IBM History

In 1911, C-T-R had US$800,000 in net income.

In 1912, along with John Patterson, his former employer at NCR, Watson was convicted of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act on behalf of the company.

The founder hired Thomas Watson, Sr. in 1914 and shortly thereafter became president.

Watson never admitted any wrongdoing, and in 1915 the government dropped its case against NCR after the company became famous for its help during a catastrophic flood in its hometown of Dayton, Ohio.

The Endicott, NY, toolmakers group, circa 1917.

1920: CTR introduces the first complete school time control system, the lock autograph recorder.

Evelyn Granville, née Evelyn Boyd, (born May 1, 1924, Washington, D.C., United States), American mathematician who was one of the first African American women to receive a doctoral degree in mathematics.

Model time clocks in ITR service office, 1925.

Employees punching in on ITR dial recorders, 1926.

In 1928, for example, its profit of $5.3 million was nearly as great as that of giant Remington Rand, though the latter more than tripled IBM's sales of $19.7 million.

In 1933 IBM purchased Electromatic Typewriters, Inc., and thereby entered the field of electric typewriters, in which it eventually became an industry leader.

In 1935, at the same time the Justice Department was pursuing its case against IBM, the newly formed Social Security Administration placed an order with the company for more than 400 accounting machines and 1,200 keypunchers.

In 1936, after learning that IBM sold nearly 85 percent of all keypunch, tabulating, and accounting equipment in the United States, the Supreme Court ordered IBM to release its customers from all such card restrictions.

In 1937, IBM's tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process huge amounts of data.

In 1939, IBM's profit of $9.1 million exceeded that of the next four companies combined, and held an impressive 23 percent of sales.

By 1940, IBM had revenues of $46 million and a workforce of nearly 13,000 employees.

1944: IBM co-develops its first computer, the Automated Sequence Controlled Calculator aka Mark I, with Harvard University.

Only a handful of scientists continued refining the advances won by ENIAC, eventually creating a more saleable machine called UNIVAC around 1948.

In 1949 World Trade had sales of only $6.3 million but operated in 58 countries.

When IBM's old rival, Remington Rand, began to market UNIVAC in 1951, it took a significant lead in the new computer business.

By the time he became president in 1952, he had won the power struggle with his father and led IBM into an immense research program designed to surpass Rand.

There she became interested in the new field of computer programming, which led her to the corporation International Business Machines (IBM) in 1956.

In 1957 she joined IBM’s Vanguard Computing Center in Washington, D.C., where she wrote computer programs that tracked orbits for the uncrewed Vanguard satellite and the crewed Mercury spacecraft.

In 1958 Sperry Rand and Control Data brought out the first second generation computers, which used transistors instead of vacuum tubes.

By 1960, there were 5,000 computers in the United States, most of them made by IBM, whose annual revenues had ballooned to $1.6 billion.

In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines and introduced the highly successful Selectric typewriter.

In 1962 she joined the aerospace firm North American Aviation, where she worked on celestial mechanics and trajectory calculations for the Apollo project.

On April 7, 1964, IBM launched the first computer system family, the IBM System/360.

1965: IBM introduces the System/360, the first large grouping of computers to use interchangeable software.

Control Data filed yet another antitrust suit in 1968, charging that IBM had sold "phantom" computers to its customers to keep them from placing orders for superior CDC products.

An IBM engineer by the name of Forrest Parry developed the modern magnetic striped card in 1969 and IBM developed a system to read such cards over the next few years, as well as modified bar code functionality.

In 1971 Tom Watson retired from IBM after suffering a heart attack.

1973: Company sells a laser device to supermarkets, which is used to automatically read product prices at checkout stands; company introduces the IBM 3614 Consumer Transaction Facility, an early form of the Automatic Teller Machine.

In 1974, IBM engineer George J. Laurer developed the Universal Product Code.

In 1975, IBM pulled the plug on its five-year Future Systems development project for the next generation of mainframe computers, effectively wasting over $100 million and many millions of staff hours.

IBM failed to join this race until 1980, at which late date it was unable to dominate the market, as it did mainframes and minicomputers.

The IBM PC, originally designated IBM 5150, was introduced in 1981, and it soon became an industry standard.

Said Barron's, "just about everyone and his dog owns IBM." Watson, Jr. was labeled by Fortune Magazine, "the greatest capitalist in history." IBM was highlighted in the 1982 business book In Search of Excellence.

Said Barron's, "just about everyone and his dog owns IBM." Watson, Jr. was labeled by Fortune Magazine, "the greatest capitalist in history." IBM was highlighted in the 1982 business book In Search of Excellence. It grew to be the most valuable company in the world in 1984, worth $72 billion and earning the largest profit ever to that point, $6.6 billion.

1985: John F. Akers takes over as CEO, leading IBM to four Nobel Prizes in physics.

The dip in revenues could be explained as part of the severe 1990-91 recession that took its toll on the entire computer industry, but clearly IBM was no longer the juggernaut it had been during most of its history.

1991: The company's board approves a new strategy for IBM. The corporation that was famous for business machines set out to become "a world-class services company." At the time, IBM made $6 billion from business services.

By 1995 it surpassed Electronic Data Systems (EDS) to become the largest computer services business in the world.

1996: Microsoft's market value passes IBM's market value, as personal computing explodes, largely led by IBM's competitors like Dell and Compaq running Microsoft Windows.

The company's image got a boost in 1997 when its computer Deep Blue won a six-game chess match against World Class Champion Garry Kasparov.

Services accounted for 29 percent of IBM's revenues in 1998 and 39 percent of pretax profits.

Also in 1999, IBM acquired two new technology companies--Sequence Computer Systems and Whistle Communications--and signed contracts exceeding $15 billion with several other technology companies: Dell Computer Corporation, Acer Incorporated, Cisco Systems, Inc., and Nintendo Company, Ltd.

By 2000, the company made $33 billion a year in services revenue.

In 2001 the financial situation for IBM turned gloomy, as the company lost nearly $3 billion in overall revenue, decreasing net income from $8 billion to $7.7 billion.

In addition, gross profits rose almost $3 billion from 2002.

The year 2003 also witnessed further innovation at IBM, including the introduction of the world's most advanced server, the eServer z Series 990; the eServer p690 system, offering 65 percent more speed than its predecessor; and two new high-end iSeries servers: iSeries 825 and 870.

One such product, introduced in 2004, was the IBM eServer Blade Center HS40, the most powerful and flexible (and smallest) 4-way blade server available.

2005: Lenovo purchases IBM's personal computing division, completing IBM's transition into a services company and away from selling directly to consumers.

In 2010, IBM made $56 billion from business and technology services.

In 2011, IBM gained worldwide attention for its artificial intelligence program Watson, which was exhibited on Jeopardy! where it won against game-show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

In 2012 IBM announced it has agreed to buy Kenexa and Texas Memory Systems, and a year later it also acquired SoftLayer Technologies, a web hosting service, in a deal worth around $2 billion.

In 2014, IBM announced it would sell its x86 server division to Lenovo for $2.1 billion.

In 2015, IBM announced three major acquisitions: Merge Healthcare for $1 billion, data storage vendor Cleversafe, and all digital assets from The Weather Company, including Weather.com and the Weather Channel mobile app.

In April 2016, it posted a 14-year low in quarterly sales.

IBM is also a major research organization, holding the record for most United States patents generated by a business (as of 2018) for 25 consecutive years.

IBM announced in October 2020 that it would divest the Managed Infrastructure Services unit of its Global Technology Services division into a new public company.