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IBM turns 100

by Pete Mason on 24 January 2011, 11:52

Tags: IBM (NYSE:IBM)

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Even though computers as we know them have only been around for half a century or so, one of the titans of the industry is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. IBM - which was founded as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation before being renamed International Business Machines in 1924 - has had a long and illustrious history, and it has released a video to mark the occasion that highlights some of its achievements.

Obviously IBM managed to claim a lot of firsts with the ThinkPad line of laptops - including the first CD drives, integrated wireless-networking and spill-resistant keyboards  in a notebook - but the company is also responsible for a lot of fundamental developments in computing.

Throughout its history, IBM was either solely responsible for or instrumental in the development of DRAM, the Fortran and SQL programming languages, laser printers, portable computers, ATMs, magnetic hard-drives and RISC processors. The company even invented the barcode.

But there were a lot of other developments that the company contributed to outside of computing. IBM was a very early supporter of equal opportunity in terms of disability, gender and race and helped to enable the giant accounting headache that is social security in the US. It was also a key partner in NASA's early space programme, helped to land the first astronauts on the moon and built the heart-lung machine for the first successful open-heart bypass surgery.

From floppy disks and fractals to supercomputing and silicon nanophotonics, IBM has been some behind some pretty amazing advancements in science computing - earning five Nobel Prizes and four Turing Awards along the way. A video taking a quick skip through the past 100 years has been posted to the company's official YouTube channel, as well as a longer look at some key moments for those with a bit more time.



HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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I wonder if they'll be celebrating those years they helped out Hitler and the Third Reich to efficiently massacre millions of Jews? Probably not. Oh well done IBM on turning 100, what a brilliant company!


Is it me or does the logo actually shorten to BIM?
Nobull
I wonder if they'll be celebrating those years they helped out Hitler and the Third Reich to efficiently massacre millions of Jews? Probably not. Oh well done IBM on turning 100, what a brilliant company!

That's extremely unfair - their German subsidiary, which had been seized by the Nazis, supplied the equipment that was used. IBM can't be blamed for that - it would be like claiming that someone strangled with their own tie committed suicide.
To be fair it wasn't just IBM, it was a lot of companies and to be honest there are many many more making hay in Afghanistan/Iraq.
Nelviticus
That's extremely unfair - their German subsidiary, which had been seized by the Nazis, supplied the equipment that was used. IBM can't be blamed for that - it would be like claiming that someone strangled with their own tie committed suicide.

It may have been a subsidiary but Thomas Watson (IBM Chairman at the time) knew exactly what he was doing in Germany

Far from intervening in its German subsidiary to halt its collaboration with the Nazi persecution, IBM in New York carefully supervised the whole process and also would make sure that all technical requirements were provided. Dehomag technicians were constantly sent to the US for training

Granted he wasn't a facist but he saw an opportunity to make a heap of money and he exploited it despite what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. IBM were made well aware of what their technology would be used for, as they had to cater to the very specialist tasks that the Nazis wanted them to fulfill.

Nonetheless, Watson not only fully exploited the profit making possibilities offered by Nazi Germany, he also became a political spokesperson for the German Reich. Black explains that Watson believed the world should extend “a sympathetic understanding to the German people and their aims under the leadership of Adolf Hitler”…For his role, Watson was awarded the specially created Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star to “honour foreign nationals who made themselves deserving of the German Reich”—a medal ranking second in prestige only to Hitler’s German Grand Cross



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