Computer in Use. Маркушевская Л.П - 9 стр.

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Университет ИТМО | Санкт-Петербург

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9
THE RISE OF IBM
IBM started in the late nineteenth century as manufacturer of
electromechanical office tabulating equipment: the company took its current name in
1924. It financed one of the first digital computers, a clacking electromechanical
monster known as Mark I, in 1943. IBM's first president Thomas Watson, Sr.,
commissioned the project, possibly as an expensive publicity stunt - research,
advertising, and publicity-all came out of the same budget in those days. IBM did not
immediately enter the computer business after the war and did not deliver its first
computer until 1953. In 1954 IBM was only the fourth-ranked computer producer,
well behind computer industry pioneer - Radio Corporation of America (RCA). That
year IBM introduced the Model 650, the first computer to utilize punch-card
technology.
Over the next decade, IBM made heavy investments in research and
development under Thomas Watson, Jr., who took over from his father as IBM
president in the mid-1950s. IBM capitalized on its manufacturing expertise to
produce a full line of peripheral equipment: printers terminals, keypunch machines
and card sorters that brought enormous profits for IBM and unbeatable competition
for other computer manufacturers.
By the mid-1950s, IBM threatened to dominate the entire computer industry
with its fast-selling Model 650. IBM also offered its computers for sale for the first
time instead of renting them as it previously had insisted. This allowed leasing
companies to buy computer equipment from IBM and then rent it to computer users
at prices lower than IBM itself could charge.
These changes opened up competition in the computer services and equipment
leasing markets.
In April 1964 IBM introduced the Model 360, the first computer that came in a
variety of sizes and that was compatible with many different applications. Software
and peripheral devices that worked on any one of the versions also worked on the
others and were also "backward compatible" with earlier IBM models. Before, users
had to start over with entirely new software, printers, terminals and so on, whenever
they switched to a larger computer or added a new application. The Model 360 and
its successor, the Model 370, led the company to dominance of both U.S. and
international markets.
IBM's enormous success with room-sized mainframe computers eventually
proved its undoing. It made unsuccessful entries into many of the specialized
computer markets that later emerged. IBM abandoned the high-performance
supercomputer market in the 1960s, and it entirely missed the minicomputer trend,
pioneered in the early 1960s by Digital Equipment Corporation.
By the time IBM came out with its own models, minicomputers were about to
be made obsolete by another new product that IBM ultimately failed to capitalize on
the desktop-sized personal computer.
Notes
unbeatable competition - непреодолимая конкуренция

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