IBM 1911
Incorporated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R), IBM can trace its origins even earlier, back to the invention of the first dial recorder by Dr Alexander Dey in 1888. Dey’s business became one of the building blocks of IBM. Similarly the Bundy Manufacturing Company, makers of the “Bundy Clock”, was incorporated in 1889 and also became a component of C-T-R.

C-T-R was renamed International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924. WWII marked IBM’s first steps towards computing, with the development of the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, also called the Mark I, in 1944. In 1952 IBM introduced the IBM 701, its first vacuum tube computer. 1957 saw the company introduce the first computer disk storage system, the Random Access Method of Accounting and Control (RAMAC) and also the programming language FORTRAN. By 1959 transistors were replacing vacuum tubes, and the IBM 7090 was one of the first fully transistorised mainframes.