The invention of the calculator dates back to ancient times with tools like the abacus. However, the electronic calculator we are familiar with today came to be thanks to an Italian engineer, Pier Giorgio Perotto, and the Italian company Olivetti. The story centers around the creation of the Olivetti Programma 101, one of the first commercial programmable desktop calculators, which paved the way for personal computing as we know it today.

Perotto, an engineer at Olivetti based in Ivrea, Piedmont, was the brain behind the Programma 101, also affectionately known as Perottina or P101. His journey into this groundbreaking invention began with an aspiration to design a machine that was not only functional but user-friendly: in the early 1960s, most computing devices were bulky, complex, and intimidating to the average person. Perotto imagined a device that would sit on a desk, usable by anyone without specialized training.