IBM

Founded by Charles Ranlett Flint (1850–1934) as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in 1911, the company known in 2001 as International Business Machines (IBM) started out making shopkeepers' scales and counting machines for the U.S. Census Bureau. IBM became famous for its mainframe computers in the 1950s and 1960s when it was one of America's largest and most powerful corporations. Some say the blue suits worn by the sales staff inspired the press to nickname the company "Big Blue"; others say it was the color of the "big blue boxes," the large mainframe computers of the 1960s. Always seen as one of the safe bets of American commerce, when IBM collapsed in the late 1980s, it sent shock-waves through the world of computing. By the late 1990s, however, Big Blue had managed to revive its reputation as a major computer manufacturer.

In the early days under chief executive Thomas Watson Jr. (1914–1993), IBM concentrated on sales. Although it was later to gain a reputation for a bullying approach to business, IBM was actually very good to its employees in the 1920s. In the 1930s IBM was among the first companies to offer insurance and paid vacations; it even had a fund for widows of IBM workers killed in World War II (1939–45). Less commendably, the company has been linked with aiding the Nazi government in Germany during the war years.

With the invention of electronic computing after World War II, IBM entered the mainframe computer market. The sharp-suited sales force enjoyed a lifetime employment policy and sold some of the most technically advanced machines of the time. IBM's domination of the computer market lasted until the 1970s, when smaller companies like Apple Computer (see entry under 1970s—The Way We Lived in volume 4) proved quicker to exploit the new personal computer (PC; see entry under 1970s—The Way We Lived in volume 4) market. Although the company made record profits of $6.6 billion in 1984—the year it was portrayed as an evil "Big Brother" in a famous advertisement aired by Apple Computer—its dominance was beginning to fade. Barely a decade later, it took a loss of $8.5 billion.

Over the years, IBM's image has swung from gentle giant to evil empire and back again. For most of the twentieth century, however, it was a symbol of powerful and efficient American enterprise. At the turn of the twenty-first century, IBM remains one of the giants among several large computing firms competing for dominance in a global market.

—Chris Routledge

For More Information

Black, Edwin. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance BetweenNazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation. New York: Crown Publishers, 2001.

Campbell-Kelly, Martin, and William Asprey. Computer: A History of theInformation Machine. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.

Carroll, Paul. Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM. New York: Crown Publishers, 1993.

IBM.http://www.ibm.com (accessed April 1, 2002).