SBS Documentaries

Programma 101, The Machine That Changed the World (2014x16)

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In the early sixties, to talk about computer science meant talking about enormous calculators that were seen as pure science fiction to the vast majority. In 1963 the IBM PDP-1 occupied an entire room, cost 100.000 dollars and was in few specialised laboratories. And while the world dreams about and fears this object of the future, in that small lab with tainted black windows, four pioneers invented the P101, ''the first desk top computer of the world'. This is the birth of our age. But the big US companies didn’t sit idly by. In 1967, Hewlett Packard compensated Olivetti with 900.000 dollars, implicitly recognising that they had infringed the Olivetti’s patent of the P101 with their model HP 9100 and the inventors received a dollar each as a symbolic gesture, for that invention that changed the world. Programma 101 is the tale of the birth of our era, told through the voices of its protagonists and through an incredible archive material. (From Italy, in Italian and English) (Documentary) G CC