The IBM Century: Creating the IT Revolution

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.