IBM – Milestones from the last Century

IBM is one of the largest IT companies in the world. Yesterday it turned 100 years old. It has grown from a pre-World War I conglomeration of companies making tabulating machines and time-keeping devices into a globe-spanning technology behemoth that pioneered the development of electronic computers and dominated the mainframe era. The company holds a vast array of patents in a vast number of technologies.

It has crossed many milestones in the last century. Here are a few of them:

• 1889 – The Bundy Manufacturing Co., a time recording equipment maker is founded.
• 1896 – The Tabulating Machine Co., a punched-card, electric tabulating equipment maker is founded
• 1911 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company is founded which merges the Bundy Manufacturing Co., The Tabulating Machine Co., The Computing Scale Company and the International Time Recording Co. It has a total of 1300 employees.
• 1914 – Thomas J. Watson, Sr., joins the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and ends up as President in 11 months. The company more than doubles its revenues to $9 million in his first four years.
• 1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company is formally renamed International Business Machines.
• 1928 – IBM introduces the 80 column punch card which doubles previous capacity and remains a standard for the next 50 years.
• 1933 – IBM enters the typewriter business by acquiring Electromatic Typewriters
• 1944 – IBM introduces the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator or the Mark I, which is the first large scale computer to accomplish operations automatically.
• 1946 – IBM introduces the first commercially availabe machine with electronic arithmatic circuits, the 603 Electronic Multiplier.
• 1952 – Thomas J. Watson, Jr. becomes President of IBM.
• 1957 – IBM introduces FORTRAN, which is used to this day.
• 1964 – IBM bets $5 billion on future trends by introducing the IBM System/360 which used Solid Logic Technology microelectronics.
• 1969 – The first manned mission to the moon included an onboard computer designed at IBM
• 1971 – Frank Cary becomes CEO of IBM and the Floppy disk is also introduced. It becomes a PC data storage standard.
• 1981 – IBM introduces the worlds cheapest and smallest Personal Computer at $1565. It partners with Microsoft to supply the Operating System and allows competitors to buy it for IBM-Compatible clones which paves the way for competitors like Dell and Compaq.
• 1984 – IBM introduces its second generation PC with a 6Mhz Intet 80286
• 1991 – IBM shocks the industry by announcing its first annual loss of $2.82 billion
• 1995 – IBM acquires Lotus Development Corp. and its Notes software making it the worlds largest software company. It also launches the IBM Thinkpad running on an Intel Pentium 133Mhz processor. It is an instant success.
• 1997 – The IBM Deep Blue supercomputer, capable of calculating 200 million chess moves per second, defeats chess Grand Master Garry Kasporov.
• 2005 – IBM sells its PC business to Lenovo to focus on software development.
• 2011 – Watson, the IBM AI, which comprises of 90 IBM 750 servers defeats two Jepordy game show champions in a two match game.