IBM:

Early formative years[edit]

The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational
technology and consulting corporation, with headquarters in Armonk, New York, United
States. IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware and software, and offers
infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to
nanotechnology.[3]
The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR)
through a merger of three companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International
Time Recording Company, and the Computing Scale Company.[4][5] CTR adopted the name
International Business Machines in 1924, using a name previously designated to CTR's
subsidiary in Canada and later South America. Securities analysts nicknamed IBM Big Blue
in recognition of IBM's common use of blue in products, packaging, and logo.[6]
In 2012, Fortune ranked IBM the No. 2 largest U.S. firm in terms of number of employees
(435,000 worldwide),[7] the No. 4 largest in terms of market capitalization,[8] the No. 9 most
profitable,[9] and the No. 19 largest firm in terms of revenue.[10] Globally, the company was
ranked the No. 31 largest in terms of revenue by Forbes for 2011.[11][12] Other rankings for
2011/2012 include No. 1 company for leaders (Fortune), No. 1 green company worldwide
(Newsweek), No. 2 best global brand (Interbrand), No. 2 most respected company (Barron's),
No. 5 most admired company (Fortune), and No. 18 most innovative company (Fast
Company).[13]
IBM has 12 research laboratories worldwide and, as of 2013, has held the record for most
patents generated by a company for 20 consecutive years.[14] Its employees have garnered five
Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, and five National
Medals of Science.[15] Notable inventions by IBM include the automated teller machine
(ATM), the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database,
the Universal Product Code (UPC), the financial swap, the RDBMS and SQL, SABRE airline
reservation system, DRAM, and Watson artificial intelligence.
The company has undergone several organizational changes since its inception, acquiring
companies such as Kenexa (2012) and SPSS (2009) and organizations such as PwC's
consulting business (2002), spinning off companies like Lexmark (1991), and selling off
product lines like its personal computer and server businesses to Lenovo (2005, 2014).
Today IBM operates in over 170 countries with 20,000 in UK IBM alone.[16]

History:

In the 1880s, various technologies came into existence that would form part of IBM's
predecessor company. Julius E. Pitrat patented the computing scale in 1885;[17] Alexander Dey
invented the dial recorder (1888);[18] in 1889, Herman Hollerith patented the Electric
Tabulating Machine[19] and Willard Bundy invented a time clock to record a worker's arrival
and departure time on a paper tape.[20]
On June 16, 1911, these technologies and their respective companies were merged by Charles
Ranlett Flint to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).[21] The New
York City-based company had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and
Binghamton, New York; Dayton, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Washington, D.C.; and Toronto,
Ontario. It manufactured and sold machinery ranging from commercial scales and industrial
time recorders to meat and cheese slicers, along with tabulators and punched cards.
Flint recruited Thomas J. Watson, Sr., formerly of the National Cash Register Company, to
help lead the company in 1914.[21] Watson implemented "generous sales incentives, a focus on
customer service, an insistence on well-groomed, dark-suited salesmen and an evangelical
fervor for instilling company pride and loyalty in every worker".[22] His favorite slogan,
"THINK", became a mantra for C-T-R's employees, and within 11 months of joining C-T-R,
Watson became its president.[22] The company focused on providing large-scale, custom-built
tabulating solutions for businesses, leaving the market for small office products to others.
During Watson's first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million and the
company's operations expanded to Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia.[22] On
February 14, 1924, C-T-R was renamed the International Business Machines Corporation
(IBM),[13][not in citation given] citing the need to align its name with the "growth and extension of [its]
activities".[23]

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