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IBM 100'th anniversary

Dms12444

Experienced Member
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Well the old titan of computers, IBM was founded originally in 1896 making it 114 years old in total, But back then it was called the Tabulating Machine company, and want referred to as IBM until it was incorporated in 1911. Essentially, since it was known as IBM it has gone through what is now 99 years of history. The company commonly referred to as "Big Blue" has done quite alot in the past century and is still today the worlds largest computer company with 398,455 employees worldwide (information from www.wolframalpha.com). What have they done more recently? Well Power and Power PC has played a big part in computer and gaming history (just about every game console on the market today uses Power PC). And up until 2004 Apple Computers used Power PC [I still cant figure out why they downgraded from Power PC (A RISC based architecture) to x86 (a CISC based architecture).]

Granted it's not their 100'th anniversary yet but next year it will be. What are your thoughts on this?

Oh and for some interesting though here is IBM compared to a few companies:

Company---------Employees-----------Yearly Net income
IBM:---------------398,455------------95.53 billion dollars
Microsoft:---------93,000-------------58.69 billion dollars
HP:-----------------304,000-----------114.6 billion dollars
AMD:--------------14,700--------------4.984 billion dollars
Intel:--------------83,900-------------32.78 billion dollars
 
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Small correction: The full name for the original company was the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, or CTR.

Another small correction: Calling a current x86 chip CISC is a little misleading - they are all RISC under the covers. And the IBM Power series would be called a CISC chip by the original definition of RISC .. it is hard to imagine something so complex being called RISC. ;-0

Want to do some fun background reading? Try these:
  • A Business and Its Beliefs : The Ideas That Helped Build IBM, Thomas J Watson, Jr
  • IBM's Early Computers: Charles J. Bashe, Lyle R. Johnson, John H. Palmer, Emerson W. Pugh


-Mike
 
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