Ibm History :: essays research papers

1890-1938 The early long time IBM was incorporated in the state of New York on June 15, 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. only when its origins can be traced back to 1890, during the height of the Industrial Revolution, when the United States was experiencing waves of immigration. The U.S. count berth knew its traditional methods of counting would not be adequate for measuring the population, so it sponsored a contest to find a more high-octane means of tabulating census data. The winner was Herman Hollerith, a German immigrant and Census Bureau statistician, whose Punch Card Tabulating Machine used an electric current to sense experience holes in punch cards and keep a running sum total of data. Capitalizing on his success, Hollerith formed the Tabulating Machine Co. in 1896. In 1911, Charles R. Flint, a famous trust organizer, engineered the merger of Holleriths smart set with two others, Computing Scale Co. of the States and International Time Recording Co. The combined Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co., or C-T-R, manufactured and sell machinery ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders to meat and cheese slicers and, of course, tabulators and punch cards. base in New York City, the company had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, N.Y. Dayton, Ohio Detroit, Mich. Washington, D.C., and Toronto, Canada. When the diversified product linees of C-T-R proved vexed to man mount, Flint turned for help to the former No. 2 executive director at the National Cash Register Co., Thomas J. Watson. In 1914, Watson, age 40, joined the company as general manager. The son of Scottish immigrants, Watson had been a top salesman at NCR, but left after clashing with its unequivocal leader, John Henry Patterson. However, Watson did adopt some of Pattersons more effective business tactics generous sales incentives, an insistence on well-groomed, dark-suited salesmen and an evangelical inflammation f or instilling company pride and loyalty in every worker. Watson boosted company spirit with employee sports teams, family outings and a company band. He preached a positive outlook, and his front-runner slogan, "THINK," became a mantra for C-T-Rs employees. Watson also stressed the importance of the customer, a lasting IBM tenet. He understood that the success of the client translated into the success of his company, a belief that, days later, manifested itself in the popular adage, "Nobody was ever fired for buying from IBM." at bottom 11 months of joining C-T-R, Watson became its president. The company focused on providing large-scale, custom-built tabulating solutions for businesses, difference the market for small office products to others.