Ettore Sottsass was born in Austria in 1917, though in the late 1920s he moved to Italy with his family (his father was the prominent Italian architect Ettore Sottsass, Sr). He set up his first studio in Milan before traveling to New York in the 1950s, where he worked in the office of from 1956 to 1957. A future-minded designer, Sottsass worked closely with Olivetti designing the Elea 9003 (the first Italian calculator) in 1959 and the company's first electronic typewriter, the Tekne, a few years later. He passed away in 2007 at the age of 90, after resurged interest in his work led to exhibitions at the and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.