Building IBM: Shaping an Industry and Its TechnologyMIT Press, 23. jaan 2009 - 432 pages No company of the twentieth century achieved greater success and engendered more admiration, respect, envy, fear, and hatred than IBM. Building IBM tells the story of that company—how it was formed, how it grew, and how it shaped and dominated the information processing industry. Emerson Pugh presents substantial new material about the company in the period before 1945 as well as a new interpretation of the postwar era.Granted unrestricted access to IBM's archival records and with no constraints on the way he chose to treat the information they contained, Pugh dispels many widely held myths about IBM and its leaders and provides new insights on the origins and development of the computer industry.Pugh begins the story with Herman Hollerith's invention of punched-card machines used for tabulating the U.S. Census of 1890, showing how Hollerith's inventions and the business he established provided the primary basis for IBM. He tells why Hollerith merged his company in 1911 with two other companies to create the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, which changed its name in 1924 to International Business Machines. Thomas J. Watson, who was hired in 1914 to manage the merged companies, exhibited remarkable technological insight and leadership—in addition to his widely heralded salesmanship—to build Hollerith's business into a virtual monopoly of the rapidly growing punched-card equipment business. The fascinating inside story of the transfer of authority from the senior Watson to his older son, Thomas J. Watson Jr., and the company's rapid domination of the computer industry occupy the latter half of the book. In two final chapters, Pugh examines conditions and events of the 1970s and 1980s and identifies the underlying causes of the severe probems IBM experienced in the 1990s. |
Contents
Inventor and Entrepreneur | 1 |
2 Origins of IBM | 19 |
A Man with a Mission | 29 |
4 Building an Engineering Organization | 37 |
5 Responding to the Great Depression | 53 |
6 Support for Academic Research | 67 |
7 Research for Patents and Devices | 77 |
8 World War II Activities | 89 |
14 Programming Computers | 183 |
15 An Air Defense System | 199 |
16 Chasing New Technologies | 221 |
17 Legacy | 243 |
18 Gambling on System360 | 263 |
19 Commitment and Delivery | 279 |
20 Onrush of Technology | 301 |
21 Demands of the Future | 317 |
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Common terms and phrases
accounting machine achieved activities Aiken announced antitrust April assigned automatic Bashe Belden Bryce Bureau Business Machines Calculator census circuits company's cores Corporation cost customers Data Processing December devices digits disk storage Division Dunwell E. W. Pugh early Eckert EDVAC electrical electronic computers Endicott engineering ENIAC filed Forrester FORTRAN Haanstra Herman Hollerith hired History of Computing holes Hollerith Howard Aiken IBM document IBM's industry installed interview by E. W. inventor January June Learson magnetic drum magnetic tape manager manufacturing Mauchly ment operation Palmer percent Poughkeepsie Powers-Samas president problems processors proposed punched cards punched-card equipment puter RAMAC Remington Rand revenue SAGE September Speedcoding SSEC stored-program computer success T. J. Watson Tabulating Machine task technical technologies tion Tom Watson transistors typewriter U.S. Patent unit UNIVAC vacuum tubes Wallace Eckert York