THE ROLE OF IBM IN COMPUTERS

by R. J. Reiman, Historian

The Business Machine industry was divided between Remington Rand, NCR, Burroughs, Underwood Elliot Fisher and IBM in 1928. Production devices included tabulators, sorters, punchers, punch cards, typewriters and adding machines, all mostly mechanical devices. Growth of IBM began when they acquired Pierce Accounting Machines in 1922, and eleven years later Electromatic Typewriter, which got them into electric typewriters, and electric punch cards, but business didn't flourish until the 1940's and early 1950's.

Financial success came through revenues from equipment leases and card sales, mostly to large corporations and government agencies which were stable during the depression. Punch cards were their "ace". The NRA and Social Security Administration both leased IBM equipment. By 1939, IBM became the leading business machine manufacturer, with Remington Rand leading slightly in gross sales but lagging in net profits. World War 2 pushed IBM into the lead with reputation, money, customer base, and managerial skills, and enabled them to enter the computer business. Thomas Watson, Sr., was reluctant to change, but his son, Thomas Watson, Jr., insisted on IBM entering the field.

In 1939, Thomas Watson Sr., agreed to finance the construction of Howard Aiken's Automatic Sequence-Controlled Calculator, "Mark 1", which was composed of electromechanical program-controlled calculator using gears and axles, incapable of storing instructions or of performing conditional jumps. Mark 1 was outmoded by ENIAC but was a valuable experience for IBM in the design and construction of calculators. Aiken spit with Watson over a row of credit for Mark 1.

Next, IBM began to work on a computer designed by Wallace Eckert, head of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University. The computer was called the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator {SSEC}, and was a technological hybrid with 12,500 tubes, and 21,400 mechanical relays. The carried out the arithmetic and stored a small amount of data and instructions while the relays served as lower but larger internal memory. When the SSEC performed an operation like the addition of two numbers, the necessary instructions and data was transferred from punch tape to relays, to tubes, where the instructions were executed. Although cumbersome, the size of SSEC possessed more computational power than ENIAC. This computer was not fully automatic, and used a small but significant external wiring. On January 27, 1948, it did calculate the Moon's position, six months before Mark 1 of Manchester University in England, the first fully electronic calculator, ran its first stored program. The SSEC was installed in IBM's building on Madison Avenue in Manhattan where it was visible from the street, and attracted attention from its blinking lights, spinning wheels, and punched tape. IBM's entering the field of electronic calculators were the next step, and were a natural progression from electromechanical equipment , punch cards, and relays, essentially the same technology the Hollerith had employed in his first tabulators and sorters.