Eng/101
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Thesis Statement: IBM’s Past Present and Future continues to revolutionize the IT industry today!
The IBM Corporation’s History started in 1911 making punch-card tabulators (IBM, 2014). It wasn’t till 1924 that the company took the name of IBM under Thomas Watson’s leadership (IBM, 2014). Watson led IBM into being the largest manufacturer of punch card Tabulators which lead to their rise as a dominant corp. in America (IBM, 2014). The IBM corporation started competing in the electronic typewriters in 1933(IBM, 2014). IBM’s technology also helped the war effort in WW2 with electro-mechanical calculators(IBM, 2014).
In the 1950’s Under the first president Thomas Watson Jr IBM got into the Mainframe computer department (IBM, 2014). IBM dominated the field of Mainframe’s and became one of the most profitable companies in the word (Jones, 2012, p.285). IBM still dominates the Mainframe field to this day.
In 1970 Intel Corp. released its 4004 microprocessor which was the route to the Personal computer’s you can see today (Jones, 2012, p.287). Apple was the first company to release a personal computer in 1976 and it posed a threat to the IBM corp.(Jones, 2012, p.285). IBM downplayed the importance of the personal computer thinking it was a toy compared to Mainframe computing (Jones, 2012, p.287). Because of this thinking IBM did not release a PC of their own till 1981, five years after apples first pc (IBM, 2014). IBM decided to get into the PC business after seeing the popularity of apples computer with the public. Since the company disregarded pc’s as not being a real threat to their Mainframe computing they were far behind in developing all the technology to do so. In order not to push back the release of the IBM PC another 4-5 years they had to outsource for their parts this was not the normal way IBM builds their products. IBM did not have an operating system build for their pc as well but they knew of a small town in Washington