IBM

IBM

International Business Machine Corporation, better known as IBM, is one of the historical giants of computing. Created in June 1911 by Charles Flint, the company was then called Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. It was the result of a merger between the Tabulating Machine Company, the Computing Scale Company of America (meat slicers and scales companies) and International Time Recording Company (industrial time stamp companies). The IBM name will be adopted in 1924.

The IBM company is nicknamed "Big Blue" because of the blue color of its logo. © IBM

IBM's innovations

BM, also nicknamed "Big Blue" because of the dark blue color of its logo, is at the origin of several founding innovations of modern computing:

• 1944: launch of the Harvard Mark I considered as the first digital computer;
• 1955: the term "computer" was introduced by IBM France as an equivalent to the English word "computer";
• 1957: IBM launches the Fortran programming language and introduces the hard disk;
• 1964: birth of OS / 360 operating system;
• 1981: The IBM PC 5150 is the first personal computer to become a mass product sold to millions of copies. This computer uses the Microsoft QDOS operating system, renamed PC-DOS and later sold by Microsoft as MS-DOS.

IBM and the Nobel Prize in Physics

• 1986: Two IBM researchers, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, receive the Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention of the tunneling microscope;
• 1997: Deep Blue supercomputer beats world champion Garry Kasparov;
• 2000: IBM invests $ 1 billion in the Linux operating system, with the goal of improving it, in consultation with the Linux community;
• 2005: IBM sells its personal computer division to Chinese Lenovo;
• 2011: The Watson supercomputer goes down in history as the first computer to win the game show Jeopardy! That same year, the company celebrated its centenary;
• 2012: Virginia "Ginni" Mr. Rometty becomes the first woman to lead IBM.

In 2014, for the twenty-second consecutive year, IBM ranked first in the number of patent filings in the United States (source: IFI claims). That same year, Big Blue announced a $ 3 billion investment to develop future 7 nanometer processors and explore alternatives to silicon such as graphene, photonics or carbon nanotubes.