The engineer Giovanni De Sandre, one of the protagonists of the development of Olivetti Program 101, considered the first personal computer, died at 89 years of age. Born in Sacile (PN), in 1935, De Sandre had graduated in electrical engineering at the Polytechnic of Milan in 1959 and the following year he had entered Olivetti, where he was chosen for the group led by engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto for the project of program 101, together with Giuliano Gaiti, Gastone Garziera and Giancarlo Toppi. The first table computer conceived by Olivetti was presented at the BEMA (Business Equipment Manifacturers Association) in New York in 1965. In 1962 it was the young new hired de Sandre who developed the electronic part. At the time, the American General Electric, after the acquisition of Olivetti’s electronic section, did not want to know about an Italian computer. To avoid the cancellation of the project, program 101 was then classified as a calculating machine because the calculating division was not part of the agreement with General Eletric. In that way the invention could be perfected. Olivetti program 101 had no printed processors or circuits, but transistors, diodes and capacitors grouped in functional micro-units, a patented technology specially for the machine.
De Sandre has spent his career in the research and development sector between Pregnana, Ivrea and Milan in Olivetti. In 2015, fifty years of the birth of the P101, De Sandre was received together with Garziera and Banzi, by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.