The acronym ELEA stood for Elaboratore Elettronico Aritmetico (Arithmetical Electronic Computer, then changed to Elaboratore Elettronico Automatico for marketing reasons) and was chosen with reference to the ancient Greek colony of Elea, home of the Eleatic school of philosophy.

[3] ELEA 9001: (Macchina Zero - Machine Zero) prototype was made with vacuum tubes, but used germanium transistors for the tape drive system.

[4] ELEA 9002: (Macchina 1V - Machine 1V), 1958,[5] was a prototype with printed circuits and optimized design, much faster than its predecessor and utilizing silicon transistors for the management of tape drives.

[11] Later this unit was donated for educational purposes to the "Enrico Fermi" Technical High School in Bibbiena, where it is still in use today.

The Olivetti computers competed directly with foreign manufacturers such as IBM and Ferranti, but received no special consideration from the Italian government.

[6] ELEA 4001: A computer of reduced size and power compared to previous models, intended to be used in businesses.

The need to obtain 300,000 highly reliable transistors and diodes for each computer, convinced Adriano Olivetti to build a foundry called SGS in cooperation with the company Telettra .

Cabinets were about 1 metre high and interconnected by overhead conduits, so the system did not require the raised floor of other mainframe designs.

The Elea 4000, was a later series that was successfully sold by General Electric after it purchased Olivetti's computer interests.

The company developed a programming language Palgol, a derivative of ALGOL, and an assembler named Psyche.

The death of the engineers Olivetti and Tchou put a brake on laboratory work, which was subsequently sold to General Electric.