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IBM formed in 1911 as CTR (Computing-Tabulating-Recording), from the merger of four other companies that got their starts as early as the 1880s.
The 1880 census took 7 years to count and rapid growth predicted the 1890 census would take 13 years to count, so something better was needed. Herman Hollerith, invented a tabulating machine using punch cards, relays, solenoids, and mechanical counters. And founded a company that would a few years later be part of the merger that forms IBM.
Over the years these tabulating machines, evolved into accounting machines, which evolved into computers.
Even IBM's "Think" motto is old. Thomas Watson became president of IBM in 1914 and his favorite slogan was "Think".
IBM dominated the personal computer market in the 1980s. Though it might be said IBM made a mistake by leasing instead of buying the DOS software from Microsoft. This allowed Microsoft to sell the software to PC clone makers, which would eventually erode IBM's dominance in the PC business. IBM eventually will sell it's PC business to Chinese company Lenovo.
But these days IBM is still going strong doing all sorts of research and consulting projects and many other things technology related.
IBM's computer computer cluster Watson won on Jeopardy, beating the filthy meat bags. Watson contains 90 IBM 750 with four 8 core processors, for a total of 2,880 CPU cores in the cluster. And 16 terabytes of memory.
The Xbox360 uses an IBM PowerPC processors, the Wii has an IBM Broadway processor, and Sony got help from IBM to create the PS3 Cell processor. The upcoming Wii U will also feature a new IBM processor based on Watson technology.
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