On June 16th, 1911, three 19th century companies merged – the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company and the Computing Scale Company all merged to create the “Computing-Tabulating –Recording Company”(CTR). Thomas J. Watson Sr. joined the company in 1914 and over the next two decades, he transformed the company into a growing leader of innovation and technology. In 1924, the company’s name was changed to International Business Machines (IBM).
Here are just a very few of the products and developments by this amazing company:
- 1923 – The IBM punch card was developed and became an industry standard.
- 1935 – IBM markets the first electric typewriter.
- 1936 – IBM installed punch card equipment to support records of 26 million Americans for Social Security.
- 1944 – IBM presented its first large scale calculating computer to Harvard University.
- 1952 – They introduced the world’s first magnetic hard disk drive for data storage.
- 1953 – The world’s first successful open heart surgery was performed using an IBM heart/Lung machine.
- 1964 – They introduce the “360” family of computers – The first data processing system to use microminiaturized circuits.
- 1969 – The magnetic stripe was introduced. These stripes are on every credit card used today.
- 1974 – IBM introduced the first portable computer.
- 1981 – Technology for laser surgery was introduced.
Again, these are just a few of the technologies this company has introduced. What would we do today without them?
