On: The Texas Instruments TMX 1795: the first, forgott...

[agumonkey]

Funny you mention Olivetti, I recently learned they were huge in those days. Very fine design and 'better world' goals, very similar to Apple today.

trivia: it seems Olivetti was forced out of the Personal Computer business by bad financial games from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_De_Benedetti cutting funds at a bad time.

[Turing_Machine → agumonkey]

I think every typewriter/office machine company tried their hand at computers at some point. Royal McBee, Burroughs, Smith Corona (I don't think they did full-blown computers, but they did do some dedicated word processors), Remington Rand...

[agumonkey → Turing_Machine]

That was quite natural. Mechanical, electro-mechanical, mostly electronic.

[Turing_Machine → agumonkey]

Sure. The interesting question is why, out of all the office machine companies that tried it, only IBM managed to pull it off.

[kens → Turing_Machine]

I think that gives the wrong impression, that office machine companies tried making computers and failed. Remington Rand, for instance, was IBM's principal rival in the 1950's, selling the UNIVAC. Olivetti had transistorized mainframes before IBM. I think the interesting question is why IBM survived while the rest didn't. My highly oversimplified answer would be the IBM 360 crushed them.