Happy 100th birthday, Big Blue

Pan Am, General Telephone, E.F. Hutton, General Foods -- all of these once-household names are now gone, either bankrupt or swallowed up by bigger fish.

IBM? Not gone. Not even close. And now entering its second century.

It seems odd, even perverse, that a company so synonymous with technology could also be a century old. And yet, it is: 100 years ago, on June 16, 1911, the Computing Tabulating Recording company was formed. Among its top products: cash registers, punch clocks, and meat and cheese slicers.

The name International Business Machines wouldn't be used until 1924, when CEO Thomas Watson changed the direction of the company for good. The meat and cheese slicers were soon replaced by punch-card counting machines, then a slew of computing innovations we now take for granted, starting with mainframe computers and magnetic storage. The rest, as they say, is history.

:story: Full story: InfoWorld