The History Of Ibm

International Business Machines, or IBM, is the largest computer company in the world today (1). The company, which was founded in 1888 and incorporated (as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R)) on June 15, 1911, they manufacture and sell computer hardware, software, infrastructure services, hosting services, and consulting services (2).

The company began as a merger of three separate corporations; Tabulating Machine Corporation of Washington D.C, the Computing Scale Corporation of Dayton, Ohio and the International Time Recording Company of Endicott, NY. On February 14, 1924, CTR changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation.

In the beginning, IBM manufactured a range of different products, from automatic meat slicers, to weighted scales, and most importantly punch-card time equipment. Whne the others began to be less profitable than the punch-card equipment, IBM stopped manufacturing them, and concentrated on the time-keeping equipment (2).

The computer is not the only innovation that IBM is known for. During World War Two, IBM manufactured the Browning Automatic Rifle, and the M1 Carbine.

Much of IBM's computer success came after they became chief contractor for the United States Air Force's defense systems in the 1950s. The first computer was a lot different than the personal computers that are available today. The SAGE computers were quite costly at 30 million dollars each, and IBM built 56 (2.)

Business, however, for IBM has not always been successful. The U.S. Department of Justice, which is responsible for antitrust litigation, filed a complaint for the case U.S. v. IBM in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on January 17, 1969. The suit alleged that IBM violated the Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed