- There comes a time when every enterprise must ask itself: What difference have we made?
What impact have we had on the world? What have we changed?
In 2011, IBM reflects on 100 years of innovation, bold risks and transformative breakthroughs. W
- IBM at 100:IBM百百歲
2011
IBM at 100: Mid-Hudson Valley a witness to Big Blue's innovation
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If one looks for a single entity that has had a defining role in the growth of the mid-Hudson Valley, that entity is the International Business Machines Corp. — IBM.
Those three little letters are writ large across our map. IBM brought in billions of dollars of business, greatly expanded the jobs base, spurred a population surge and created a massive housing boom that reshaped the local landscape.
This is IBM's 100th year in business since the 1911 merger of three companies into one called Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co., later renamed IBM.
This is also the 70th anniversary of its entry in 1941 into Dutchess County.
Since then, "IBMers in the mid-Hudson Valley have made significant contributions to the evolution of technology," said Rod Adkins, senior vice president of IBM's Systems and Technology Group.
But the coming of IBM into Poughkeepsie was through a subsidiary called the Munitions Manufacturing Co. World War II was brewing, and Uncle Sam needed weapons. IBM's head, Thomas J. Watson Sr., obliged.
Looking for space, Watson learned from an IBM machining subcontractor in Arlington, Frederick Hart, about the 215 acres and "pickle factory" available from the food-packing R.U. Delapenha Co. on South Road.
It was bought, and soon the newcomers began building. The first 20mm aircraft cannon came off the line in February 1942, with about 250 employees at the new factory in town. Browning automatic rifles followed, along with airplane parts, grenade launchers and 346,500 .30-caliber carbines.
By the end of 1943, the workforce had exploded to 1,940 in a little more than two years, giving the local manufacturing culture a startling taste of what this little upstart no one had heard of could do.
The war would soon be over, but IBM was not. The return to business came with typewriters when Watson, in 1944, moved production of the Electromatic typewriter from upstate Rochester to Poughkeepsie.
Workforce swells
Employment dipped briefly after the war, but soon resumed a ramp-up as work making card key-punch machines, sorters and other machines was shifted from Endicott to Poughkeepsie. By 1948, 2,907 people were working at IBM. In 1955, the typewriter work was moved to Kingston and eventually to Lexington, Ky.
This is where IBM begins its tradition of constant innovation in computing, never resting and constantly layering innovations. As one machine is rolled out for sale, engineers and scientists are quietly developing the next model. Others are blue-skying the one after that.
Journal photo - Jack Dorler, an engineer at the IBM East Fishkill facility who has 85 inventions to his credit, checks the design and layout of circuit devices and wiring. Photo taken February 1984. Show Caption View Thumbs
Zoom A gathering of about 15,000 people attended IBM Corp.'s Poughkeepsie Plant 2 dedication on June 15, 1952. At the time, the IBM logo was located on top of the facility. / Journal archive photo CEOs of IBM 2002-present
Samuel J. Palmisano
1993-2002
Louis V. Gerstner Jr.
1985-1993
John F. Akers
1981-1985
John R. Opel
1973-1981
Frank T. Cary
1971-1973
T. Vincent Learson
1956-1971
Thomas J. Watson Jr.
1914-1956
Thomas J. Watson Sr.
Prior to Thomas Watson Sr., the company, originally named Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co., was a merger of three firms engineered by Charles Ranlett Flint. George Fairchild was the first chairman. Watson came in as general manager in 1914 and was elected president in 1915. Then & Now Revenues
1911: No records
1961: $2.2 billion
2010: $99.9 billion
Profits
1911: $0.8 million
1961: $234 million
2010: $14.8 billion
Global employees
1911: 1,300
1961: 116,276
2010: 426,751
Mid-Hudson employees
1911: none
1961: 11,000+
2010: 8,000 Related Links IBM launches computer revolution in 1964First Person: Mid-Hudson workers are base for many IBM breakthroughs Historic IBM Photographs If one looks for a single entity that has had a defining role in the growth of the mid-Hudson Valley, that entity is the International Business Machines Corp. — IBM.Those three little letters are writ large across our map. IBM brought in billions of dollars of business, greatly expanded the jobs base, spurred a population surge and created a massive housing boom that reshaped the local landscape.This is IBM's 100th year in business since the 1911 merger of three companies into one called Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co., later renamed IBM.This is also the 70th anniversary of its entry in 1941 into Dutchess County.Since then, "IBMers in the mid-Hudson Valley have made significant contributions to the evolution of technology," said Rod Adkins, senior vice president of IBM's Systems and Technology Group.But the coming of IBM into Poughkeepsie was through a subsidiary called the Munitions Manufacturing Co. World War II was brewing, and Uncle Sam needed weapons. IBM's head, Thomas J. Watson Sr., obliged.Looking for space, Watson learned from an IBM machining subcontractor in Arlington, Frederick Hart, about the 215 acres and "pickle factory" available from the food-packing R.U. Delapenha Co. on South Road.It was bought, and soon the newcomers began building. The first 20mm aircraft cannon came off the line in February 1942, with about 250 employees at the new factory in town. Browning automatic rifles followed, along with airplane parts, grenade launchers and 346,500 .30-caliber carbines.By the end of 1943, the workforce had exploded to 1,940 in a little more than two years, giving the local manufacturing culture a startling taste of what this little upstart no one had heard of could do.The war would soon be over, but IBM was not. The return to business came with typewriters when Watson, in 1944, moved production of the Electromatic typewriter from upstate Rochester to Poughkeepsie.Workforce swellsEmployment dipped briefly after the war, but soon resumed a ramp-up as work making card key-punch machines, sorters and other machines was shifted from Endicott to Poughkeepsie. By 1948, 2,907 people were working at IBM. In 1955, the typewriter work was moved to Kingston and eventually to Lexington, Ky.
Slowly, the Poughkeepsie IBM site became home to the emerging industry of computing, starting in 1948 when an expanding plant sprouted the Poughkeepsie lab and produced the IBM 604 electronic calculator.
In 1950, Ralph L. Palmer was named manager of the lab and began developing IBM's first modern electronic computing systems. In 1951, development started on the IBM 701 electronic data processing system, first called the Defense Calculator, and the first one shipped in 1952.
In 1954, IBM started building a plant in Lake Katrine. Called the Kingston Facility, its first task was to develop a digital computer for a U.S. air defense system that would be called SAGE, for "semi-automatic ground environment." It was a major piece of Cold War defense technology.
Meanwhile, the Poughkeepsie engineers were working on the 702, which would be the first to use magnetic cores for memory instead of cathode ray tubes.
Computer development was good for Poughkeepsie's economy. IBM bought land on Boardman Road to expand, and by 1954, had 8,309 employees at five sites around town.
Working for IBM in those days was about as good as it got, recalled Lou DeFelice, who started in 1955 and left in 1993 when the big downsizing hit.
"Working for IBM was fantastic," said DeFelice. "It was the greatest company. I can't talk too much about that.
"It was kind of an elite company. You just mentioned IBM," he said, "and people would say, 'Oh, boy, that's great! You're so lucky,' and that's really how you felt."
Professionally, it was also exciting, DeFelice said, because many technological breakthroughs were made.
Others had invented the transistor, but IBMers were quick to grasp its potential for computers, and in 1956, Poughkeepsie shipped the first commercially available transistorized computer, the 608. Vacuum tubes, a costly, fragile and hot technology, were now doomed in this fast-moving industry.
What may fairly be called the first supercomputer, the Stretch, or IBM 7030, was built here and shipped to the government's Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories.
It contained far-thinking advances that built a base for IBM's future mainframes, even though few Stretch units were made before the line was discontinued. IBM lost one battle to Univac, then the dominant computer maker. But it eventually won the computing war.
Another plant opens
Various models followed, incorporating new technologies. Key to this progress is the new IBM Components Division, formed 50 years ago in 1961 to develop and make solid-state parts for computers. This led to the new plant in Wiccopee, an East Fishkill hamlet, where IBM bought farmland in 1962 and started building again. Manufacturing began in April 1963.
Then came the birth of the modern mainframe computer, the most transformative product, called the System/360, which debuted on April 7, 1964.
"The popularity of the System/360 made it difficult for others to compete in the general-purpose computer market," wrote Kevin Maney in the IBM-produced book, "Making the World Work Better."
"Thomas Watson had bet the company, and he won in ways he never imagined," he said. Watson had invested $5 billion in the 1960s, an astonishing sum that is about $34 billion in today's dollars, Maney noted.
Mainframes never died, as some skeptics predicted. Instead, they evolved on schedule and today are called System z, and Poughkeepsie remains the center of their development and one of two manufacturing sites for these "big iron" machines.
East Fishkill kept evolving, too, and produces chip modules for mainframes and Power7 microprocessors that are the brains of many other IBM systems. It also makes sophisticated processors for customers like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft's Xbox, among others.
In the growth phase of IBM, the mid-Hudson went through a boom in population and housing, culminating in a peak employment in the mid-1980s of more than 31,000 employees.
It changed the face of the valley, too, in that IBM, with a corporate commitment to equal opportunity, brought in people of all races and nationalities to a region that wasn't expecting it.
Reginald and Margaret White, both African-Americans, arrived in Dutchess in January 1969 from Philadelphia, where he was a chemist and she was a teacher.
"We heard IBM had a job fair, and we decided to go," Margaret White said. Reginald White got an interview and was "hired immediately, and off to Poughkeepsie it was.'' Reginald White began work at the new microelectronics plant in East Fishkill.
Finding a home was an issue, she said.
"When IBM started bringing all the people in, people were not finding homes," she said. But IBM's standing carried influence. They soon moved into a southern Dutchess apartment complex where they were the first of their race to live there.
"We found that if you were an IBM transfer, a lot of doors opened for you," she said.
Landscape changes
As mid-Hudson employment peaked in the mid-1980s, other employers began to find it harder to get workers, so strong was the competition from IBM.
The housing landscape was transformed, with one subdivision after another blooming on farmland and empty space between Poughkeepsie and East Fishkill, a zone shaped roughly like a football with a tip at each plant. Ulster County got a boom, too, with the Kingston plant's growth.
But in the late 1980s, IBM's jobs began to slide and, in the early 1990s, crash.
The worst year was 1993, when thousands were let go as then-CEO John Akers wrapped up his career with IBM's fabled financial strength reduced to red ink.
The company has recovered, but downsizing continues to be a regular trimming of expenses that has left IBMers realizing this is not the IBM of old, when a job at Big Blue meant employment for an entire career.
IBM, for many years, reported how many people worked for it and where, but in 2010, its top management decided to stop giving out those numbers routinely.
However, in a report to government, IBM said it had about 8,000 people in Dutchess in 2010. It would not disclose how many were in the United States as opposed to overseas.
Layoffs continue, with no IBM comment.
"IBM hides this from employees. IBM hides this from the stockholders. IBM hides this from our communities. IBM hides this from the state and federal government. This is wrong," said Lee Conrad, national organizer for the employee union group, Alliance@IBM.
The offshoring issue has become controversial. IBMers told of training people coming from other countries to do their work as U.S.-based jobs disappeared.
IBM management has said that's the way of the world today and that it intends to stay competitive.
And IBM's strategies in recent years have been competing well.
The company posted $99.9 billion in revenues in 2010. Notice that it's just below $100 billion, which, from results so far, looks like an easy target to hit in its 100th year.
"How many centennials do we know in the corporate world? Not many," said analyst Robert Djurdjevic at Annex Research in Maui, Hawaii. He keeps a chart of IBM's revenues and offers this observation:
"What you're looking at is a company that has managed to grow at nearly double the rate of U.S. gross domestic product for a century. I don't know of any other company that's done that."
Welcome to IBM at 100.
- Explore our latest stories, programs and events: Look for updates throughout 2011.
2011年5月2日 星期一
IBM百百歲
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