History of IBM

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International Business Machine , or IBM, dubbed "Big Blue", is a multinational computer technology company and IT consulting firm headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. IBM comes from bringing together several companies that work to automate routine business transactions. In 1911 the company that rented Unit recording equipment, especially Hollerith cards and card readers to government agencies and insurance agents, became Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR). Thomas J. Watson (1874-1956) took over in 1924, using the name "International Business Machine." IBM developed into electric typewriters and other office machines. Watson is a salesman and concentrates on building highly motivated and well-paid salespeople who can create solutions for clients unfamiliar with the latest technology. His motto is "THINK"; customers are advised not to "fold, clot or mutilate" fine cardboard cards. IBM's first experiment with computers in the 1940s and 1950s was a simple advance on card-based systems. His big break came in the 1960s with his 360 Model mainframe model. IBM offers a full suite of hardware, software, and service agreements, so users who need more money will continue to use "Big Blue". Since most software is created specifically by programmers within the company, and will only run on one brand of computer, it is too expensive to switch brands. Brushing clone makers, and facing federal anti-trust lawsuits, the giant sold reputation and security and hardware, and was the most admired American company in the 1970s and 1980s.

The late 1980s and early 1990s were cruel to IBM - losses in 1993 exceeded $ 8 billion - because the mainframe giants failed to adjust quickly enough to the personal computer revolution. Desktop machines have the power they need, and are much easier for users and managers than the millions of dollars' main frame. IBM does introduce a range of popular microcomputers - but it's too popular. The cloning maker spells out IBM, while its profits go to chipmakers like Intel or home software like Microsoft. After a series of reorganizations, IBM has become one of the world's largest computer and system integrators companies. With more than 400,000 employees worldwide by 2014, IBM has more patents than any other US-based technology company and has twelve research labs around the world. The company has scientists, engineers, consultants, and sales professionals in over 175 countries. IBM employees have won five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, five National Technology Medals, and five National Science Medals.

Video History of IBM

Chronology

1880s-1924: The Origin of IBM

The roots of IBM date back to the 1880s. Since the 1960s or earlier, IBM has described its formation as a merger of three companies: The Tabulating Machine Company (with origins in Washington, DC founded in 1896), International Time Recording Company (established in 1900 in Endicott), and Company Computing Scale (founded 1901 in Dayton, Ohio, USA). But the 1911 stock prospectus states that four companies are consolidated; all three are described by IBM and the Bundy Manufacturing Company (founded in 1889). Furthermore, there is no merger, no consolidation. The new company, named Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), was founded on June 16, 1911 in the state of New York, the US CTR is the parent company; now five companies are merging. Each company continued to operate by using their assigned names until the parent company was abolished in 1933. The merger was engineered by renowned financial expert Charles Flint. Flint remained a member of the CTR board until retirement in 1930.

The companies incorporated to form CTR produce a wide range of products, including employee time logging systems, scales, automatic meat cutter, coffee grinders and hollow card equipment. The product line is very different; Flint states that consolidation is "allied"

... instead of relying on earnings in one industry alone, will have three separate and distinct business lines, so that in normal times, interest and funds drowned in bonds can be obtained by either of these independent channels, while at times abnormal consolidation will have three opportunities, not one to meet its obligations and pay dividends.

The five amalgamated companies have 1,300 employees and offices and factories in Endicott and Binghamton, New York; Dayton, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Washington DC.; and Toronto, Ontario.

From the combined companies to form CTR, the most important is The Tabulating Machine Company, founded by Herman Hollerith, and specialized in the development of punch card data processing equipment. Hollerith's patent series on tabulation machine technology, first applied in 1884, drew his work in the US Census Bureau from 1879-82. Hollerith initially sought to reduce the time and complexity required for the 1890 Census tabulation. The progression of the hole cards in 1886 set industry standards for the next 80 years in processing and calculating input data.

In 1896, The Tabulating Machine Company leased several machines to the railroad company but quickly focused on the greatest statistical effort challenge of its time - the US Census of 1900. After winning the government contract, and completing the project, Hollerith faced the challenge of keeping the company in years- year non-Census. He returned to target private businesses in the United States and abroad, trying to identify industrial applications for automatic punching, tabulating and sorting machines. In 1911, Hollerith, now 51 and failed to sell his business to Flint for $ 2.3 million (of which Hollerith earned $ 1.2 million), which later established CTR. As the diverse CTR business proved difficult to manage, Flint requested assistance to former executive No. 2 at National Cash Register Company (NCR), Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Watson became General Manager of the CTR in 1914 and the President in 1915. Utilizing his managerial experience at NCR, Watson quickly adopted a range of effective business tactics: generous sales incentives, customer service focus, insistence on neat and skinned salespeople dark, and evangelical spirit to instill the company's pride and loyalty in every worker. When salespeople grew into a highly professional and knowledgeable company arm, Watson focused their attention on providing large-scale tabulation solutions for businesses, leaving markets for small office products for others. He also emphasized the importance of customers, IBM's lasting principles. This strategy proved successful, as during Watson's first four years, revenue doubled to $ 2 million, and the company's operations expanded to Europe, South America, Asia and Australia.

At the helm during this period, Watson played a central role in determining what would become IBM's organization and culture. He launched a number of initiatives that showed a firm faith in his workers. He employed the company's first defective worker in 1914, he formed the company's first employee education department in 1916 and in 1915 he introduced his favorite slogan, "THINK," which quickly became a corporate mantra. Watson enhances the company's spirit by encouraging every employee with a complaint to approach him or another company executive - his famous Open Door policy. He also sponsors employee sports teams, family events and corporate bands, believing that employees are most productive when they are supported by healthy, supportive families and communities. This initiative - each rooted in Watson's personal value system - became a core aspect of the IBM culture for the rest of the century.

"Watson never liked the awkwardly written CTR title" and chose to replace it with the broader title "International Business Machine". First as a name for a Canadian subsidiary in 1917, then as a line in advertising. For example, McClures magazine, v53, May 1921, has a full page ad with, at the bottom:

   New York International Time Recording Company    Â Â Â Â Â ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ ÂÂÂÂ  Â Â Â ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ Computing Company-Tabulation-Recording, New York  <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<  Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â   International Business Machines    

Finally, on February 14, 1924, the name was used for the CTR itself.

Key events

1890-1895: Hollerith perforated cards used for 1890 Census

U.S. Census Bureau Contracts to use Tabular tabulation technology Herman Hollerith in the 1890 US Census. The census was completed in 6 years and is estimated to have saved the government $ 5 million. Earlier, 1880, the census took 8 years. The required years can not be compared directly; both differ in: population size, data collected, resources (number of census office heads, machines,...), and reports prepared. Total population 62,947,714, family, or rough , count, announced after just six weeks of processing (hollow cards are not used for this tabulation). Hollerith perforated cards become the industry standard tabulation for input over the next 70 years. Hollerith's The Tabulating Machine Company was then consolidated into what became IBM.

1906: Hollerith Type I Tabulator

First tabulator with automatic card feed and control panel.

1911: Formation

Charles Flint, a trusted organizer, engineer of four companies: The Tabulating Machine Company, International Time Recording Company, Computing Scale Company of America, and Bundy Manufacturing Company. The combined companies produce and sell or rent machines such as commercial scales, industrial timers, meat and cheese slicer, tabulators, and hollow cards. The new parent company, Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, is based in Endicott. The five companies have 1,300 employees with offices and factories in Endicott and Binghamton, New York; Dayton, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and Washington, D.C.

1914: Thomas J. Watson arrives

Thomas J. Watson Sr., a delayed one-year jail sentence - see NCR - made general manager of CTR. Less than a year later the court decision was removed. The consent decision was made that Watson refused to sign, gambling that there would be no retrial. He became president of the company Monday, March 15, 1915.

1914: First defective employee

The CTR Company employs employees with their first disabilities.

1915: Mark "THINK"

"THINK" signs, based on the slogan coined by Thomas J. Watson, Sr. while in NCR and promoted by John Henry Patterson (owner of NCR) used in the company for the first time.

1916: Employee education

CTR invests in employees of its subsidiaries, creating educational programs. Over the next two decades, the program will be expanded to include management education, voluntary study clubs, and the construction of the IBM Schoolhouse in 1933.

1917: CTR in Brazil

Preferred in Brazil in 1917, invited by the Brazilian Government to conduct a census, CTR opened an office in Brazil

1920: tabulation tabulation of the First Printing Machine.

With the previous tabulation the results are displayed and must be copied by hand.

1923: German CTR

CTR earns majority ownership of the German company tabulation Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Groupe (Dehomag).

1924: International Business Machine Company

Watson never liked the oblique writing of the Computing-Tabulation-Recording Company and chose a new name for both his aspirations and for escaping from the "office tool". The new name was first used for a Canadian subsidiary in 1917. On February 14, 1924, the name CTR was officially changed to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). The names of subsidiaries do not change; there will be no IBM labeled product until 1933 (below) when the subsidiaries are incorporated into IBM.

1925-1929: _IBM's_early_growth "> 1925-1929: IBM's initial growth

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The newly printed IBM continues to develop its core cultural attributes during the 1920s. It launched an employee newspaper, the Business Machine, which brings together all IBM businesses in a single publication. It introduced the Quarter Century Club, honoring employees with 25 years of service to the company, and launching Centenary Clubs, to reward salespeople who meet their annual quota. In 1928, the Saran Plan program - which provided cash rewards to employees who contributed viable ideas on how to improve IBM products and procedures - made its debut.

IBM and its predecessor companies built clocks and other time-clocking products for 70 years, culminating in the 1958 sales of the IBM Time Equipment Division to the Simplex Time Recorder Company, IBM manufactures and sells such equipment as call recorders, job recorders, record door locks, time stamps and traffic recorder.

The company also expanded its product line through innovative engineering. Behind a group of major inventors - James W. Bryce, Clair Lake, Fred Carroll, and Royden Pierce - IBM produced a significant series of product innovations. In the optimistic years after World War I, CTR's engineering and research staff developed new and better mechanisms to meet the expanding needs of customers. In 1920, the company introduced the first complete school time control system, and launched its first printing tabulator. Three years later the company introduced the first electric keypunch button, and the 1924's Carroll Rotary Press produced hollow cards at speeds that had not previously been heard. In 1928, the company held its first customer engineering education class, showing early recognition of the importance of tailoring the solution to fit customer needs. It also introduced an 80-column press card in 1928, which doubled its information capacity. This new format, soon dubbed the "IBM Card", became and remained an industry standard until the 1970s.

Key events

1925: First Tabulator sold to Japan

In May 1925, Morimura-Brothers signed a sole agent agreement with IBM to import Hollerith's tabulators into Japan. The first Hollerith Taber in Japan was installed at Nippon Pottery (now Noritake) in September 1925, making it the # 1 IBM customer in Japan.

1927: IBM Italia

IBM opened its first office in Italy in Milan, and started selling and operating with National Insurance and Bank.

1928: Reduced tabulator, Columbia University, 80-column card

The first Hollerith tab can be reduced, Hollerith Type IV taber. IBM began a collaboration with Benjamin Wood, Wallace John Eckert, and the Bureau of Statistics at Columbia University. The Hollerith 80-column pressed card was introduced. The patented rectangle holes, ending vendor compatibility (from the previous 45 card columns; Remington Rand will soon introduce the 90-column card).

1930-1938: Great Depression

The Great Depression of the 1930s presented unprecedented economic challenges, and Watson faced these challenges, continuing to invest in people, manufacturing, and technological innovations despite the difficult economic times. Instead of reducing the staff, he hired additional employees to support President Franklin Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration plan - not just the seller, to whom he joked that he had a lifelong disadvantage for, but also the engineer. Watson not only retained his workforce, he increased the benefits. IBM was one of the first companies to provide group life insurance (1934), survival benefits (1935) and paid holidays (1936). He raised the stakes on his workforce by opening IBM Schoolhouse in Endicott to provide education and training for IBM employees. And he greatly enhanced IBM's research capabilities by building a modern research laboratory at the Endicott manufacturing site.

With all these internal investments, Watson, basically, gambles in the future. It was IBM's first bet "The The Company", but the risk paid off so well. Watson's factories, running a full slant for six years without a market to sell, created a large inventory of unused tabulation equipment, filtered out IBM resources. To reduce cash flow, the difficult Dayton Scale Division (foodservice equipment business) was sold in 1933 to Hobart Manufacturing for supplies. When the Social Security Act of 1935 - labeled as "the greatest accounting operation of all time" - appeared to bid, IBM was the only bidder who could quickly provide the necessary equipment. Watson's wager brought the company into an important government contract to maintain employment records for 26 million people. The successful performance of IBM in the contract soon led to other government orders, and by the end of the decade, IBM not only safely negotiated the Depression, but rose to the forefront of the industry. The Watson Depression-era decision to invest in technical development and sales capabilities, education to expand the extent of that capability, and its commitment to the data-processing product line became the foundation for IBM's 50 years of growth and success.

In the decades leading up to the start of World War II, IBM has operated in many countries that will be engaged in war, on both sides of the Allies and Axis. IBM has a lucrative subsidiary in Germany, which is a majority owner, as well as operations in Poland, Switzerland, and other countries in Europe. Like most enemy-owned businesses in Axis countries, this subsidiary was taken over by the Nazis and other Axis governments at the start of the war. The headquarters in New York meanwhile work to help the American war effort.

IBM in America

When the Second World War began - long before the United States was formally involved in the conflict - Watson put all IBM facilities at the disposal of the US government.

IBM's product line shifted from tabulation equipment and time recorder to Sperry and Norden bombsights, Browning Automatic Rifle and M1 Carbine, and engine parts - all of which, more than three dozen major armaments and 70 products as a whole. Watson set a nominal one-percent profit on those products and used profits to set up funds for widows and orphans of victims of the IBM war.

Allied military forces used IBM's tabulation equipment for record units, ballistics, accounting and logistics, and other war purposes. There are many uses of punch card machines from IBM for calculations made at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. During the War, IBM also built the Automated Order Controlled Calculator, also known as Harvard Mark I for the US Navy - the first large-scale electro-mechanical calculator in the US.

In 1933 IBM had acquired the rights to the Radiotype, IBM Electric typewriter attached to the radio transmitter. "In 1935 Admiral Richard E. Byrd managed to send a Radiotype message 11,000 miles from Antarctica to an IBM receiving station in Ridgewood, New Jersey." Chosen by the Signal Corps for use during the war, the Radiotype installation handles up to 50,000,000 words per day.

To meet the demands of wartime products, IBM greatly expanded its manufacturing capacity. IBM added new buildings at its Endicott, New York (1941) plant, and opened new facilities in Poughkeepsie, New York (1941), Washington, D.C. (1942), and San Jose, California (1943). IBM's decision to build a West Coast presence leverages its growing base of electronics research and other high-tech innovations in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, an area later known as decades later as the Silicon Valley.

IBM in Germany and Nazi Occupied Europe

The Nazis used Hollerith's equipment and a majority-owned German subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH (Dehomag), supplied this equipment from the early 1930s. This equipment is essential for the Nazi effort to categorize German citizens and other countries falling under Nazi control through an ongoing census. This census data is used to facilitate the gathering of Jews and other target groups, and to categorize their movements through Holocaust machines, including in the concentration camps.

Like the hundreds of foreign-owned companies doing business in Germany at the time, Dehomag was under the control of the Nazi authorities before and during World War II. A Nazi, Hermann Fellinger, was appointed by Germany as a guardian of enemy properties and placed in the head of a subsidiary of Dehomag.

Historian and author Edwin Black, in his best-selling book on the subject, stated that the seizure of the German subsidiary was a ruse. He wrote: "Companies are not looted, hired machines are not confiscated, and [IBM] continues to receive money channeled through its subsidiaries in Geneva." In his book he argues that IBM is an active and enthusiastic supplier to the Nazi regime long after they should stop dealing with them. Even after the Polish invasion, IBM continued to serve and expand its services to the Third Reich in Poland and Germany. The IBM seizure came after Pearl Harbor and the US War Declaration, in 1941.

IBM responded that the book was based on well-known facts and documents that were previously available to the public and no new facts or findings. IBM also refused to retain the relevant documents. Writing in the New York Times, Richard Bernstein argues that Black exaggerates IBM's mistakes

Key events

1942: Training for the disabled

IBM launched a program to train and employ people with disabilities in Topeka, Kansas. The next year's classes begin in New York City, and soon the company is asked to join the Presidential Committee for the Work of the Handicapped.

1943: First female vice president

IBM appoints its first female vice president.

1944: ASCC

IBM introduced the world's first large-scale computing calculator, the Auto Sequence Control Calculator (ASCC). Designed in collaboration with Harvard University, ASCC, also known as Mark I, uses electromechanical relays to solve additional problems in less than a second, multiplication in six seconds, and divide within 12 seconds.

1944: United Negro College Fund

IBM President Thomas J. Watson, Sr., joins the United Nations School Advisory Advisory Committee (UNCF), and IBM contributes to UNCF fundraising efforts.

1945: IBM's first research lab

IBM's first research facility, Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory, opened in a renovated fraternity house near Columbia University in Manhattan. In 1961, IBM moved its research headquarters to T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.

1946 -1959: Postwar recovery, resurgence of business computing, space exploration, Cold War

IBM had expanded so much at the end of the War that the company faced a very difficult situation - what would happen if military spending declined sharply? One way IBM overcame these concerns was to accelerate its international growth in the post-war years, culminating with the establishment of the World Trade Corporation in 1949 to manage and grow its overseas operations. Under the leadership of Watson's youngest son, Arthur K. 'Dick' Watson, the WTC would eventually generate half of IBM's profits in the 1970s.

IBM just emerged in the 1950s. With the death of Founder Father Thomas J. Watson, Sr. on June 19, 1956 at the age of 82, IBM underwent its first leadership change in more than four decades. The chief executive's coat fell to his eldest son, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., president of IBM since 1952.

The new chief executive faces a daunting task. The company is in the midst of a period of rapid technological change, with new-born computer technology - electronic computers, magnetic tape storage, disk drives, programming - creating new competitors and market uncertainties. Internally, the company grows rapidly, creating significant organizational pressure and management challenges. Not having the power of personality that Watson Sr has long used to bind IBM together, Watson Jr. and his senior executives personally wonder whether the new leadership generation will face the challenge of managing the company through this turbulent period. "We are," wrote an old IBM executive in 1956, "in grave danger of losing our" eternal "worth in electronic days like in counter-mechanical days."

Watson Jr. responded by drastically restructuring the organization just months after his father died, creating a modern management structure that enabled him to more effectively oversee fast moving companies. He codified well-known but unwritten IBM practices and philosophies into formal company policies and programs - such as IBM's Three Basic Beliefs, and the Open and Speaking Doors! Perhaps most significant was herding the company's first equal opportunity opportunity policy letter in 1953, one year before the US Supreme Court's decision at Brown v. Board of Education and 11 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He continues to expand the company's physical capabilities - in 1952 IBM San Jose launched a storage development laboratory that pioneered the disk drive. The main facility will then follow in Rochester, Minnesota; Greencastle, Indiana; Kingston, New York; and Lexington, Kentucky. Concerned that IBM was too slow in adapting the transistor technology Watson requested company policies regarding its use, generating an unambiguous product development policy statement in 1957: "It will be IBM's policy to use solid-state circuits in all machine developments. a new commercial device to be announced that uses the main tube circuit. "

Watson Jr. also continues to partner with the United States government to encourage computing innovation. The rise of the Cold War accelerated the growing government's awareness of the importance of digital computing, and prompted the major Department of Defense to support computer development projects in the 1950s. Of this amount, nothing is more important than the early detection air detection system SAGE interceptor.

In 1952, IBM began working with MIT's Lincoln Laboratories to complete the design of air defense computers. The merger of academic and business engineering culture proved troublesome, but both organizations finally pushed for design in the summer of 1953, and IBM was awarded a contract to build two prototypes in September. In 1954, IBM was named as a major computer hardware contractor to develop SAGE for the United States Air Force. Working on this massive computing and communications system, IBM gained access to pioneering research conducted at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the first real-time digital computer. This includes working on many other computer technological advances such as magnetic core memory, large real-time operating systems, integrated video display, light weapons, the first effective algebraic computer language, analog-to-digital conversion and digital-to-analog techniques, digital data over telephone lines, duplexing, multiprocessing, and distributed geographic networks). IBM built fifty-six SAGE computers at a price of US $ 30 million each, and at the peak of the project devoted more than 7,000 employees (20% of its work force at that time) to the project. SAGE has the largest ever computer footprint, and continued to operate until 1984.

More valuable to IBM in the long run than the benefits of government projects, however, is access to cutting-edge research into digital computers conducted under military aid. IBM ignored, however, to gain a more dominant role in the nascent industry by allowing RAND Corporation to take over a new computer programming job, because, according to one of the project participants, Robert P. Crago, "we can not imagine where we can absorbing two thousand programmers at IBM when this work will end in a few days, which shows how well we understand the future at that time. "IBM will use its experience of designing a massive integrated real-time network with SAGE to design its SABER airline reservation system, who met a lot of success.

On April 7, 1964, IBM introduced the revolutionary/360 System, the first big computer "family" to use replaceable peripheral software and equipment, departure from incompatible IBM product lines, each designed to solve specific customers. Terms. The idea of ​​a versatile machine was considered a gamble at the time.

Within two years, System/360 became the dominant mainframe computer in the marketplace and its architecture became the de facto industry standard. During this time, IBM was transformed from a maker of medium-sized appliances and typewriters to the world's largest computer company.

IBM's dominant market share in the mid-1960s caused antitrust questions by the US Department of Justice, which filed a complaint for the case US. v. IBM in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on January 17, 1969. The lawsuit stated that IBM violated Part 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose of electronics. market of digital computer systems, especially computers designed primarily for business. The case was dragged for 13 years, turned into a resource-depletion war. In 1982, the Justice Department finally concluded that the case was "unfounded" and dropped it, but had to operate under the veil of antitrust litigation had a significant impact on IBM's business and operations decisions during the 1970s and most of the 1980s.

In 1969, IBM's software and services were "not grouped" from hardware sales. Until now customers do not pay for software or services separately from the very high price for renting the hardware. The software is provided at no additional cost, generally in the form of source code. Services (systems engineering, education and training, system installation) are provided free of charge at the discretion of the IBM Branch office. This practice exists throughout the industry. Quoting from abstracts to the widely read IEEE paper on the topic:

At the time, service segregation was perhaps the most contentious, involving antitrust issues that were recently widely debated in the media and courts. However, IBM unbundling software has a long-term impact. After unbundling, IBM software is divided into two main categories: System Control Programming (SCP), which remains free for customers, and Program Products (PP), which are billed for. This changes the customer value proposition for a computer solution, providing a significant monetary value on something that is essentially free. This helps enable the creation of the software industry.

Similarly, IBM's services are divided into two categories: general information, which are free and based on IBM's discretion, and on-the-job assistance and training of customer personnel, which are charged separately and open to non-IBM Customers. This decision greatly expands the market for independent computing service companies.

Key events

1969: Antitrust

The United States government launched what would be a 13-year antitrust lawsuit against IBM. The suit became a desperate drainage war, and eventually fell in 1982, after IBM's mainframe market share declined from 70% to 62%.

1969: Unbound

IBM adopted a new marketing policy that charges separately for most system engineering activities, future computer programs, and customer education courses. This "separation" results in a multibillion-dollar software and services industry.

1969: Magnetic stripe card

The American National Standards Institute makes the magnetic strip technology developed by IBM as a national standard, jumping to start the credit card industry. Two years later, the International Organization for Standardization adopted the IBM design, making it the world standard.

1969: Landing in the first month

IBM personnel and computers helped NASA land the first person on the Moon.

1970-1974: Challenge of success

The Golden Decade of the 1960s was a crackdown to follow, and the 1970s began with a troubling start when CEO Thomas J. Watson Jr. suffered a heart attack and retired in 1971. For the first time since 1914 - nearly six decades - IBM will not have Watson at the helm. In addition, after only one leadership changed for nearly 60 years, IBM will survive two in two years. T. Vincent Learson, an IBM executive, succeeded Watson as CEO, then quickly retired after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 60 in 1973. Following Learson in the CEO's office was Frank T. Cary, a 25-year old IBMer who had received his lines running an incredibly successful data processing division in the 1960s.

During Cary's tenure as CEO, the company continued to dominate the hardware. The IBM/370 system was introduced in 1970 as IBM's new mainframe. The S/370 does not prove to be a revolutionary technology like its predecessor, System/360. From an income perspective, it's more than keeping the cash cow status from 360. The less successful attempt to mimic the 360frame mainframe revolution is the Future Systems project. Between 1971 and 1975, IBM investigated the feasibility of a new revolutionary product line designed to make all existing products obsolete to rebuild their technical supremacy. This effort was terminated by IBM's top management in 1975. But at that time it has spent most of the technical planning and high-level design resources, thus endangering the progress of existing product lines (although some FS elements are incorporated into the actual product). Another IBM innovation during the early 1970s including the IBM 3340 disc unit - introduced in 1973 and known as "Winchester" after the IBM project's internal name - is an advanced storage technology that more than doubles the information density on the disk surface. Winchester technology was adopted by industry and used over the next two decades.

Some of IBM's 1970s technology emerged to be a familiar aspect of everyday life. IBM developed magnetic stripe technology in the 1960s, and became the credit card industry standard in 1971. IBM's floppy disk, also introduced in 1971, became the standard for storing personal computer data during the PC's first decade. IBM Research Edgar's scientist Ted 'Codd wrote a seminal paper describing a relational database - an invention that Forbes has described as one of the most important innovations of the 20th century. IBM Portable Computer, 50 pounds. and $ 9000 personal mobility, introduced in 1975 and predicted - at least functioned if not the size or price or unit sold - Personal Computer of the 1980s. The IBM 3660 supermarket checkout station, introduced in 1973, uses holographic technology to scan product prices from UPC's now-ubiquitous bar codes, which in itself is based on 1952 IBM patents that become the industry standard for groceries. Also in 1973, bank customers began withdrawals, transfers and other account inquiries through the IBM 3614 Consumer Transaction Facility, an early form of the current Auto Teller Machine.

IBM has an innovative role in pervasive technology that is less visible as well. In 1974, IBM announced Network Architecture System (SNA), a network protocol for computing systems. SNA is a set of uniform rules and procedures for computer communications to free computer users from the technical complexity of communication through local, national, and international computer networks. SNA became the most widely used system for data processing until a more open architectural standard was approved in the 1990s. In 1975, IBM researcher Benoit Mandelbrot devised fractal geometry - a new geometric concept that made it possible to describe mathematically the kinds of irregularities that exist in nature. Fractals have a major impact on engineering, economics, metallurgy, arts and health sciences, and are an integral part of the field of computer graphics and animation.

A less successful business venture for IBM was its entry into the office copying market in 1970. The company was immediately sued by Xerox Corporation for patent infringement. Although Xerox holds a patent for the use of selenium as a photoconductor, IBM researchers perfected the use of an organic photoconductor that avoided Xerox patents. Litigation lasted until the late 1970s and was finally completed. Despite this victory, IBM never gained traction in the copier market, and withdrew from the market in the 1980s. Organic photoconductors are now widely used in photocopiers.

During this period, IBM was filing a massive anti-trust lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice in 1969. But in a few cases of related law, the landmark Honeywell v. Sperry Rand The US federal court case was concluded in April 1973. A 1964 patent for ENIAC, the world's first general purpose electronic electronic computer, was found invalid and lacked power for various reasons thus putting the invention of electronic digital computers into the public domain. Furthermore, IBM was ruled to have created a monopoly through a patent-sharing agreement of 1956 with Sperry-Rand.

Key events

1970: Relational database

IBM introduces a relational database requiring information stored on a computer to be organized into easily interpretable tables for accessing and managing large amounts of data. Today, almost all database structures are based on IBM's concept of a relational database.

1970: Office copy machine

IBM introduced the first of three models of xerographic copiers. These machines mark the first commercial use of organic photoconductors that have since grown into the dominant technology.

1971: Speech recognition

IBM got its first speech recognition app, which allowed the technician to serve the equipment to speak and receive oral answers from a computer that could recognize about 5,000 words. Today, IBM's ViaVoice recognition technology has a 64,000 word vocabulary and a 260,000 word back-up dictionary.

1971: Floppy disk

IBM introduced the floppy disk. Convenient and highly portable, the floppy became the industry standard of personal computers for storing data.

1973: Winchester storage technology

The IBM 3340 disk unit - known as "Winchester" after the IBM project's internal name - was introduced, advanced technology that more than doubles the density of information on the disk surface. It features a smaller, lighter read/write head that is designed to ride on an aerial film of only 18 million inches thick. Winchester technology was adopted by industry and used over the next two decades.

1973: Nobel Prize

Dr. Leo Esaki, an IBM Fellow who joined the company in 1960, shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery in 1958 about the phenomenon of electron tunneling. His discovery at a semiconductor junction called the Esaki diode found widespread use in electronic applications. More importantly, his work in the semiconductor field lays the foundation for further exploration in the transportation of electronic solids.

1974: SNA

IBM announced System Network Architecture (SNA), the network protocol for computing systems. SNA is a set of uniform rules and procedures for computer communications to free computer users from the technical complexity of communication through local, national, and international computer networks. SNA became the most widely used system for data processing until a more open architectural standard was approved in the 1990s.

1975-1992: Information revolution, device awakening software and PC industry

IBM President John R. Opel became CEO in 1981. His company is one of the largest companies in the world and owns 62% of the mainframe computer market share that year. The overall computer market share, however, has declined from 60% in 1970 to 32% in 1980. Perhaps disrupted by the old antitrust lawsuit, "Colossus of Armonk" really missed the rapidly growing mini-computer market during the 1970s. , and is behind rivals such as Wang, Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Data Controls in other areas.

In 1979, BusinessWeek asked, "Is IBM just another adult company?" In 1981, its share price has fallen by 22%. IBM's revenue for the first half of this year grew by 5.3% - a third of the inflation rate - while minicomputer maker Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) grew by more than 35%. The company started selling minikomputers, but in January 1982 the Justice Department ended the antitrust lawsuit because, The New York Times reported, the government "admits what computer experts and securities analysts have long concluded: IBM no longer dominates the computer business ".

IBM wants to avoid the same results as the new personal computer industry. A team led by Don Estridge in the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton built the IBM PC, launched on August 12, 1981. IBM soon became more than a presence in the consumer market, thanks to the impressive Little Tramp advertising campaign. Though not a spectacular machine according to current technological standards, the IBM PC brings together all the most desirable features of a computer into one small machine. It has 128 kilobytes of memory (can be increased up to 256 kilobytes), one or two floppy disks and an optional color monitor. And it has the prestige of the IBM brand. It's not cheap, but with a base price of US $ 1,565 it's affordable for business - and many businesses buy PCs. Soothed by the name IBM, they started buying microcomputers on their own budgets devoted to applications that the company's computer department could not meet, and in many cases could not accommodate. Typically, this purchase is not by the company's computer department, because the PC is not seen as the "right" computer. Purchases are often triggered by middle managers and senior staff who see the potential - once the revolutionary VisiCalc spreadsheet, killer apps, has been surpassed by far more powerful and stable products,

Source of the article : Wikipedia