1890-1938: The early years
IBM was incorporated in the state of New York on June 15, 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. But its origins can be traced back to 1890, during the height of the Industrial Revolution, when the United States was experiencing waves of immigration. The U.S. Census Bureau knew its traditional methods of counting would not be adequate for measuring the population, so it sponsored a contest to find a more efficient means of tabulating census data.
The winner was Herman Hollerith, a German immigrant and Census Bureau statistician, whose Punch Card Tabulating Machine used an electric current to sense holes in punch cards and keep a running total of data. Capitalizing on his success, Hollerith formed the Tabulating Machine Co. in 1896.
In 1911, Charles R. Flint, a noted trust organizer, engineered the merger of Hollerith's company with two others, Computing Scale Co. of America and International Time Recording Co. The combined......
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