04/20, 4:11pm
IBM server segment could fetch $4.5 billion
Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo may be heading back to IBM for yet another purchase, as Bloomberg reports that the company is in talks with IBM to buy its server business. The deal, still very much in the formative stages, could see Lenovo paying between $2.5 and $4.5 billion for IBM's server division, depending on what is included. A source close to the negotiations says an agreement on the deal could be weeks away.
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04/01, 6:58am
Shutdown of AMD, Cell-based supercomputer despite #22 ranking
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is shutting down its Roadrunner supercomputer, after deeming it too energy inefficient. Constructed by IBM in 2008, the five-year-old supercomputer was at one point the fastest in the world after achieving a speed exceeding one petaflop: one million billion calculations per second.
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03/29, 11:11am
Facebook updates Android app in UK with VoIP access
Facebook has updated the Android version of its Messenger app in the United Kingdom, enabling Voice over IP (VoIP) calls in the country. The new version comes just days after the same update appeared on the iOS version for the UK, with users being able to place calls to other Messenger users by tapping the "i" button then "Free Call." The unannounced Android update has taken place in a much shorter time-span than the two-months seen when the feature first rolled out in the US and Canada.
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02/28, 12:40pm
Google, Amazon fill out top three
For a sixth year in a row, Apple has claimed the top position in Fortune's annual World's Most Admired Companies list. The chart is based on a poll of executives. "Apple has had a rough time lately with its stock price in a free fall and the widely publicized failure of its Maps feature," Fortune writes. "However, it remains a financial juggernaut, posting $13 billion in net income last quarter, making it the most profitable company in the world during that period. The company has its fanatical customer base, and it still refuses to compete on price, making the iconic iPhone and iPad products that are still widely seen as prestige devices. Competition may be stiff, but so far it remains behind: In Q4 2012, the iPhone 5 was the world's best selling smartphone, followed in second place by the iPhone 4S."
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02/18, 2:40pm
Major tech companies wield influence on American government
Google increased the amount it spent on lobbying the US government 90 percent year-over-year in 2012, according to data compiled by Fortune. The company ended up spending $18.22 million, easily beating out any other American technology firm. Microsoft, in fact, came in second place with $8.09 million, despite likewise increasing its spending. Other major tech businesses that funneled more money toward lobbying last year included HP, Facebook, and Amazon.
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01/22, 8:45pm
Migration away from hardware buoys IBM stock, net worth
IBM announced its fourth-quarter 2012 diluted earnings on Tuesday. The IT services company revealed earnings of $5.13 per share, compared with diluted earnings of $4.62 per share in the fourth quarter of 2011, an increase of 11 percent. Fourth-quarter net income was $5.8 billion compared with $5.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, an increase of six percent. Total revenues for the fourth quarter of 2012 of $29.3 billion decreased one percent from the fourth quarter of 2011.
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10/31, 1:46pm
Knowledge system to be used to diagnose patients
Cleveland Clinic and IBM are to work together to implement Watson's Deep Question Answering technology in a medical capacity. Researchers will work with Watson and medical students to improve the system's knowledge, as well as to find any challenges that could appear when putting such a technology to real-world use.
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08/29, 4:32pm
Efficiency improvements to make Siri-competitor possible
IBM is looking to bring the technology that powers Watson to smartphones. The technology giant says that advances in both battery power and computing efficiency make it possible to bring a new version of the smart computer, dubbed Watson 2.0, to mobile handsets within the coming years. The new version will bring the voice recognition capabilities the system is already known for, but IBM is also looking to add more senses to the technology, allowing Watson to recognize images as well.
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08/28, 9:31pm
Purchase will shore up IBM's social offerings
IBM announced today that it was purchasing human resources software company Kenexa. The computing and enterprise services will pay $1.3 billion in cash to acquire Kenexa, which supplies an array of services aimed at aiding in employee recruitment, retention, and development. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the deal is likely to help IBM as it competes against other enterprise technology players such as Oracle and Salesforce.
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07/19, 3:48pm
Weak revenue, but outperforms expectations
In its quarterly financial statement today, IBM announced solid quarterly profits that outperformed Wall Street expectations, making for 29 consecutive quarters the company has met or exceeded investor predictions. IBM's report carried a note of caution, as its revenues underperformed versus investor expectations, due to lower hardware sales and troubles in some markets. Still, as The New York Times reports, the company maintained its streak of reliability, and shares in the company have risen four percent today on beliefs that its profitability streak will continue unabated.
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06/18, 6:42am
IBM system uses 98,000 nodes, 1.5 million cores
A supercomputer in the United States tops the list of the world's top 500 for the first time since November 2009. Sequoia, an IBM Blue Gene/Q system installed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the Department of Energy, clocked in at 16.32 sustained petaflops during tests, 50 percent more powerful than the second place “K Computer” in Japan.
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06/05, 4:30pm
Toshiba brings Smart Client Manager to newly updated business notebooks
Toshiba's Digital Products Division has just unveiled four new business notebooks, each benefitting from Intel's latest Ivy Bdrige, or third-generation Core-series processors. The newcomers include the Portégé Z930 ultrabook, 13.3-inch Portégé R930, 14-inch Tecra R940 and 15.6-inch Tecra R950. All get a newly developed Toshiba Smart Client Manager that's powered by Tivoli from IBM.
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05/23, 10:25am
Technology considered corporate security threat
Siri, the voice command system on the iPhone 4S, is being blocked on IBM's internal networks, the company's CIO has revealed. Jeanette Horan mentioned the fact in an interview with MIT's Technology Review this week. The core issue involves the way Siri translates speech; rather than performing the task on a phone, it uploads recordings to Apple servers, where the speech is deciphered before results are sent back. Accompanying this is user data, such as the names of people in Contacts, since the information is needed to interpret some requests.
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05/22, 6:18pm
Second year in top spot for iPhone maker
Apple has maintained its lead over other companies in the Millward Brown 2012 Brandz study. This marks the second year at the top for Apple, increasing their brand value from $153 billion to $182 billion, while previous branding leader Google slips behind IBM to third place. The study covers brand value as a perceptual worth independent from any financial undertakings, instead of market capitalization as typically used by financial analysts.
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05/18, 3:04pm
Would continue global R&D expansion
Apple is one of several parties in talks with Russia's Skolkovo technology park about possible research and development facilities there, according to local publication Izvestia. Other interested companies are said to include Google and Facebook; agreements are reportedly already in place for firms such as Microsoft, IBM, General Electric, and Cisco. Skolkovo's organizers are said to be aiming at making the park a Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley.
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04/30, 8:15pm
Microsoft backs CISPA bill to the end
Microsoft in a statement Monday clung to a firm stance on the proposed CISPA bill. The firm told The Hill that, despite having said it wanted to "honor the privacy" of users, it wanted the bill to continue forward. It would "look forward" to working with the Senate on the bill.
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04/16, 1:30pm
HP's South Korean offices raided by the FTC
Korea's Fair Trade Commission raided HP's Seoul office on Friday as part of an investigation into the company's alleged price-fixing practices, The Korea Times reported. Employees were questioned and computer records as well as documents were ceased during the raid. Other companies that are said to be involved in the scheme include IBM and Oracle.
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04/10, 2:30pm
ZTE contract for embargoed US gear to Iran found
China's second biggest telecommunications gear maker ZTE was found to have sold embargoed US computer equipment to Iran. A Tuesday Reuters report claimed that documents show ZTE sold some computer gear as part of a $10.5 million supply contract to a unit that controls Iranian telecoms. The documents are dated June 30, 2011 and explain how Iran got sophisticated US hardware despite sanctions against such transactions.
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04/02, 11:30am
IBM, ASTRON join forces on ultimate supercomputer
A newly announced collaboration between ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, and IBM aims to research the world's most powerful exascale supercomputer to study space. Once built, the supercomputer will be used in the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which is an effort to build the largest and most sensitive radio telescope that will involve millions of antennas to be built across 3,000 kilometers (about 1,860 miles), likely to be in Australia or South Africa and due to be completed by 2024. The joint effort, dubbed DOME, will initially span over five years and represents a 32.9 million euro ($43.8 million) investment.
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03/22, 4:10pm
Facebook rumored to have bought 750 IBM patents
Facebook has bought 750 patents from IBM in order to be better protected against patent infringement lawsuits, Bloomberg was told by a purported source close to the affair. The deal isn't yet public, but the patents were said to cover software and networking technologies, among others. Its purchase was almost certainly triggered by Yahoo's recent lawsuit against the social network over web patents.
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03/08, 10:35am
IBM shows off optical chipset prototype in LA
At the Optical Fiber Communication Conference in LA, IBM will talk about its latest prototype optical chipset that is the first to reach one terabit per second data speeds. Dubbed Holey Optochip, it's eight times faster than modern optical components, and IBM compares its total bandwidth to 100,000 users at common 10Mbps Internet access speeds. The chip was made by fabricating 48 holes through a standard silicon CMOS chip.
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03/06, 5:00pm
Intel Xeon E5-2600 given official arrival
Intel ended one of the longest waits for one of its processors in recent memory on Tuesday by launching and detailing the Xeon E5-2600. Its mid-range server and workstation chip is a superset of the much newer Sandy Bridge-E architecture and can carry a full eight cores (up from six) and handle a much larger 768GB memory ceiling. The extra cores, along with a shrink from 45 to 32 nanometers and new AVX support, should make it about 80 percent faster than the Xeon 5600 it replaces.
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03/01, 10:50am
Tremendous profits cited
Apple has claimed first place in the 2012 Fortune list of the World's Most Admired Companies. The achievement is a fifth in a row for Apple, with the company this year getting a score of 8.42. "To say it was another big year for Apple would be a gross understatement. With the passing of Steve Jobs, questions swirled around the company’s future. But under new CEO Tim Cook’s guidance, Apple continues to prosper," Fortune writes.
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02/28, 1:05pm
Research brings quantum computers one step closer
Scientists at IBM labs have established three new records in the field of quantum computing, bringing the reality of a practical, full-scale quantum computer one step closer. The researchers discovered new methods for for reducing errors due to quantum decoherence in elementary computations and retaining the integrity of quantum mechanical properties. The researchers will present their results at the annual American Physical Society meeting taking place February 27-March 2, 2012 in Boston.
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02/20, 4:30pm
Microsoft adds John W. Thompson to board
Microsoft revealed on Monday that it has brought John Thompson onto its board of directors, reinstating it to its full 10 members once again. Thompson is the CEO of Virtual Instruments and was once chairman and CEO of Symantec. He also served at IBM, in the sales, marketing, and software development divisions as well as being the general manager of IBM Americas.
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02/17, 4:50pm
IBM, SCO scheduled to go back to courts over Unix
The long-running but stalled legal battle between Unix vendor SCO and IBM has been reactivated in Utah courts, Groklaw revealed. The proceedings were interrupted when SCO entered bankruptcy court. SCO sued IBM, among others, for using Unix code and integrating it into Linux, though it doesn't own Unix copyrights, as ruled in a different case between Novell and SCO.
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01/28, 2:40pm
Nanotube transistors hit new record
IBM researchers have published results for a new nine-nanometer nanotube transistor that could redefine processors in the future. The carbon-based element is the first below 10 nanometers and is much more efficient than the best current silicon-based transistors. Because of the size and material, it can use considerably less power and takes on more of a current to improve the reliability.
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01/21, 6:30pm
HTC to use IBM business apps on Android devices
HTC and IBM together said in an interview Friday that they were working together to get Android into the workplace. IBM's business apps were running on HTC's phones and tablets, HTC's Global Enterprise and Services director David Jaeger told eWeek. On its side, HTC was making sure both that the devices took full advantage of the IBM apps and that they "focused extensively" on security.
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01/03, 1:20pm
Google tries to counter patent wars with more IBM
Google has quietly escalated its attempts to mount a defense for Android by getting more IBM patents. An acquisition recorded December 30 gave Google 217 more active and pending patents primarily focused on cellphones, mobile web browsers, and voice search. Among the examples are a patent for a "computer phone," another for a method of resizing websites for mobile, and a third for voice-based keyword searches.
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01/02, 10:20pm
Executive points to HP as evidence
As IBM head Samuel Palmisano prepares to step down from his position and hand the reins to Virginia Rometty, the chief executive has reflected on the company's recent strategy. In an interview with the New York Times, Palmisano suggests he faced strong disagreement within the company over the decision to sell of IBM's PC division, however he credits the decision with helping the company stay innovative and maintain profits.
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12/19, 2:25pm
IBM releases Five in Five 2011 tech predictions
IBM has revealed its sixth-annual Five in Five technology predictions for the future on Monday. The computer maker has outlined the five technologies that it believes will become commonplace within the next five years. The first of them involves recycling kinetic energy that would otherwise go to waste to help power homes, cities and workplaces. This could be done through dynamos on bicycles that could recharge portable devices, capturing heat from a computer, or walking and jogging.
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12/05, 9:50pm
IBM racetrack memory made with common tech
IBM at the International Electronic Devices Meeting on Monday showed a working prototype of its racetrack memory made using conventional semiconductor tools. The 100 times more dense memory used to require a special research manufacturing machine but can now be made in a fully integrated way that should be much cheaper. IBM found it could put a nickel-iron layer on to a silicon wafer and etch out the 20-nanometer thick nanowires that define the memory.
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12/03, 9:40pm
Leak reveals Samsung had rejected Apple offer
Apple had made an olive branch license to Samsung for a patent that the Korean company turned down, a discovery within redacted court documents found on Saturday. Normally unavailable, the details given to The Verge showed that Apple in November 2010 offered the same license for its iOS scrolling feedback patent that it ultimately secured with IBM and Nokia. As a cornerstone of iOS' intuitiveness, it showed Apple willing to make a significant concession to Samsung first before it turned to the court.
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12/01, 10:40am
IBM, Micron team up on 3D memory chips
IBM and Micron will collaborate on the production of the first memory chip to use CMOS manufacturing technology with through-silicon vias (TSVs). These are vertical conduits that electrically connect a stack of individual chips. This IBM process will let Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) run 15 times faster than current, conventional memory chips. The chip's parts will be made on 32-nanometer, high-K metal gate process technology that's as efficient as modern processors.
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11/27, 12:50pm
IBM credits Apple for spike in mobile shopping
Apple's mobile devices were responsible for a tenth of all US online shopping on Black Friday this year, IBM said in a new study. The iPad and iPhone made up 4.8 and 5.6 percent each of all online shopping in the US, or 10.2 percent combined. Android, in spite of its larger collective market share, wasn't as trusted at just 4.1 percent.
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11/24, 8:55am
Shenzhen tech firms call for labor rights
China Labor Watch reported Thursday that 1,000 workers at a Jingyuan Computer Group plant in Shenzhen briefly went on strike over tough conditions. The staff at the southern China plant, who make keyboards, hard drives, displays, and wireless cameras for companies like Apple and IBM, have complained of working 100 to 120 hours of overtime each per month. They also cite being berated by supervisors, high injury rates, and frequent layoffs for older workers.
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11/05, 1:00pm
IBM chief behind PC push was aged 86
One of IBM's most influential CEOs, John Opel, died late Thursday at the age of 86, IBM confirmed on Friday. The former executive was CEO of the company from January 1981 to January 1985 and oversaw the launch of the original IBM PC, the 5150, in August 1981. He was credited with having the foresight to support home computers at a time when IBM was still known by most for its mainframes. Opel had IBM invest a minority stake in Intel in 1984 that helped establish its chips as the main choice for PC processors, even through today.
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10/25, 7:15pm
Rometty succeeds Samuel Palmisano
IBM has announced that it has elected Virginia Rometty to serve as the company's new CEO. The move marks the first time the company has placed a woman in the top spot. She is not a newcomer to the upper ranks, however, having served as senior vice president and group executive for sales, marketing and strategy.
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10/05, 9:50am
InterBrand shows Apple move up quickly in image
InterBrand's new rankings have seen Apple enter into the top 10 for the first time. The company leapt on the global ranks of its image's value from 17th to eighth, passing BMW, HP, Mercedes-Benz, and even its frequent ally Disney. Symbolically, it took over the former position from Nokia, whose rapid decline in sales and public perception dropped it to 14th.
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09/30, 10:10am
IBM passes Microsoft for 2nd in value, Apple tops
The close of the stock market Thursday saw IBM overtake Microsoft to become the second most valuable technology company. IBM's climb to $214 billion in its stock market cap was just enough to counter a Microsoft decline to $213.2 billion, pushing Microsoft down to third. Apple was still the largest, even with recent sell-offs, and had a much larger $362.1 billion cap.
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09/27, 7:05pm
Investment to create 2,500 high tech jobs
IBM and Intel have agreed to invest $4.4 billion to create an R&D hub for nanotechnology in Albany, New York. The two companies, along with Samsung, Global Foundries, and TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufucturing Corporation), will make the investment over a five-year period. New York state will pour $400 million into its College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at Albany in support of the effort.
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09/15, 3:40pm
Beats Microsoft, Walmart, other major corporations
Apple has leaped ahead in rank to become the second most valuable brand in the world, an interim 2011 Brand Finance study claims. Although the worth of a brand is difficult to quantify, Brand Finance's latest metrics put Apple up 33 percent to $39.3 billion. Leading the list is Google, which rose 9 percent to just under $48.3 billion.
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09/07, 10:35pm
Tech promises up to 100 separate layers
IBM and 3M are reportedly collaborating to develop new adhesives that will be designed for layered microprocessors. The stacked technology, which could be composed of up to 100 separate layers, is said to be geared for enterprise equipment, such as servers, or consumer electronics such as computers, smartphones, tablets or gaming devices.
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08/26, 2:45pm
IBM developing largest ever storage array
IBM is building a hard drive of sorts that's 10 times bigger than any other built before it. It has a capacity of 120 petabytes, or 120 million gigabytes, and is made up of 200,000 hard drives hooked up together. IBM's data storge group is working on the project at the hardware giant's Almaden, CA research lab.
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08/18, 1:00pm
IBM makes two experimental, brain-like chips
IBM on Thursday announced said it's working on two experimental chips that are structured like the human brain. It further believes these are key to developing what it calls cognitive computing. The effort will result in a machine that is close to processing information the way a human brain does, allowing it to learn and take action while being more space- and energy-efficient than modern computers.
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08/13, 12:50pm
Google asks USPTO to invalidate Lodsys patents
Google has at last taken steps to try and protect Android developers from the wide-ranging Lodsys lawsuit, the company's general counsel Kent Walker stated Saturday. The company has asked the USPTO to reexamine the validity of two patents for in-app purchases that "should never have been issued," according to Walker. The approach described to Wired would either narrow the scope of the complaints or invalidate the patents entirely, likely forcing Lodsys to either limit the reach of lawsuits or toss them out entirely.
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08/10, 6:15pm
Microsoft downplays tablets in 30-year PC history
Microsoft's Corporate Communications VP Frank Shaw in a commentary on the 30th anniversary of the original IBM PC dismissed the talk of a post-PC era. He preferred to characterize it as a "PC-plus era," since there would be an estimated 400 million PCs sold around the world in 2011. Microsoft's response would be to largely stay the course, though he hinted at tighter hardware and software integration going on.
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07/29, 9:40am
Google buys 1,030 IBM patents in first defense
Google showed its first signs of becoming serious about patent defense with a discovery that it had bought 1,030 patents from IBM. The company quietly took on the intellectual property on July 12 and 13. Many are focused on web search, but others are clearly phone related and include chip and memory design, routers, servers, and others.
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06/30, 3:35pm
IBM working on fast 2-bit phase change memory
IBM, which turned 100 recently, on Thursday said it has developed solid-state chips that have the same capacity as current NAND flash storage but 100 times more performance and much longer durability. The so-called phase-change memory (PCM) chips have the ability to store two bits of data per cell without corrupting it, which is not something that could have been said of early versions of the technology. The nonvolatile memory retains data after its power supply is shut down, just like NAND flash memory.
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06/16, 10:40am
Computer pioneer IBM turns 100 years old
International Business Machines, better known by its IBM acronym, has turned 100 years old on Thursday. Back on June 16, 1911, the company was called Computing Tabulating Recording Co. and was a result of the merger of three companies that built scales, punch clocks for work and other machines. The original Endicott, New York-based plant made cheese slicers and machines that read data stored on punch cards. The current name came to be in 1924.
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