Pisa, 1954–1961: Assessing Key Stages of a Seminal Italian Project

The last decade and a half have seen a renewed interest in the development of the IT industry in Italy and the role of the 1950s pioneers. The aim of the article is to retrace key stages of the first Italian project aimed at creating an electronic calculator, carried out by the University of Pisa in collaboration with Olivetti. The re-evaluation of the documents kept in the University's archives, including the technical projects, has proved fruitful and has shed light on lesser-known aspects of a project that opened the way to the birth of computer science in the country as a business and as a scientific discipline.