Today: IBM's 100th Birthday

[jon]

U.S. computer pioneer IBM turns 100
Agence France-Presse June 16, 2011 5:02 AM

NEW YORK (AFP) — U.S. technology pioneer IBM turns 100 years old on Thursday and while "Big Blue" is no longer the dominant player in the computer industry it remains a force to be reckoned with.

With a market capitalization of $197 billion, IBM is the world's 14th most valuable technology company, well behind California gadget-maker Apple's $304 billion but close to software giant Microsoft's $201 billion.

Thomas Misa, a history of science and technology professor at the University of Minnesota, credits IBM's longevity to its "mastery of getting information processing power into users' hands in a form that they need and want."

"They did this in the 1930s with punch-card tabulation machines and they are doing the same, essentially, with the post-1993 shift to information services," Misa said.

While its ancestry stretches back to the 19th century, IBM dates its birth to the June 16, 1911 merger of three firms: the Tabulating Machine Co., the International Time Recording Co. and the Computing Scale Co. of America.

Thomas Watson Sr., the man credited with building IBM into a powerhouse, joined the new company, Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. (CTR) in 1914 and renamed it International Business Machines Corp. in 1924.

Over the years, rivals have mocked IBM's corporate culture of conformity but that has not stopped the Armonk, New York, company from being at the forefront of technological innovation.

IBM claims to hold more U.S. patents than any other company and five of its employees have won Nobel prizes for physics.

Dag Spicer, senior curator of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, said IBM's success can be traced in part to its readiness to take "big gambles."

"During the Depression, Tom Watson kept making machines even though there was no market," Spicer said.

"In 1935, FDR (president Franklin Delano Roosevelt) passed the Social Security Act. The law passed and IBM was the only company that had the equipment ready to go," he said.

Thomas Watson Jr., who took over the presidency of IBM in 1952 from his father, embarked on a huge gamble of his own in 1964, Spicer said.

"Tom Watson Jr decided to bet essentially the whole company — $5 billion, probably the equivalent of $100 billion today — on a new computer system, the System/360," he said. "It made all of IBM's products obsolete.

"The System/360 was the most successful mainframe computer of all time, sealing the blue letters IBM in the public imagination," he said.

IBM was unable, however, to emulate its success with mainframe computers with personal computers and the company struggled in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

"Microsoft and Intel were the big winners in the personal computer market, which IBM defined but did not long dominate," Misa said.

IBM sold its PC division to China's Lenovo in 2005 for $1.25 billion.

IBM's comeback came with a strategic shift to software and services and the company posted revenue of $99.9 billion in 2010.

IBM also grabbed headlines earlier this year when an IBM computer called Watson handily defeated two human champions on the popular U.S. television game show "Jeopardy!" in a triumph of artificial intelligence.

Watson's triumph came 14 years after an IBM computer named Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a closely-watched, six-game match.

ref. - http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business ... story.html

[Neumann Sennheiser]

Over the years, rivals have mocked IBM's corporate culture of conformity...

In the "button-down" era, this was the company that required all employees to not only dress in identical blue business suits and ties , in addition, it was not unusual for any employee to be asked to "lift the cuffs of his pant hem" in order to ascertain that one was wearing the required sock garters.

I seem to recall 1960's rumors that certain radio companies, like CHQR in Calgary, required announce staffers to come to work dressed appropriately, in if not a suit or jacket, at the very least a crisp white shirt and tie.

[jon]

Dress codes were not just the territory of the CHQRs of the world -- "Quality Radio playing Quality Music". Even youth-oriented stations like Top 40 KJR in Seattle had dress codes for specific situations.

The late Robert O. Smith once told me that, as part of his evening DJ duties in 1967, he spent the hour from 5-6pm mailing KJR weekly music charts across the country, in a glass-walled room. While there, he had to wear a tie. With either a jacket or nice shirt. The rationale was that KJR office hours lasted until 6pm and that he would be seen by visitors, presumably advertising clients.

[Mike Cleaver]

If you look at those old CJOC charts occasionally posted here, you'll see all of us wearing white shirts and ties.
When I joined in 1967, white shirts and ties were required for work by Selkirk.
I'll take credit for starting the rebellion against such conformity but the tie edict finally came to an end when one of my photographer friends at CJLH-TV was almost dragged into the 16mm film processing machine when his tie became caught in the moving chain and sprocket system.
The machine had no safety cut off and his shouts prompted me to run from the newsroom across the hall and pull the plug.
After that, the tie era came to an end, except for public appearances and on tv.

[jon]

If you look at those old CJOC charts occasionally posted here, you'll see all of us wearing white shirts and ties.

Interesting. I never took much stock in those pictures, as I know many a station had no dress code for DJs, but required them to "dress up" for official pictures. Kind of like picture day in school....

The Hippie era ended the shirt/jacket and tie in official pictures for most Top 40 stations, and certainly all the FM Underground/Progressive Rock stations.