Norman Bel Geddes (born Norman Melancton Geddes ; April 27, 1893 – May 8, 1958) was an American theatrical and industrial designer , described in 2012 by the New York Times as "a brilliant craftsman and draftsman, a master of style, the 20th century’s Leonardo da Vinci." As a young designer, Bel Geddes brought an innovative and energized perspective to the Broadway stage and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. In the 1930s he became one of the first to hold the title of Industrial Designer. His futuristic Streamline designs re-envisioned many of the utilitarian objects of the day from airliners and cruise ships to cocktail shakers and circuses. He also conceived and oversaw construction of the Futurama Exhibition at the 1939 New York World's Fair .
79-548: The Harvard Mark I , or IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator ( ASCC ), was one of the earliest general-purpose electromechanical computers used in the war effort during the last part of World War II . One of the first programs to run on the Mark I was initiated on 29 March 1944 by John von Neumann . At that time, von Neumann was working on the Manhattan Project , and needed to determine whether implosion
158-575: A neuromorphic CMOS integrated circuit and announced a $ 3 billion investment over the following five years to design a neural chip that mimics the human brain, with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses, but that uses just 1 kilowatt of power. In 2016, the company launched all-flash arrays designed for small and midsized companies, which includes software for data compression, provisioning, and snapshots across various systems. In January 2019, IBM introduced its first commercial quantum computer: IBM Q System One . In March 2020, it
237-665: A 50-foot (15 m) drive shaft coupled to a 5 horsepower (3.7 kW) electric motor, which served as the main power source and system clock . From the IBM Archives: The Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Harvard Mark I) was the first operating machine that could execute long computations automatically. A project conceived by Harvard University’s Dr. Howard Aiken, the Mark I was built by IBM engineers in Endicott, N.Y. A steel frame 51 feet long and 8 feet high held
316-649: A Hollerith department called Hollerith Abteilung, which had IBM machines, including calculating and sorting machines. IBM as a military contractor produced 6% of the M1 Carbine rifles used in World War II, about 346,500 of them, between August 1943 and May. IBM built the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator , an electromechanical computer, during World War II. It offered its first commercial stored-program computer,
395-581: A consequence, IBM quickly began losing its market dominance to emerging competitors in the PC market. In 1985, IBM collaborated with Microsoft to develop a new operating system , which was released as OS/2 . Following a dispute, Microsoft severed the collaboration and IBM continued development of OS/2 on its own but it failed in the marketplace against Microsoft's Windows during the mid-1990s. In 1991 IBM began spinning off its many divisions into autonomous subsidiaries (so-called "Baby Blues") in an attempt to make
474-621: A fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton , New York; Dayton, Ohio ; Detroit, Michigan ; Washington, D.C. ; and Toronto , Canada. Collectively, the companies manufactured a wide array of machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. , fired from
553-447: A focus on customer service, an insistence on well-groomed, dark-suited salesmen and had an evangelical fervor for instilling company pride and loyalty in every worker". His favorite slogan, " THINK ", became a mantra for each company's employees. During Watson's first four years, revenues reached $ 9 million ($ 158 million today) and the company's operations expanded to Europe, South America, Asia and Australia. Watson never liked
632-415: A second. A multiplication took 6 seconds, a division took 15.3 seconds, and a logarithm or a trigonometric function took over one minute. The Mark I read its instructions from a 24-channel punched paper tape . It executed the current instruction and then read the next one. A separate tape could contain numbers for input, but the tape formats were not interchangeable. Instructions could not be executed from
711-626: A separate lawsuit. In 2015, IBM bought the digital part of The Weather Company , Truven Health Analytics for $ 2.6 billion in 2016, and in October 2018, IBM announced its intention to acquire Red Hat for $ 34 billion, which was completed on July 9, 2019. In February 2020, IBM's John Kelly III joined Brad Smith of Microsoft to sign a pledge with the Vatican to ensure the ethical use and practice of Artificial Intelligence (AI) . IBM announced in October 2020 that it would divest
790-480: A sharp drop in profit margins during the second quarter of fiscal year 1992; market analysts attributed the drop to a fierce price war in the personal computer market over the summer of 1992. The corporate restructuring was one of the largest and most expensive in history up to that point. By the summer of 1993, the IBM PC Co. had divided into multiple business units itself, including Ambra Computer Corporation and
869-714: A stockbroker. When he married Helen Belle Schneider in 1916, they combined their names to Bel Geddes . Their daughters were actress Barbara Bel Geddes and writer Joan Ulanov. Bel Geddes began his career with set designs for Aline Barnsdall 's Los Angeles Little Theater in the 1916–17 season, then in 1918 as the scene designer for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He designed and directed various theatrical works, from Arabesque and The Five O'Clock Girl on Broadway to an ice show, It Happened on Ice , produced by Sonja Henie . He also created set designs for
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#1732772007455948-422: A teardrop-shaped automobile, and an Art Deco House of Tomorrow. In 1929, he designed " Airliner Number 4 ," a 9-deck amphibian airliner that incorporated areas for deck-games, an orchestra , a gymnasium , a solarium , and two airplane hangars . His book Horizons (1932) had a significant impact: "By popularizing streamlining when only a few engineers were considering its functional use, he made possible
1027-420: A unique identifying index number. These numbers were represented in binary on the control tape. The first field was the binary index of the result of the operation, the second was the source datum for the operation and the third field was a code for the operation to be performed. In 1928 L.J. Comrie was the first to turn IBM "punched-card equipment to scientific use: computation of astronomical tables by
1106-440: Is the largest shareholder of IBM and as of March 31, 2023, held 15.7% of total shares outstanding. In 2011, IBM became the first technology company Warren Buffett 's holding company Berkshire Hathaway invested in. Initially he bought 64 million shares costing $ 10.5 billion. Over the years, Buffett increased his IBM holdings, but by the end of 2017 had reduced them by 94.5% to 2.05 million shares; by May 2018, he
1185-740: The Analytical Engine to his proposal; the resulting machine "brought Babbage’s principles of the Analytical Engine almost to full realization, while adding important new features." The ASCC was developed and built by IBM at their Endicott plant and shipped to Harvard in February 1944. It began computations for the US Navy Bureau of Ships in May and was officially presented to the university on August 7, 1944. Although not
1264-574: The FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines and introduced the highly successful Selectric typewriter. In 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flights of the Mercury astronauts. A year later, it moved its corporate headquarters from New York City to Armonk, New York. The latter half of
1343-851: The IBM Rome Software Lab (Rome, Italy), Hursley House (Winchester, UK), 330 North Wabash (Chicago, Illinois, United States), the Cambridge Scientific Center (Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States), the IBM Toronto Software Lab (Toronto, Canada), the IBM Building, Johannesburg (Johannesburg, South Africa), the IBM Building (Seattle) (Seattle, Washington, United States), the IBM Hakozaki Facility (Tokyo, Japan),
1422-888: The IBM Yamato Facility (Yamato, Japan), the IBM Canada Head Office Building (Ontario, Canada) and the Watson IoT Headquarters (Munich, Germany). Defunct IBM campuses include the IBM Somers Office Complex (Somers, New York), Spango Valley (Greenock, Scotland), and Tour Descartes (Paris, France). The company's contributions to industrial architecture and design include works by Marcel Breuer , Eero Saarinen , Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , I.M. Pei and Ricardo Legorreta . Van der Rohe's building in Chicago
1501-544: The National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson , called on Flint and, in 1914, was offered a position at CTR. Watson joined CTR as general manager and then, 11 months later, was made President when antitrust cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Patterson's pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTR's companies. He implemented sales conventions, "generous sales incentives,
1580-642: The Smithsonian Institution . IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM ), nicknamed Big Blue , is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York and present in over 175 countries. It is a publicly traded company and one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average . IBM is the largest industrial research organization in
1659-480: The Trinity and Fat Man bombs, was likely faster and more efficient than the gun design." Aiken published a press release announcing the Mark I listing himself as the sole inventor. James W. Bryce was the only IBM person mentioned, even though several IBM engineers including Clair Lake and Frank Hamilton had helped to build various elements. IBM chairman Thomas J. Watson was enraged, and only reluctantly attended
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#17327720074551738-448: The UPC barcode . The company has made inroads in advanced computer chips , quantum computing , artificial intelligence , and data infrastructure . IBM employees and alumni have won various recognitions for their scientific research and inventions, including six Nobel Prizes and six Turing Awards . IBM originated with several technological innovations developed and commercialized in
1817-813: The US Navy base at Dahlgren, Virginia . The Mark IV was built for the US Air Force , but it stayed at Harvard. The Mark I was disassembled in 1959, and portions of it went on display in the Science Center , as part of the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments . It was relocated to the new Science and Engineering Complex in Allston in July 2021. Other sections of the original machine had much earlier been transferred to IBM and
1896-681: The Universal Product Code . IBM and the World Bank first introduced financial swaps to the public in 1981, when they entered into a swap agreement. IBM entered the microcomputer market in the 1980s with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM 5150), which soon became known as the PC , one of IBM's best selling products. Due to a lack of foresight by IBM, the PC was not well protected by intellectual property laws. As
1975-627: The first working computer , the machine was the first to automate the execution of complex calculations, making it a significant step forward for computing. The ASCC was built from switches , relays , rotating shafts , and clutches . It used 765,000 electromechanical components and hundreds of miles of wire, comprising a volume of 816 cubic feet (23 m) – 51 feet (16 m) in length, 8 feet (2.4 m) in height, and 2 feet (0.61 m) deep. It weighed about 9,445 pounds (4.7 short tons; 4.3 t). The basic calculating units had to be synchronized and powered mechanically, so they were operated by
2054-410: The magnetic stripe card that would become ubiquitous for credit/debit/ATM cards, driver's licenses, rapid transit cards and a multitude of other identity and access control applications. IBM pioneered the manufacture of these cards, and for most of the 1970s, the data processing systems and software for such applications ran exclusively on IBM computers. In 1974, IBM engineer George J. Laurer developed
2133-577: The 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, participating in the 1965 Gemini flights, 1966 Saturn flights, and 1969 lunar mission. IBM also developed and manufactured the Saturn V's Instrument Unit and Apollo spacecraft guidance computers. On April 7, 1964, IBM launched the first computer system family, the IBM System/360 . It spanned the complete range of commercial and scientific applications from large to small, allowing companies for
2212-829: The Evening , was published posthumously in 1960. Bel Geddes is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame , a distinction he shares with his daughter, actress Barbara Bel Geddes . The United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp honoring Bel Geddes as a "Pioneer Of American Industrial Design". The archive of Norman Bel Geddes is held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin . This large collection includes models, drafts, watercolor designs, research notes, project proposals, and correspondence. The Ransom Center also holds
2291-490: The IBM PC Co. was dissolved and merged into IBM Personal Systems Group. In 2002 IBM acquired PwC Consulting, the consulting arm of PwC which was merged into its IBM Global Services . On September 14, 2004, LG and IBM announced that their business alliance in the South Korean market would end at the end of that year. Both companies stated that it was unrelated to the charges of bribery earlier that year. Xnote
2370-561: The IBM Power Personal Systems Group, the former an attempt to design and market " clone " computers of IBM's own architecture and the latter responsible for IBM's PowerPC -based workstations . IBM PC Co. introduced the ThinkPad clone computers, which IBM would heavily market and would eventually become one of the best-selling series of notebook computers . In 1993, IBM posted an $ 8 billion loss – at
2449-789: The IBM website. On June 7, Krishna announced that IBM would carry out an "orderly wind-down" of its operations in Russia. In late 2022, IBM started a collaboration with new Japanese manufacturer Rapidus , which led GlobalFoundries to file a lawsuit against IBM the following year. In 2023, IBM acquired Manta Software Inc. to complement its data and A.I. governance capabilities for an undisclosed amount. On November 16, 2023, IBM suspended ads on Twitter after ads were found next to pro-Nazi content. In December 2023, IBM announced it would acquire Software AG 's StreamSets and webMethods platforms for €2.13 billion ($ 2.33 billion). IBM's market capitalization
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2528-551: The Managed Infrastructure Services unit of its Global Technology Services division into a new public company. The new company, Kyndryl , will have 90,000 employees, 4,600 clients in 115 countries, with a backlog of $ 60 billion. IBM's spin off was greater than any of its previous divestitures, and welcomed by investors. IBM appointed Martin Schroeter, who had been IBM's CFO from 2014 through
2607-413: The Mark I computed values to eighteen decimal places . Additionally, Mark I integrated the partial differential equation at a much smaller interval size [or smaller mesh] and so...achieved far greater precision . "Von Neumann joined the Manhattan Project in 1943, working on the immense number of calculations needed to build the atomic bomb. He showed that the implosion design, which would later be used in
2686-401: The Mark I was designed by futuristic American industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes at IBM's expense. Aiken was annoyed that the cost ($ 50,000 or more according to Grace Hopper ) was not used to build additional computer equipment. The Mark I had 60 sets of 24 switches for manual data entry and could store 72 numbers, each 23 decimal digits long. It could do 3 additions or subtractions in
2765-516: The Weather Channel mobile app. Also that year, IBM employees created the film A Boy and His Atom , which was the first molecule movie to tell a story. In 2016, IBM acquired video conferencing service Ustream and formed a new cloud video unit. In April 2016, it posted a 14-year low in quarterly sales. The following month, Groupon sued IBM accusing it of patent infringement, two months after IBM accused Groupon of patent infringement in
2844-469: The antitrust laws in IBM's actions directed against leasing companies and plug-compatible peripheral manufacturers. Shortly after, IBM unbundled its software and services in what many observers believed was a direct result of the lawsuit, creating a competitive market for software. In 1982, the Department of Justice dropped the case as "without merit". Also in 1969, IBM engineer Forrest Parry invented
2923-421: The basis for the majority of personal computers to the present day. The company later also found success in the portable space with the ThinkPad . Since the 1990s, IBM has concentrated on computer services , software , supercomputers , and scientific research ; it sold its microcomputer division to Lenovo in 2005. IBM continues to develop mainframes, and its supercomputers have consistently ranked among
3002-453: The calculator, which consisted of an interlocking panel of small gears, counters, switches and control circuits, all only a few inches in depth. The ASCC used 500 miles (800 km) of wire with three million connections, 3,500 multipole relays with 35,000 contacts, 2,225 counters, 1,464 tenpole switches and tiers of 72 adding machines, each with 23 significant numbers. It was the industry’s largest electromechanical calculator. The enclosure for
3081-601: The city's seventh tallest building and overlooking Beijing National Stadium ("Bird's Nest") , home to the 2008 Summer Olympics . IBM India Private Limited is the Indian subsidiary of IBM, which is headquartered at Bangalore , Karnataka. It has facilities in Coimbatore , Chennai , Kochi , Ahmedabad , Delhi , Kolkata , Mumbai , Pune , Gurugram , Noida , Bhubaneshwar , Surat , Visakhapatnam , Hyderabad , Bangalore and Jamshedpur . Other notable buildings include
3160-560: The clumsy hyphenated name "Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company" and chose to replace it with the more expansive title "International Business Machines" which had previously been used as the name of CTR's Canadian Division; the name was changed on February 14, 1924. By 1933, most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, IBM. The Nazis made extensive use of Hollerith punch card and alphabetical accounting equipment and IBM's majority-owned German subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH ( Dehomag ), supplied this equipment from
3239-461: The company designed a video surveillance system for Davao City . In 2014 IBM announced it would sell its x86 server division to Lenovo for $ 2.1 billion. while continuing to offer Power ISA -based servers. Also that year, IBM began announcing several major partnerships with other companies, including Apple Inc. , Twitter, Facebook, Tencent , Cisco , UnderArmour , Box , Microsoft , VMware , CSC , Macy's , Sesame Workshop ,
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3318-421: The company more manageable and to streamline IBM by having other investors finance those companies. These included AdStar , dedicated to disk drives and other data storage products; IBM Application Business Systems, dedicated to mid-range computers; IBM Enterprise Systems, dedicated to mainframes; Pennant Systems, dedicated to mid-range and large printers; Lexmark , dedicated to small printers; and more. Lexmark
3397-585: The dedication ceremony on August 7, 1944. Aiken, in turn, decided to build further machines without IBM's help, and the ASCC came to be generally known as the "Harvard Mark I". IBM went on to build its Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) to both test new technology and provide more publicity for the company's efforts. The Mark I was followed by the Harvard Mark II (1947 or 1948), Mark III/ADEC (September 1949), and Harvard Mark IV (1952) – all
3476-569: The design style of the thirties." He wrote forward-looking articles for popular American periodicals. In the classic science fiction film of H. G. Wells ' Things to Come (1936), he assisted production designer William Cameron Menzies on the look of the world of tomorrow. Bel Geddes designed the General Motors Pavilion, known as Futurama , for the 1939 New York World's Fair . For that famous and enormously influential installation, Bel Geddes exploited his earlier work in
3555-475: The early 1930s. This equipment was critical to Nazi efforts to categorize citizens of both Germany and other nations that fell under Nazi control through ongoing censuses. These census data were used to facilitate the round-up of Jews and other targeted groups, and to catalog their movements through the machinery of the Holocaust , including internment in the concentration camps. Nazi concentration camps operated
3634-553: The end of 2017, as CEO of Kyndryl. In 2021, IBM announced the acquisition of the enterprise software company Turbonomic for $ 1.5 billion. In January 2022, IBM announced it would sell Watson Health to private equity firm Francisco Partners . On March 7, 2022, a few days after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine , IBM CEO Arvind Krishna published a Ukrainian flag and announced that "we have suspended all business in Russia". All Russian articles were also removed from
3713-445: The enterprise-oriented Personal Systems Group of the IBM PC Co. into IBM's own Global Services personal computer consulting and customer service division. The resulting merged business units then became known simply as IBM Personal Systems Group. A year later, IBM stopped selling their computers at retail outlets after their market share in this sector had fallen considerably behind competitors Compaq and Dell . Immediately afterwards,
3792-487: The film Feet of Clay (1924), directed by Cecil B. DeMille , designed costumes for Max Reinhardt , and created the sets for the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley 's Dead End (1935). Bel Geddes opened an industrial-design studio in 1927, and designed a wide range of commercial products, from cocktail shakers to commemorative medallions to radio cabinets. His designs extended to unrealized futuristic concepts:
3871-540: The first time to upgrade to models with greater computing capability without having to rewrite their applications. It was followed by the IBM System/370 in 1970. Together the 360 and 370 made the IBM mainframe the dominant mainframe computer and the dominant computing platform in the industry throughout this period and into the early 1980s. They and the operating systems that ran on them such as OS/VS1 and MVS , and
3950-469: The implosion. In March 1944, he proposed to run certain problems regarding implosion of the Mark I, and in 1944 he arrived with two mathematicians to write a simulation program to study the implosion of the first atomic bomb . The Los Alamos group completed its work in a much shorter time than the Cambridge group. However, the punched-card machine operation computed values to six decimal places, whereas
4029-749: The larger ones. In New York City, IBM has several offices besides CHQ, including the IBM Watson headquarters at Astor Place in Manhattan. Outside of New York, major campuses in the United States include Austin, Texas ; Research Triangle Park (Raleigh-Durham), North Carolina ; Rochester, Minnesota ; and Silicon Valley, California . IBM's real estate holdings are varied and globally diverse. Towers occupied by IBM include 1250 René-Lévesque (Montreal, Canada) and One Atlantic Center (Atlanta, Georgia, US). In Beijing, China, IBM occupies Pangu Plaza ,
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#17327720074554108-570: The late 19th century. Julius E. Pitrap patented the computing scale in 1885; Alexander Dey invented the dial recorder (1888); Herman Hollerith patented the Electric Tabulating Machine (1889); and Willard Bundy invented a time clock to record workers' arrival and departure times on a paper tape (1889). On June 16, 1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming
4187-451: The latest being the IBM z series. The most recent model, the IBM z16 , was released in 2022. In 1990, IBM released the Power microprocessors , which were designed into many console gaming systems, including Xbox 360 , PlayStation 3 , and Nintendo 's Wii U . IBM Secure Blue is encryption hardware that can be built into microprocessors, and in 2014, the company revealed TrueNorth ,
4266-497: The leading manufacturer of punch-card tabulating systems . During the 1960s and 1970s, the IBM mainframe , exemplified by the System/360 , was the world's dominant computing platform , with the company producing 80 percent of computers in the U.S. and 70 percent of computers worldwide. IBM debuted in the microcomputer market in 1981 with the IBM Personal Computer , — its DOS software provided by Microsoft , — which became
4345-425: The longer term. The key trends of IBM are (as at the financial year ending December 31): The company's 15-member board of directors are responsible for overall corporate management and includes the current or former CEOs of Anthem , Dow Chemical , Johnson and Johnson , Royal Dutch Shell , UPS , and Vanguard as well as the president of Cornell University and a retired U.S. Navy admiral . Vanguard Group
4424-476: The machine; some had been IBM employees before being required to join the Navy to work on the machine. This technical team was not informed of the overall purpose of their work while at Harvard. The 24 channels of the input tape were divided into three fields of eight channels each. Each storage location, each set of switches, and the registers associated with the input, output , and arithmetic units were assigned
4503-400: The method of finite differences, as envisioned by Babbage 100 years earlier for his Difference Engine". Very soon after, IBM started to modify its tabulators to facilitate this kind of computation. One of these tabulators, built in 1931, was The Columbia Difference Tabulator. John von Neumann had a team at Los Alamos that used "modified IBM punched-card machines" to determine the effects of
4582-585: The mid-1950s. There are two other IBM buildings within walking distance of CHQ: the North Castle office, which previously served as IBM's headquarters; and the Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Center for Learning (formerly known as IBM Learning Center (ILC)), a resort hotel and training center, which has 182 guest rooms, 31 meeting rooms, and various amenities. IBM operates in 174 countries as of 2016 , with mobility centers in smaller market areas and major campuses in
4661-613: The middleware built on top of those such as the CICS transaction processing monitor, had a near-monopoly-level market share and became the thing IBM was most known for during this period. In 1969, the United States of America alleged that IBM violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general-purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business, and subsequently alleged that IBM violated
4740-450: The most powerful in the world in the 21st century. As one of the world's oldest and largest technology companies, IBM has been responsible for several technological innovations , including the automated teller machine (ATM), dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), the floppy disk , the hard disk drive , the magnetic stripe card , the relational database , the SQL programming language , and
4819-400: The parent company of Sesame Street , and Salesforce.com . In 2015, its chip division transitioned to a fabless model with semiconductors design, offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries . In 2015, IBM announced three major acquisitions: Merge Healthcare for $ 1 billion, data storage vendor Cleversafe , and all digital assets from The Weather Company , including Weather.com and
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#17327720074554898-654: The same vein: he had designed a "Metropolis City of 1960" in 1936. Bel Geddes's book Magic Motorways (1940) promoted advances in highway design and transportation, foreshadowing the Interstate Highway System , along with aspects of driver assist and autonomous driving . The case for the Mark I computer was designed by Bel Geddes at IBM's expense, and put in place just in time for the machine's dedication at Harvard University . Bel Geddes died in New York on May 8, 1958. His autobiography, Miracle in
4977-777: The storage registers. Because instructions were not stored in working memory, it is widely claimed that the Harvard Mark I was the origin of the Harvard architecture . However, this is disputed in The Myth of the Harvard Architecture published in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing , which shows the term 'Harvard architecture' did not come into use until the 1970s (in the context of microcontrollers) and
5056-460: The tape (literally creating a loop ). At first, conditional branching in Mark I was performed manually. Later modifications in 1946 introduced automatic program branching (by subroutine call). The first programmers of the Mark ;I were computing pioneers Richard Milton Bloch , Robert Campbell, and Grace Hopper . There was also a small technical team whose assignment was to actually operate
5135-543: The time the biggest in American corporate history. Lou Gerstner was hired as CEO from RJR Nabisco to turn the company around. In 1995, IBM purchased Lotus Software , best known for its Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software. During the decade, IBM was working on a new operating system, named the Workplace OS project. Despite a large amount of money spent on the project, it was cancelled in 1996. In 1998, IBM merged
5214-608: The vacuum tube based IBM 701 , in 1952. The IBM 305 RAMAC introduced the hard disk drive in 1956. The company switched to transistorized designs with the 7000 and 1400 series, beginning in 1958. In which, IBM considered the 1400 series the ''model T'' of computing, due to it being the first computer with over ten thousand sales by IBM. In 1956, the company demonstrated the first practical example of artificial intelligence when Arthur L. Samuel of IBM's Poughkeepsie , New York, laboratory programmed an IBM 704 not merely to play checkers but "learn" from its own experience. In 1957,
5293-489: The work of Aiken. The Mark II was an improvement over the Mark I, although it still was based on electromechanical relays . The Mark III used mostly electronic components — vacuum tubes and crystal diodes —but also included mechanical components: rotating magnetic drums for storage, plus relays for transferring data between drums. The Mark IV was all-electronic, replacing the remaining mechanical components with magnetic core memory . The Mark II and Mark III were delivered to
5372-420: The world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries, having held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business for 29 consecutive years from 1993 to 2021. IBM was founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems. It was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924 and soon became
5451-452: Was a viable choice to detonate the atomic bomb that would be used a year later. The Mark I also computed and printed mathematical tables, which had been the initial goal of British inventor Charles Babbage for his analytical engine in 1837. According to Edmund Berkeley , the operators of the Mark I often called the machine "Bessy, the Bessel engine", after Bessel functions . The Mark I
5530-404: Was acquired by Clayton & Dubilier in a leveraged buyout shortly after its formation. In September 1992, IBM completed the spin-off of their various non-mainframe and non-midrange, personal computer manufacturing divisions, combining them into an autonomous wholly owned subsidiary known as the IBM Personal Computer Company (IBM PC Co.). This corporate restructuring came after IBM reported
5609-425: Was announced that IBM will build Europe's first quantum computer in Ehningen, Germany . The center, to be operated by the Fraunhofer Society , was still in construction as of 2023, with cloud access planned in 2024. Norman Bel Geddes Bel Geddes was born Norman Melancton Geddes in Adrian, Michigan , and was raised in New Philadelphia, Ohio , the son of Flora Luelle (née Yingling) and Clifton Terry Geddes,
5688-400: Was completely out of IBM. IBM is headquartered in Armonk, New York , a community 37 miles (60 km) north of Midtown Manhattan. A nickname for the company is the " Colossus of Armonk ". Its principal building, referred to as CHQ, is a 283,000-square-foot (26,300 m ) glass and stone edifice on a 25-acre (10 ha) parcel amid a 432-acre former apple orchard the company purchased in
5767-615: Was disassembled in 1959; part of it was given to IBM, part went to the Smithsonian Institution , and part entered the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments . For decades, Harvard's portion was on display in the lobby of the Aiken Computation Lab. About 1997, it was moved to the Harvard Science Center . In 2021, it was moved again, to the lobby of Harvard's new Science and Engineering Complex in Allston, Massachusetts . The original concept
5846-400: Was exhibited on Jeopardy! where it won against game-show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The company also celebrated its 100th anniversary in the same year on June 16. In 2012, IBM announced it had agreed to buy Kenexa and Texas Memory Systems, and a year later it also acquired SoftLayer Technologies, a web hosting service , in a deal worth around $ 2 billion. Also that year,
5925-515: Was only retrospectively applied to the Harvard machines, and that the term could only be applied to the Mark III and IV , not to the Mark I or II . The main sequence mechanism was unidirectional. This meant that complex programs had to be physically lengthy. A program loop was accomplished by loop unrolling or by joining the end of the paper tape containing the program back to the beginning of
6004-640: Was originally part of the joint venture and was sold by LG in 2012. Continuing a trend started in the 1990s of downsizing its operations and divesting from commodity production , IBM sold all of its personal computer business to Chinese technology company Lenovo and, in 2009, it acquired software company SPSS Inc. Later in 2009, IBM's Blue Gene supercomputing program was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by U.S. President Barack Obama . In 2011, IBM gained worldwide attention for its artificial intelligence program Watson , which
6083-554: Was presented to IBM by Howard Aiken in November 1937. After a feasibility study by IBM engineers, the company chairman Thomas Watson Sr. personally approved the project and its funding in February 1939. Howard Aiken had started to look for a company to design and build his calculator in early 1937. After two rejections, he was shown a demonstration set that Charles Babbage ’s son had given to Harvard University 70 years earlier. This led him to study Babbage and to add references to
6162-507: Was recognized with the 1990 Honor Award from the National Building Museum . IBM has a large and diverse portfolio of products and services. As of 2016 , these offerings fall into the categories of cloud computing , artificial intelligence, commerce , data and analytics , Internet of things (IoT), IT infrastructure , mobile , digital workplace and cybersecurity . Since 1954, IBM sells mainframe computers ,
6241-480: Was valued at over $ 153 billion as of May 2024. Despite its relative decline within the technology sector, IBM remains the seventh largest technology company by revenue, and 67th largest overall company by revenue in the United States . IBM ranked No. 38 on the 2020 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. In 2014, IBM was accused of using "financial engineering" to hit its quarterly earnings targets rather than investing for
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