IBM's Early Computers


Book Description

The challenges faced by IBM's research and development laboratories, the technological paths they chose, and how these choices affected the company and the computer industry.




IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems


Book Description

No product offering has had greater impact on the computer industry than the IBM System/360. This book describes the creation of this remarkable system and the developments it spawned, including its successor, System/370.




Building IBM


Book Description

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.




Before the Computer


Book Description

Before the Computer fully explores the data processing industry in the United States from its nineteenth-century inception down to the period when the computer became its primary tool. As James Cortada describes what was once called the "office appliance industry," he challenges our view of the digital computer as a revolutionary technology. Cortada interprets reliance on computers as a development within an important segment of the American economy that was earlier represented largely by such instruments as typewriters, tabulating machines, adding machines, and calculators. He also describes how many of the practices of the office appliance industry evolved into those of the computer world. Drawing on previously unavailable industry archives, the author adds to our understanding of IBM's early history and offers short corporate histories of firms that include NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand. Focusing on the United States but also including comparative material on Europe and Asia, Before the Computer will be a unique source of knowledge about the companies that built office equipment and their enormous impact on economic life. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




First Generation Mainframes


Book Description

This volume describes several different models of IBM computer systems, characterized by different data representations and instruction sets that strongly influenced computer system architecture in the 1950s and early 1960s. They focused on a common system architecture that allowed peripherals to be used on different systems, albeit with specific adapters. These systems were modular, which made them easy to manufacture, configure, and service. Computing with UNIVAC, they used reliable Williams Tubes for memory, and later introduced magnetic core memory. IBM developed its own magnetic tape drives and magnetic drums that were both faster and more reliable than UNIVAC’s peripherals. The first software systems that could reasonably be called “operating systems” enabled more efficient use of programmer time and system resources. The development of programming languages, notably FORTRAN, and assembly language processors, notably Autocoder, improved the productivity of programmers. In addition, IBM developed one of the finest product marketing, sales and servicing organizations in the world. The legacy of the IBM 700 series is found in their popular successors, the IBM 7000 Series, which will be described in a forthcoming volume.




Pillars of Computing


Book Description

This accessible compendium examines a collection of significant technology firms that have helped to shape the field of computing and its impact on society. Each company is introduced with a brief account of its history, followed by a concise account of its key contributions. The selection covers a diverse range of historical and contemporary organizations from pioneers of e-commerce to influential social media companies. Features: presents information on early computer manufacturers; reviews important mainframe and minicomputer companies; examines the contributions to the field of semiconductors made by certain companies; describes companies that have been active in developing home and personal computers; surveys notable research centers; discusses the impact of telecommunications companies and those involved in the area of enterprise software and business computing; considers the achievements of e-commerce companies; provides a review of social media companies.




Memories That Shaped an Industry


Book Description




Making the World Work Better


Book Description

Thomas J Watson Sr’s motto for IBM was THINK, and for more than a century, that one little word worked overtime. In Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company, journalists Kevin Maney, Steve Hamm, and Jeffrey M. O’Brien mark the Centennial of IBM’s founding by examining how IBM has distinctly contributed to the evolution of technology and the modern corporation over the past 100 years. The authors offer a fresh analysis through interviews of many key figures, chronicling the Nobel Prize-winning work of the company’s research laboratories and uncovering rich archival material, including hundreds of vintage photographs and drawings. The book recounts the company’s missteps, as well as its successes. It captures moments of high drama – from the bet-the-business gamble on the legendary System/360 in the 1960s to the turnaround from the company’s near-death experience in the early 1990s. The authors have shaped a narrative of discoveries, struggles, individual insights and lasting impact on technology, business and society. Taken together, their essays reveal a distinctive mindset and organizational culture, animated by a deeply held commitment to the hard work of progress. IBM engineers and scientists invented many of the building blocks of modern information technology, including the memory chip, the disk drive, the scanning tunneling microscope (essential to nanotechnology) and even new fields of mathematics. IBM brought the punch-card tabulator, the mainframe and the personal computer into the mainstream of business and modern life. IBM was the first large American company to pay all employees salaries rather than hourly wages, an early champion of hiring women and minorities and a pioneer of new approaches to doing business--with its model of the globally integrated enterprise. And it has had a lasting impact on the course of society from enabling the US Social Security System, to the space program, to airline reservations, modern banking and retail, to many of the ways our world today works. The lessons for all businesses – indeed, all institutions – are powerful: To survive and succeed over a long period, you have to anticipate change and to be willing and able to continually transform. But while change happens, progress is deliberate. IBM – deliberately led by a pioneering culture and grounded in a set of core ideas – came into being, grew, thrived, nearly died, transformed itself... and is now charting a new path forward for its second century toward a perhaps surprising future on a planetary scale.




The IBM Century


Book Description

More than a century ago Herman Hollerith pioneered punch card tabulation technology. In 1911 his enterprise became the centerpiece of a new corporation (renamed in the 1920s), International Business Machines (IBM). Over the past century IBM has transformed how we record, calculate, and process information -- forever changing business, science, engineering, government, and leisure. Far more than any other firm, IBM created the IT revolution. This unique volume brings together fascinating memoirs of key IBM engineers and managers of the past 100 years -- from Walter Jones, who started as a sales engineer in 1912 and rose through the ranks for three decades, to Cuthbert Hurd, James Birkenstock, Bob Evans, John Backus, Watts Humphrey, and others who led IBM to supremacy in digital computing and software. It details punch card tabulation, IBM's entrance into computing, and the transformative IBM hardware (IBM 650, IBM 1401, System/360) and software (FORTRAN, SABRE, IMS) that changed the world. The IBM Century contains an IBM timeline, the most comprehensive IBM annotated bibliography to date, and a new introductory essay that characterizes IBM's 100-year history and contextualizes each of the memoirs.




The 80x86 IBM PC and Compatible Computers


Book Description

Praised by experts for its clarity and topical breadth, this visually appealing, one-stop source on PCs uses an easy-to-understand, step-by-step approach to teaching the fundamentals of 80x86 assembly language programming and PC architecture. Offering students a fun, hands-on learning experience, it uses the Debug utility to show what action the instruction performs, then provides a sample program to show its application. Reinforcing concepts with numerous examples and review questions, its oversized pages delve into dozens of related subjects, including DOS memory map, BIOS, microprocessor architecture, supporting chips, buses, interfacing techniques, system programming, memory hierarchy, DOS memory management, tables of instruction timings, hard disk characteristics, and more.* Covers all the x86 microprocessors, from the 8088 to the Pentium Pro. * Combines assembly and C programming early on. * Introduces the x86 instructions with examples of how they are used, and covers 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit programming of x86 microprocessors. * Uses fragments of programs from IBM PC technical reference. * Shows students a real-world approach to programming in assembly. * Ensures a basic un