IBM

Multinational company, the largest manufacturer of computers in the world. The company is a descendant of the Tabulating Machine Company, formed in 1896 by US inventor Herman Hollerith to exploit his punched-card machines. It adopted its present name in 1924. By 1991 it had an annual turnover of US$64.8 billion and employed about 345,000 people, but in 1992 and 1993 it made considerable losses. The company acquired Lotus Development Corporation in 1995. By 1997 IBM had, under new management, recovered financially. In 2007 IBM's total revenue was US$99 billion and with 330,000 employees in 75 countries it was the world's largest information technology company.

In 2003, IBM's chairman and chief executive, Sam Palmisano, unveiled the company's ‘big bet’ for the future, e-business on demand. On-demand computing envisages corporate applications working together with those of other companies using World Wide Web services, and with shortfalls in computing capacity being remedied through access to online data centres.

Founded in 1924, by former cash register salesperson Tom Watson, IBM grew to monopolize the mechanical data processing business, and in the 1950s, thanks mainly to Tom Watson Jr, also quickly took over the new electronic (computer-based) data processing business. IBM's sales increased from US$734 million in 1956 to US$51 billion in 1986, when the company dominated most computer markets: mainframes, mid-range computers, personal computers, and networking. However, the rise of powerful microprocessors and the ‘open systems’ movement destroyed much of IBM's power; in the early 1990s it lost billions of dollars and shed almost half its 420,000 staff.

IBM became an important patron of modern design in the post-1945 years. Tom Watson Jr hired Eliot Noyes as chief design consultant. Previously an employee of Norman Bel Geddes, Noyes ensured that IBM worked with the best architects – among them Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer – and designed many of the company's machines, including the ‘Selectric’ electric typewriter in 1961.