IBM Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

IBM - Essay Example IBM is an American Computer manufacturing company which was founded in 17 February, 1874 by Thomas Watson. It is also known as the ‘big blue’ due to the color of its logo. The company started as a producer of punch cards tabulating machines. It built a 600s calculator in 1930s which was based on the punch card processing machine. The first computer (Mark 1) to perform long calculations automatically was co-funded by the organization in 1944 together with Harvard University. Watson Junior developed the 701 EDPM in 1953 which was meant to help in the policing of Korea by the United Nations but was not compatible with the punch card processing machine. The machine had processing units which were about 10 times faster than the core memory. The organization built more computers of IBM types like the IBM 704 of 1956, IBM 7090 of 1960, the 650 EDPM which was compatible with the earlier calculator 600s and it was the first massively produced computer. In 1981 the organization bu ilt a home-use computer called IBM PC. The company currently produces software products and computers. IBM research has helped the company in development of new technology and their application and helped the company to make innovations in the industry. These include; the innovation of copper chip technology that are capable of holding very large capacity of information. These were scheduled to be produced in 1998; Introduction of the Giant Magneto-resistive Head (GMR) which allowed introduction of products with higher areal densities e.g. disk drives; Speech recognition technology that would revolutionalise data input and usage of computers in business. There is research to expand and enhance voice recognition software which is already available in 8 words; Scalable parallel systems that allows joining of computer processors together while breaking down complexity and data-intensive jobs to speed their completion; Token-ring networking that allowed more efficient and reliable control of LAN (Local Area Network) traffic-a token-ring controls an individual computer to accessing of the network for example used in factories, cyber cafes, and university campuses; discovery of High-temperature superconductivity in ceramics which was done in 1986 by two scientists from the organization and they were offered the Nobel Peace Prize; discovery in Fractals allows mathematical description of natural irregularities via fractal geometry. A paper which contained the view that, irregular shapes in the nature, like tree branching of objects or phenomena had similar form when given a close up view or far away. The paper was published by Mandelbrot Benoit a scientist at IBM, in 1967; introduction of Formula Translation System (FORTRAN) in 1957; Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), whose memory concept of storing one bit of information in a memory cell consisting of only one transistor and a capacitor, was first described by a researcher in organization in a patent issue of 1968.