera ribbon spools, not Group 1. Olivetti also took control of Underwood in 1959. Lettera 32s asked about $220–330 delivered on eBay in late 2026.