International Business Machines Definition and Meaning
Standing for International Business Machines according to ABBREVIATIONFINDER, IBM created the 15 of June of 1911 in Binghamton (United States) as a result of the merger run by Charles R. Flint your company, the Tabulating Machine Company (founded by Herman Hollerith in 1896) with Computing Scale Corporation and International Time Recording Company . The company formed from the merger was called Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR), but on February 14, 1924 CTR changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation.(IBM), it is said that due to a kind of joke, being the leader of the sector the company of registers “National”.
CTR’s originating companies manufactured a wide range of products, from employee monitoring systems to automated meat cutting equipment. They also manufactured equipment for the management of punched cards, which would be a key element of future computers. Over time, CTR would focus on these teams and put aside the manufacturing of the rest of the products.
In 1933, the IMB manager Thomas J. Watson signed a contract with the Nazi Germany of Adolf Hitler to conduct the census of that year and specify the number of Jews that existed in the country [1] . The result of the census helped the German holocaust and was so accurate that in 1937 Watson received the German Eagle Cross of Merit from the führer himself.
During World War II, IBM began to do research in the field of computer science. The 7 of August of 1944 [2] was presented at Harvard University computer Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator), also known as the Harvard Mark I. The Mark Iwas the first machine capable of performing complex calculations automatically, and it was based on electromechanical switches. Its development was led by Howard Aiken, Clair D. Lake, Frank E. Hamilton, Benjamin M. Durfee and James W. Bryce.
In 1952, IBM created the IBM 701, the first large computer based on vacuum valves, a technology that replaced electromechanical switches. In 1954 he introduced the IBM 650. In 1959, transistors began to replace vacuum tubes. One of the first IBM transistor-based computers was the IBM 7090. Until then, computers were used mainly in research and government centers, but the performance improvement achieved with valves and especially with transistors, led some companies to start using them.
The first disk- based computer storage system, called RAMAC, and the ” Fortran ” programming language were created by IBM in 1957. The RAMAC is the predecessor to today’s hard drives and was internally made up of fifty drives.
In the early 1960s, IBM began to transform itself into a company dedicated exclusively to computing, gradually leaving the manufacture of equipment for punch cards and typewriters. The latter began to be manufactured in the mid- 1930s.
The 7 of April of 1964, IBM released the System / 360, the first architecture of computers that allowed exchange programs and peripherals among the various components architecture teams, to the contrary of what exists above, each team was a closed box incompatible with others. The order to create this architecture came directly from the IBM manager of the time, Thomas J. Watson, Jr.. The System / 360 was so expensive to develop that it practically bankrupted to IBM, but it was so successful in going to market that IBM’s new revenue and leadership over its competitors compensated them for all expenses.
Such was the success of IBM in the mid- 1960s that it caused the company to be investigated for monopoly. In fact, she had a trial, which began in 1969, in which she was accused of trying to monopolize the market for general-purpose electronic devices, specifically the market for business computers. The lawsuit continued until 1983 and had a major impact on the company’s practices.
During the 1970s, IBM continued to create new computing devices. In 1971 he created the floppy disk and soon after began to market predecessors to today’s barcode readers and ATMs.
In 1981, IBM created the IBM PC, which is the most successful personal computer of all time. This success was not expected by IBM, which created the IBM PC quickly and by buying low-end components from other manufacturers, which it had not done so far, so that the IBM PC would not absorb part of the market for more powerful computers in the United States. IBM. In addition, the operating system of the IBM PC was not created by IBM either, but was contracted with Microsoft.
Because it was not created from scratch by IBM, equipment compatible with the IBM PC from other manufacturers began to appear shortly after, and Microsoft began to grow by selling licenses of the IBM PC operating system to these other manufacturers.
During the 1980s IBM forged four Nobel prizes.
The 19 of January of 1993, IBM announced a loss of about 8,000 million dollars, which was the record for losses in a company in the entire history of the United States. Part of those losses are due to the fact that the IBM PC absorbed a large part of the market for more powerful computers and that manufacturers of computers compatible with the IBM PC increasingly had more market share. The big change at IBM came in 1993 when Louis V. Gerstner, the first senior executive in IBM’s history, was elected as Chief Executive Officer who did not come from within its own ranks. Lou, as he is known, had been CEO of food, cigarette and credit card manufacturing companies, but never of technology companies. From then on, IBM began to transform itself into a service company, reducing its economic dependence on the sale of equipment. This trend has increased, especially since in 2002 Samuel J. Palmisano, Lou’s successor, will step down from running IBM’s services arm to become the company’s new chief executive. In 2003, around 50% of IBM’s revenue came from the services branch, while the sale of equipment accounted for approximately 30%.
The October to December of 2004, IBM completed the negotiations aimed to sell the PC division to Chinese group Lenovo for $ 650 million in cash and more than 600 million shares (19% of Lenovo). Along with the PC division, Lenovo gets around 10,000 IBM employees and the right to use the IBM and Thinkpad brands for five years.
