A worker installs monitors at the IBM booth in a file photo from the Cebit fair in Hanover, northern Germany. IBM was formed on June 16, 1911, as the Computing Tabulating Recording Co. in a merger of four separate companies. The new business with a plant in Endicott, N.Y., made scales, time clocks, cheese slicers and – significantly for its future – machines that read data stored on punch cards. (AP Photo/Fabian Bimmer)ENDICOTT, N.Y.-Google, Apple and Facebook get all the attention. But the forgettable everyday tasks of technology – saving a file on your laptop, swiping your ATM card to get 40 bucks, scanning a gallon of milk at the checkout line – that’s all IBM.
International Business Machines turned 100 on Thursday without much fanfare. But its much younger competitors owe a lot to Big Blue.
After all, where would Groupon be without the supermarket bar code? Or Google without the mainframe computer?
“They were kind of like a cornerstone of that whole enterprise that has become the heart of the computer industry in the U.S.,” says Bob Djurdjevic, a former IBM employee and president of Annex Research.
IBM dates to June 16, 1911, when three companies that made scales, punch-clocks for work and other machines merged to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Co. The modern-day name followed in 1924.