The history of IBM can be traced back to decades before the development of electronic computers. Before the development of electronic computer, it was a punched card data processing device. IBM was registered as CTR Company in endicott, new york, a few miles west of Binghamton on June1915. In the early days, IBM advertised the merger of three independent companies to form CTR Company, namely List Machine Company (1896 was established in Washington), Calculation Table Company (190 1 was established in Dayton, Ohio) and International Times Records Company (1900 was established in endicott, new york). At that time, the president and founder of the list machine company was HermanHollerith. The key figure behind the merger is financier CharlesFlint, who called the founders of the three companies to propose the merger and worked in CRT until 1930 retired. Thomas. J. Watson is the founder of IBM. 19 14 years as general manager of CTR, 19 15 years as president. 19 17, CTR entered the Canadian market as an international business machine company. 1924.2. 14 was renamed International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). The company was merged into CTR to manufacture various products, including employee timing systems, scales, automatic meat cutters, and most importantly, to develop computers and punching equipment. For a while, CTR concentrated on punching in and didn't participate in other activities.
World War II, the Holocaust era.
In 200 1 year, the writer Edwin Black published "IBM and the Holocaust" (ISBN0609808990), in which he claimed to explain how IBM's new york headquarters and CEO Thomas J. Watson provided punching machines to the Third Reich through overseas subsidiaries. They knew that machines could help the Nazis implement the "final solution". According to the book, with the cooperation of new york, the Geneva offices of IBM, De Homagk and Siemens actively participated in supporting Nazi atrocities. Blake also said that these machines made the Nazis more efficient. In 2003, the company's documentary also discussed this issue. IBM rejected these allegations, and lawsuits based on these allegations were also rejected. During World War II, IBM produced M 1 carbine and Browning automatic rifle. Allied forces widely use IBM equipment for military calculation, logistics and other military supplies. When Manhattan planned to develop an atomic bomb head, IBM punch cards were widely used in Los Alamos for calculation. Richard feynman described this point in his best-selling book "Are you kidding, Mr. Feynman?". During the war, IBM also built Harvard Mark I for the Navy, which was the first large-scale automatic digital computer in the United States.
Air force and aviation engineering
In 1950s, IBM became the main contractor for computer development of automatic defense system of US Air Force. Only when IBM began to copy the anti-aircraft gun system did it come into contact with the key research conducted by MIT; This work is about the first generation of real-time and digital computers (including many other advanced computers such as integrated video display, core experience inheritance, light gun, the first effective algebraic computer language, analog-digital and digital-analog conversion technology, digital data transmission telephone line, duplex, multiprocessor and network). IBM has manufactured 56 intelligent computers at the price of 10000 yuan each, and invested more than 7000 employees (accounting for 20% of the total employees) in the peak project. IBM neglected to strive for more dominant emerging industries, which led Rand to take over the design of new computers, because according to a project participant (RobertPCrago), "We can't imagine that the work in this field will disappear in the future. Where can we attract 2,000 programmers to do this work at IBM?" . IBM will use its huge design experience to combine real-time network design with the start-up of Wise Airlines booking system, and achieve great success.
60 to 80 years old
In 1960s, IBM was the largest of the eight computer companies (Univac, City Life, Scientific Data System, Control Data Company, General Electric Company, American Radio Company and Honeywell). People will say "IBM and Seven Stars" when talking about it. Because other companies or their computer departments are very small, only Urban Life, UNIVAC, NCR and Honeywell produce mainframes, and then some people say that "IBM and B.U.N.C.H" Now most of IBM's competitors have long since disappeared, except Unisys. This is because many mergers, including Univac and Urban Life, NCR and Honeywell, abandoned general mainframes and small departments and focused on profitable product markets. NCR is a cash register (hence the name National Cash Register) and Honeywell has become a market-oriented thermostat. General electric company is still the largest company in the world. But it doesn't work in the computer market. At that time, IBM computer series won the market position, and it is still growing. It was originally called IBM System/360, a more modern 64-bit form, and now it is called IBM-based system (usually called "IBM mainframe"). In the mid-1960s, the success of IBM led the US Department of Justice to investigate IBM's antitrust violations. According to the lawsuit, IBM violated Article 2 of the Sherman Act, monopolizing or trying to monopolize the general digital electronic computer system market, especially the commercially designed computers. The lawsuit lasted until 1983, which had a great impact on the company's practice.
modern history
199365438+1October19, IBM announced a loss of $4.97 billion in the fiscal year of 1992, which was the biggest annual loss of the company in American history at that time. Because of this loss, IBM's business activities have undergone major changes, and the focus will shift from hardware to software and services. On March 9th, 20001,IBM, Sony and Toshiba reached a consensus to jointly develop the processor of the next generation game console. IBM2002, IBM strengthened its consulting ability by acquiring PricewaterhouseCoopers, a professional consulting service company. The company pays more and more attention to promoting enterprises to solve consulting, services and software, and focuses on hardware and high-value chip technology. By 2005, there will be about 195 professional and technical personnel. There are about 350 outstanding engineers, 60 IBM researchers and a large number of senior engineers. In 2002, IBM announced the launch of a 1000 billion dollar research plan. And realize the necessary technical infrastructure to provide the super resources that "require" all enterprises to use effectively. Since then, the plan has been implemented. In recent years, IBM has continuously increased its patent portfolio, which is a valuable cross-licensing with other companies. From 1993 to 2005, IBM obtained more American patents than other companies every year. The period has exceeded 3 1. 000 patents, IBM is the first person. Protecting the company's intellectual property rights has gradually become the business of enterprises, during which the company created a bottom line of 654.38+0 billion US dollars. In 2003, Fortune magazine quoted Paul, the research director of IBM, as saying that IBM brought 1 billion dollars in profits through intellectual property licensing. In 2004, IBM announced that it would sell its personal computer business to Lenovo Group, a computer manufacturer in China. Lenovo is partly controlled by the China Municipal Government. The transaction was completed with $650 million in cash and $600 million in Lenovo stock. The foreign investment was approved by the Trade Commission in March 2005 and completed in May 2005. IBM owns 0/9% of Lenovo/KLOC-and is headquartered in New York State. The company will reserve the right to use certain brands of IBM. By purchasing and inheriting Lenovo's product line, including Thinkpad notebook computer, notebook computer has become the most successful product of IBM. On February 8, 2005, the "Cell”CPU architecture jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba came out. Recently, from the perspective of hardware technology, IBM has focused most of its efforts on providing consulting and purchasing enterprise restructuring services. In the process of consulting, software and technical services, the new IBM has enhanced its global distribution capability, which is very powerful. On June 20th, 2006, Georgia and IBM jointly announced a new technology to record 500GHz silicon-based chips. This is done by freezing the chip to F-45 1℃(-268.0C), which is not as fast as CPU. At room temperature, the working frequency of the chip is about 350GHz. IBM is a long-term leader in the computer industry, with the most remarkable achievements in mainframes/minicomputers and ThinkPad. The personal computer (PC) standard it founded is still in use and development. On February 8, 2004, 65438 sold its PC division to Lenovo for $ 1.75 billion, and held shares in Lenovo. IBM has also made great achievements in materials, chemistry, physics and other scientific fields. Hard disk technology was invented by IBM, and scanning tunneling microscope (STM), copper wire technology and atomic etching technology were also invented by IBM Research Institute. In 2003, IBM earned $896,543.8 billion and had 230,000 full-time employees. IBM China includes CSDL of IBM China Software Development Center and CRL of China Research Center. In 2004, we cooperated with Hong Kong Cultural Communication Group to promote China CPU cash register. On February 8th of the same year, 65,438, Lenovo Group, which accounts for nearly one-third of the personal computer market in China, announced that it would acquire IBM's global desktop and notebook computer production and sales business for125 billion dollars in cash and stock. In 2005, the desktop computer and notebook computer business were sold to China IT enterprise Lenovo Group, and Lenovo will still use the IBM brand in five years. ThinkPad and ThinkCentre brands are owned by Lenovo Group.