this is the largest computer company in
the world and it's known as Big Blue
welcome to watchmojo.com and today we'll
be learning more about the history of
IBM before changing its name to IBM the
computing tabulating recording
corporation was incorporated on June
16th 1911 CTRs products were quite
varied but they all increased business
efficiency just a few years after that
company was officially formed Thomas J
Watson senior became president and
within four years he doubled the
company's profits Watson's appointment
also resulted in a shift in policies at
the company in fact iBM is credited with
a number of changes that have indelibly
influenced the American workforce it was
among the first companies to hire
disabled workers and it created an
employee training program early on IBM
also instituted the 40-hour work week
and introduced group life insurance to
its workers
it was also early in its acceptance of
Equal Opportunity Employment eventually
On February 14 1924 CTRs name was
officially changed to International
Business Machines Corporation or IBM in
the company's early days it achieved
success for perfecting punch card
technology as well as a number of other
innovations IBM and Watson remained
bullish throughout the Great Depression
in 1935 that gamble paid off when the
company was awarded what was called the
biggest accounting operation of all time
by the US government when it passed the
Social Security Act IBM was then put in
charge of tracking employment records
for 26 million American workers the
company expanded significantly through
the 1940s and during that period made
strides to enter the large-scale
computing industry IBM began the 1950's
strong and during that decade they began
producing some of the world's most
popular business and scientific
computers for example in 1952 the IBM
701 business computer was introduced to
the public by 1956 they had also
revolutionized data storage by launching
the world's first magnetic hard disk
this machine was the size of two
refrigerators and cost roughly
$10,000 per megabyte amid these great
strides the company lost one of its
founding fathers Thomas J Watson senior
passed away on June 19 1956 control of
the company was then passed to his son
Thomas J Watson jr. moving into the 60s
IBM introduced its award-winning
Selectric line of typewriters and this
model went on to dominate the American
typewriter market just three years later
in 1964 the Selectric typewriter became
a pioneer in word processing by allowing
typist to revise stored text the company
transformed the industry again that year
by announcing the IBM system/360 this
family of computers was the first modern
mainframe computer system by the end of
the decade IBM had also proved itself an
important ally of NASA and the space
program and was instrumental in putting
a man on the moon IBM also began
changing the face of retail in 1969 they
introduced the magnetic strips found on
credit cards and within two years this
became the standard across the world
they further influenced retail by
perfecting the technology that allowed
stores to read UPC codes IBM introduced
a magnetic storage system called the
floppy disk in 1971 ten years later the
company announced the IBM personal
computer and this caused another
revolution in the business world in fact
in 1982 Time magazine named the personal
computer the person of the year IBM went
through some tough times through the
late 80s and into the 90s due to
changing trends in business computing
however one positive event during this
period was the invention of deep blue
this supercomputer defeated the world
champion chess player and foreshadowed
another triumph for the company in 2011
another IBM supercomputer competed on
the trivia game show Jeopardy against to
human champions the appropriately named
Watson computer was able to process
questions asked in natural language and
used its huge database of knowledge to
win the game following this impressive
showing experiments placed Watson in a
medical environment with the potential
to answer doctors questions about
medicines diseases and diagnosis IBM
continues to
advance the computer industry and will
surely contribute a number of valuable
discoveries over its next hundred years