Success Story: IBM (Part 1)

In this day and age, it's hard to find someone who hasn't heard of the globally renowned company known as IBM, one of the largest and most popular producers in the field of computer technologies. Today, we'll delve into the success story of this global giant and the pioneers behind IBM who transformed it from a small promising enterprise into a massive thriving corporation.

It may be hard to believe, but IBM's history dates back over 100 years! Interestingly, the company didn't begin its journey with the development of computers, a concept that was unheard of in the late 19th century. Instead, IBM started with the invention and manufacturing of tabulators used for more efficient and rapid processing of population census data. The main developer of these marvel machines was Herman Hollerith, a German-American citizen who worked for years at the bureau responsible for population tallying in the country.

The primary challenge was that the government conducted the population census every ten years, with the population continually growing due to immigrants from around the world. This meant that tallying and processing the data took at least seven years (!) and required a significant number of people in the field. It was evident that manual data analysis was highly inefficient and too costly.

Therefore, it's no surprise that Hollerith's invention of the tabulator caused a sensation and revolutionized data processing. With this innovation, the time taken for population tallying was reduced by almost threefold, as data processing now only required two and a half years. The 1890 population census was already conducted using this cutting-edge technology.

Thanks to the incredibly high demand for tabulators, Herman Hollerith was able to establish his own company, the Tabulating Machine Company, in 1896. This company supplied large quantities of data processing machines overseas, including to Europe and beyond.

During Hollerith's tenure, the company made a significant contribution to technology development. The Tabulating Machine Company became part of a conglomerate that manufactured many useful and innovative products aimed at simplifying our lives and freeing up time for workers in various fields and homemakers. Hollerith patented a large number of technical innovations and made an invaluable contribution to the corporation's development. Nevertheless, he was more of an inventor than an entrepreneur, so in the 1920s, he sold his share in the company for slightly over a million dollars, a fortune in those days, and dedicated all his free time to new developments.

In the next part of our article, you'll discover who exactly led the huge corporation to success and how it manages to stay competitive against new promising enterprises that are increasingly capturing the computer technology market.