1. About.com
  2. Business & Finance
  3. Inventors

Discuss in my forum

Mary Bellis

The Legend of IBM

By , About.com Guide   July 15, 2010

Follow me on:

IBM
The year 1953 saw the development of IBM's first commercially successful general-purpose computer. Inventor, Thomas Johnson Watson Junior wanted to contribute a "defense calculator" to aid in the United Nations' policing of Korea after the Korean War. However, one obstacle Watson Junior had to overcome was in convincing his father, Thomas Johnson Watson Senior (the CEO of IBM) that computers would not harm IBM's card processing business. The 701s were incompatible with IBM's punched card processing equipment, at that time a big moneymaker for IBM.

Illustration of IBM 701 EDPM Control Board by Mary Bellis

Comments
August 21, 2010 at 7:37 pm
(1) William Carr :

I read your entry about Windows 1.0.

I’ve triple-checked, and I believe it was released in November 1985, not 1983.

I note that there’s a misprint on Microsoft’s own website regarding this. It refers to 1990, saying the first version of Windows was released seven years earlier.

And then states the release date was November 1985.

Which matches three other sources I found.

Leave a Comment

Line and paragraph breaks are automatic. Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title="">, <b>, <i>, <strike>

©2012 About.com. All rights reserved. 

A part of The New York Times Company.