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How was IBM founded?
A former employee joined a company called CTR and later became IBM. At first, the company engaged in punch cards-related business, then entered the pc business, was promoted through fierce competition, and later became a modern IBM.

In the history of IBM, the most successful should be Watson and his son and later Guo Shina, whose contribution to IBM is the history of IBM.

19 14, Thomas? j? Watson was founded by his business mentor John? Patterson ruthlessly drove away the National Cash Register Company (NCR) and joined a company named C-T-R at that time, which was later IBM.

During the period of 1920s, Watson gradually found the development direction of the company and turned IBM into a "punch card machine" company. Watson began to bet his future on this "thinking machine", or the data processing industry.

Special punched cards cannot be interchanged with each other's cards. First of all, he has a large number of patents for punching machines, and secondly, the cost of transferring from IBM cards to other companies is prohibitive. IBM also made huge profits by selling cards to customers.

In the1920s, IBM was one of the most dynamic star companies in the stock market. It produces meters, meat grinders, clocks, attendance clocks, punched cards and punched cards.

1929,101October 29th, the stock market crashed, and the American economy suddenly seemed paralyzed. But Watson is a natural optimist. He wants to find a way to further develop the company. In the early 1930s, with his unshakable optimism, he gambled with the whole company, and it was either successful or completely failed.

First, his factory will continue to produce and will not fire anyone. He asked the factory to continue to produce instruments and parts and store them in the warehouse.

Secondly, in 1932, he invested a huge sum of US$ 1 10,000 (6% of annual income) to build the first enterprise laboratory, which was a model followed by Xerox PARC Research Center and Microsoft Research Institute. The research and development of the laboratory throughout the 1930s made IBM far ahead of any potential competitors.

From 1929 to 1934, the company's income stagnated, and Watsons invested more and more money in production and research and development, and the company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

1935, American President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, which established the American social security system and brought huge information processing demand. The demand in punch cards has soared overnight, and only one company can meet this demand: Watson's IBM. In the next half century, until A.D. 1980, IBM dominated the data processing industry.

World War II involved all Americans, and his factory was also used to produce military supplies. He turned the war contract into an opportunity to expand the size of IBM by two or three times in a short time.

After the war, after just a few months of economic recession, no one expected the economy to recover quickly. The American economy suddenly recovered, and consumers rushed to buy goods that could not be bought during the war. Therefore, American companies need more IBM punch cards to keep accounts, and the demand is soaring.

However, while IBM succeeded, it also lost many opportunities. When Carlson, the inventor of xerography, wanted to sell this technology to IBM, Watson refused. Carlson went to Xerox. Years later, IBM tried to squeeze into the copier market, but failed. Watson put aside the radio electronic typewriter made by IBM and welcomed by the military in the war. 1946, he rejected eckert and Maudslay, inventors of ENIAC. When IBM entered the field of electronic computers a few years later, eckert and Maudslay became IBM's most important competitors.

1956 before and after Watson's death, little Tom? What Watson has done is mainly to change the company from an entrepreneurial company managed by entrepreneur Watson with personal wisdom to a professional management company. The company has a clear organization chart and clear responsibilities. Little Tom? Watson is no longer prepared to do it himself like his father.

In the past, IBM's important managers started from salesmen and were slowly cultivated. But outside of IBM, most large companies in the 1950 s adopted the organizational model of "employees plus first line". Little Tom? Watson would have done the same. There are many other management measures, but he never thought that in the development of professional management in the next few decades, IBM certainly became a management model, but it was sometimes called "the largest bureaucracy except the US government" in good faith.

196 1 year, the scale of IBM is 2.5 times that of 1956 when Watson died, and the stock value has increased five times. Of the 6,000 large computers used in the United States, 4,000 are produced by IBM. On the other hand, the company seems to have reached a platform period, and contrary to the vigorous development of the computer industry, the company's growth has slowed down. Many different types of computers provided by the company are becoming a problem. They are incompatible with each other, with different internal structures, different software and different peripheral devices.

196 1 end, little Tom? Watson approved a new series of computers called "S360", which will eliminate all kinds of computers that the company used to sell well. The annual R&D cost of this project is $654.38+0 billion, and the total cost exceeds $5 billion. This is the largest enterprise R&D project in history, which is equivalent to the cost of the US government's Manhattan moon landing program.

As Guo Shina said, "Before the emergence of System 360, IBM was just one of many ordinary companies that produced and sold computers." And if it failed, there would never be IBM now. S360 computer was a great success and gained an overwhelming advantage. The company is growing at a rate of nearly 30%, and only new companies can have such a growth rate. 1965, IBM became one of the large industrial enterprises in the United States 10. Two years later, the company's market value surpassed that of General Motors.

The extreme success of S360 inevitably led to the government's anti-monopoly lawsuit breaking out again and falling into a decade-long lawsuit. This time has completely changed the way IBM operates, little Tom? Watson had to take the initiative to abandon the bundling transaction that has been implemented since the establishment of IBM and price products and services separately.

Despite Watson's reluctance, it was here that Guo Shina found the future of IBM many years later. In this antitrust lawsuit, IBM's main rivals are the famous Control Data Company (CDC) and its legendary founder William? Norris In the history of business, we actually only remember those enterprises that stayed behind. It was not until 198 1 that the lawsuit became meaningless. In this process, IBM "changed from an aggressive and proud competitor to a cautious behemoth". Since 1972, every decision of the company has been filtered by the anti-monopoly law.

1970 suffered a sudden heart attack and announced his resignation immediately after his recovery, instead of waiting until he was 60 years old three years later as originally planned.

At the beginning of1980s, the computer industry began to welcome some tiny competitors, and IBM finally decided to enter the personal computer market (PC), which was a great success. Then the mistakes during this period created companies that have disappeared, such as Microsoft, Intel and Compaq.

The history of IBM PC is well known. Ethridge's CEO kept asking, "Where's my Apple computer?" The team he led finally designed a PC based on Intel's CPU, Microsoft's operating system and a large number of accessories purchased from outside.

Personal computers have won the feeling of "youth" for IBM in the hearts of the public. It is not as old as other mainframe companies, but it has brought IBM into a market with fierce competition and meager profits. A large number of IBM PC compatible computer companies are constantly emerging, and Compaq is one of them. Compatible computers quickly eroded the market created by IBM PC.

On the other hand, if in the post-mainframe era, IBM has mastered any technology developed by its laboratory but applied by its competitors, it may be completely different. Those technologies have at least made these companies: Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Sun Microsystems, Seagate, EMC, Cisco and so on.

In the market boom of 1990, Guo Shina successfully realized the great reversal of IBM, and the symbol of "e-commerce" made IBM one of the hottest companies in the Internet era. Guo Shina found a kind of "service" for the company, which, according to him, was "a service that didn't exist in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and emphasized the needs of customers", that is, to provide information technology services for customers on behalf of their interests rather than from the standpoint of IT vendors.

If old Watson founded IBM, young Watson transformed IBM into a new field and kept ahead in computing, while Guo Shina changed IBM's huge and bloated organization, making IBM still full of youthful vitality.