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Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as always a senior writer, Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland dayzy days. Very nice, Thank you, very nice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I that has practically no connection whatsoever to what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about, but people think it does. Okay,
Speaker 1: because how h a L that's one letter off from IBM. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is part two of our episode about the
Speaker 1: history of IBM and it's impact on technology, which I
Speaker 1: think it's safe to say it cannot be understated. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm kidding, it can't be overstated. That's where you're
Speaker 1: supposed to jump on me for using the wrong word. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: it's funny. We we didn't talk about at all, and
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna throw this in as a footnote before
Speaker 1: we get started. We didn't talk about it in the
Speaker 1: first episode. One of the uh reasons that we've got
Speaker 1: three episodes on IBM is because the company has been
Speaker 1: around for a very long time, has done a lot
Speaker 1: of technological innovation, has a very rich company culture, which
Speaker 1: includes music. In fact, is one of the few companies
Speaker 1: that has its own anthem. Um you know. In fact,
Speaker 1: Thomas J. Watson Sr. Who who became we're starting this
Speaker 1: episode in ninety two. He became IBM president in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty two officially, although he led the company before that.
Speaker 1: Um he established the first company band in nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: so all along the entire company hit one on the
Speaker 1: entire company history, but a lot of the company history
Speaker 1: for almost a hundred years now, they've had a company band,
Speaker 1: they have a company anthem, play all their music on
Speaker 1: tabulating machines. It's very rhythmic, but not melodic. The IBM
Speaker 1: Songbook was printed the year after we're starting this, in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three. You can actually you can listen to
Speaker 1: this on the at the archives at IBM dot com.
Speaker 1: So if you want to hear the IBM anthem, the
Speaker 1: IBM fight song, the IBM fight song, there is one. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a rally song. It's called ever Onward and the
Speaker 1: I just want it down with you, Apple down with
Speaker 1: you Not then there wasn't because Apple wasn't established until so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it would actually be more like down with you burrows.
Speaker 1: We should do burrows. That would be kind of fun,
Speaker 1: I guess sometimes after we give a definition of the
Speaker 1: word fun. Yes, well, just because they were a computer innovator, Yes,
Speaker 1: this is true. But we decided to start again with
Speaker 1: IBM in nineteen fifty two. Again, Watson, I'm sorry, Watson Jr.
Speaker 1: Became the company president in NIFO. His dad was leading
Speaker 1: the company before that. I was right, I miss spoke earlier,
Speaker 1: and Watson Sr. Was was a chairman of the board.
Speaker 1: That's fine. Not about Sinatra. Oh well, no, he was
Speaker 1: over there with Dino and uh hey, what where am
Speaker 1: I going with this? Ain't that a kick in the head.
Speaker 1: I was listening to that this morning. So you wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about the seven and one, did I? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: production computer. Yes. So nineteen fifty two, IBM introduces the
Speaker 1: seven oh one, starting a long line of catchy IBM
Speaker 1: product names. Well, let's let's face it, Okay, we're talking
Speaker 1: about a kind of industry where that it just isn't
Speaker 1: sexy in terms of consumers. People weren't buying computers for
Speaker 1: their homes. The customers here were businesses. So why do
Speaker 1: you need a fancy name. Yeah, you just need something
Speaker 1: that's easy to look up. You don't need something that's
Speaker 1: you know, you don't need the Jaguar. Well, hey, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're going to get right down to it.
Speaker 1: It still works for Peugeot, which sells cars with three
Speaker 1: digit names with zero in the middle, so and then
Speaker 1: would be right up there. So the seven oh one
Speaker 1: comes outwo It is the first IBM large scale electronic
Speaker 1: computer manufactured in mass quantities. It was the first commercially
Speaker 1: available scientific computer and it uh had a program stored
Speaker 1: in an internal addressable electronic memory, which was brand new
Speaker 1: for the time. That's something that we all take for
Speaker 1: granted now because we've had it for decades. But this
Speaker 1: was a brand new idea and it only took two
Speaker 1: years from the time when IBM first sketched out the
Speaker 1: idea for the seven oh one to win it rolled
Speaker 1: off the production lines. So two year development cycle for
Speaker 1: a brand new, groundbreaking computer is phenomenal. That shows that
Speaker 1: IBM was really putting some of their smartest, hardest working
Speaker 1: engineers on this project, and it seems like they had
Speaker 1: taken the IBM motto that you spoke of in the
Speaker 1: last podcast about Thomas J. Watson Senior. I think very
Speaker 1: much too, hearty. Um. It was only a year later
Speaker 1: that they came up with a seven oh two, which
Speaker 1: was a commercial version of the computer, and the six
Speaker 1: fifty magnetic drum calculator, which apparently calculated drums. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: uh wait a minute, no it didn't. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: So anyway that the reason for these um these, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I should say for the rapid development
Speaker 1: of the seven oh one and the seven oh two
Speaker 1: was actually the outbreak of another conflict. It was the
Speaker 1: Korean War, which broke out in June, and Thomas J.
Speaker 1: Watson Sr. Asked the US government what IBM could do
Speaker 1: to help the war effort, and the government said, build
Speaker 1: us some really powerful scientific computers that we can use
Speaker 1: for our you know, for our strategic needs. And that
Speaker 1: was what got IBM to work. And the seven oh
Speaker 1: one and seven oh two are kind of wrecked results
Speaker 1: of that discussion. It's pretty kind of it's kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting story in the idea that Watson at this
Speaker 1: point is he's offering. He's like, look, I have this
Speaker 1: huge corporation we have all this this uh power of
Speaker 1: of mind. Here, We've got some of the finest engineers
Speaker 1: in all the world working for my company. What can
Speaker 1: I do to help? And that's kind of phenomenal. It's
Speaker 1: not just hey, you know what would make us a
Speaker 1: lot of money, Let's do this. It's I think that's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting Now. It shows a certain philosophy that
Speaker 1: Watson had that I thought was was pretty interesting. Also
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to note just on a corporate culture side. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nine three, that's when Thomas J. Watson Jr. Wrote
Speaker 1: the first equal opportunity policy for the company, which came
Speaker 1: a full year before Brown versus the Board of Education,
Speaker 1: so before the Supreme Court had even heard that case. Uh,
Speaker 1: Watson j you'r. Was saying that, you know, he was
Speaker 1: establishing that there should be an equal opportunity employment uh
Speaker 1: culture at IBM. So again we're starting to see that
Speaker 1: IBM is not just leading the way technology wise, they're
Speaker 1: leaning the way as far as corporate culture goes. Yes,
Speaker 1: they they are pioneers in multiple avenues. Its kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So you know, and you know what they did in
Speaker 1: nineteen four, you know what kind of what military computer
Speaker 1: they developed? Then no, what the Naval Ordinance Research Computer
Speaker 1: or Yeah, fastest electronic computer at that time. So again
Speaker 1: IBM working with the United States government on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they says they succeeded the seven oh one with
Speaker 1: the seven oh four and the seven oh two with
Speaker 1: the seven oh five. UM and introduced new like uh
Speaker 1: new typewriters as well, um, including the executive typewriter, except
Speaker 1: they didn't think executives typed back in those days. I
Speaker 1: think they had somebody to do that for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the executive assistant typewriters really much should have been called.
Speaker 1: Nineteen fifty five, IBM develops magnetic core storage units, so
Speaker 1: that that research they had been doing a couple of
Speaker 1: years previously, it was starting to pay off. Uh. Ninety
Speaker 1: six was a big year for IBM for a a
Speaker 1: sad reason because that was when Thomas J. Watson Sr. Died.
Speaker 1: He passed away in nineteen fifty six. So at the
Speaker 1: time that that Watson Sr. Passed away, if you remember
Speaker 1: from our previous podcast on IBM, we talked about when
Speaker 1: Watson took control, the gross income was four million dollars
Speaker 1: and the net earnings was one million. Let's compare that
Speaker 1: to when he passed away in nineteen fifty six. At
Speaker 1: that time, IBM's gross income was eight hundred ninety two
Speaker 1: million dollars, the earnings was eighty seven million dollars, and
Speaker 1: they employed seventy two thousand, five hundred four employees even
Speaker 1: adjusted for inflation. That's a significant increase. And you know
Speaker 1: that when when wants into control, there were what six
Speaker 1: employees now and four by the time he passes away. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, no, go ahead, I was gonna say. Also,
Speaker 1: as their innovation has gone on, they've increased, uh, not
Speaker 1: only the ability for machines to process information, increase the
Speaker 1: speed with which it's processing information, but they're also moving gradually, uh,
Speaker 1: from electro mechanical devices to electronic devices. Yes, by the
Speaker 1: time you're hitting the seven oh one seven or two
Speaker 1: and seven oh four and seven oh five machines, you're
Speaker 1: really moving away from the punch card era. It's there.
Speaker 1: They're starting to be able to phase out punch cards
Speaker 1: to some extent. Now, punch cards would remain an important
Speaker 1: part of IBM for years to come, just because you know,
Speaker 1: just as IBM is developing this new technology, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that all the companies that are IBMS customers can
Speaker 1: adopt that that technology immediately. So IBM continued to support
Speaker 1: that older technology for years, although it was also driving
Speaker 1: the innovation that made it possible to move away from
Speaker 1: the old punch card system. Yeah, before before anyone writes
Speaker 1: in to say this, unless, of course, you've paused a podcast,
Speaker 1: in which case you're violating rule number seven of the podcast. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were aware that that people were still programming with
Speaker 1: punched cards into the seventies and possibilities. I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised that there's not somebody doing it now because they're
Speaker 1: on some legacy system requires you to use this, you know,
Speaker 1: some some antiquated programming language. So don't you know they're
Speaker 1: moving away from it, but they haven't completely. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I said, they support it, but they don't. It's that's
Speaker 1: not where the innovation is. And also, by the way,
Speaker 1: rule number six of the podcast is there is no
Speaker 1: rule number six of the podcast in case you guys
Speaker 1: are keeping track. Uh So that's when they developed the
Speaker 1: seven O nine computer. That's also do you know what
Speaker 1: language came out in nine? In in that year programming
Speaker 1: language to developed by IBM trans Yes four tran This
Speaker 1: is again a big, big step. IBM makes four Trend
Speaker 1: programming language available to consumers. Uh. Before that, you know,
Speaker 1: you you didn't really have access to a way of
Speaker 1: programming your computer. It pretty much ran on whatever protocols
Speaker 1: you happen to have. Four Trend. Now you can develop
Speaker 1: your own. Uh. Not easy for treand was not necessarily
Speaker 1: something you could just quickly pick up in an afternoon,
Speaker 1: but it still was a big leap as far as
Speaker 1: computers are are concerned. Yeah, it's it's not Python. Let's
Speaker 1: just say that. No. Uh, do you have anything between
Speaker 1: fifty seven and sixty one? Because my next thing that
Speaker 1: I want to really talk about is comes in sixty one. Yes,
Speaker 1: well I have a I have another giggle moment. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you listen to the last podcast. I was giggling
Speaker 1: because originally, when when IBM was founded, it was as
Speaker 1: a merger between three companies making equipment for businesses UM,
Speaker 1: one of which was a scale company, one of which
Speaker 1: was tabulating machine Company, which is essentially a computer part,
Speaker 1: and then the other was a a time recording company. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, you know clock's very important computers, but they
Speaker 1: decided at an earlier point to get rid of the
Speaker 1: Scale company because it just wasn't doing what they thought
Speaker 1: it would. So Mr Watson Senior decided to get rid
Speaker 1: of it and it immediately took off. Was now part
Speaker 1: of a very large company that still sales things, so
Speaker 1: did not fail. Neither did the Time Equipment division when
Speaker 1: they decided to sell it to Simplex Time Recorder Company,
Speaker 1: which is now Simplex Grenell. So they're there. They are
Speaker 1: dividing themselves up. We didn't mention that just as a note.
Speaker 1: As the company is moving on, especially now in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, the company is splitting off divisions. Um. They
Speaker 1: now have a military division even to help develop products
Speaker 1: for the military, UM, as well as you know, different
Speaker 1: kinds of businesses. Uh So, apparently they decided to divest
Speaker 1: themselves at this one which continue to succeed without them.
Speaker 1: But you know what, I think I think that's still
Speaker 1: I think it shows I think it still shows wisdom though,
Speaker 1: right because because there there is the possibility that you're
Speaker 1: let's say you're in you're running an enormous corporation and
Speaker 1: you have a lot of balls to juggle, right, You're
Speaker 1: you're trying to you get a lot of irons in
Speaker 1: the fire, if you prefer that metaphor. So, you got
Speaker 1: all these irons in the fire, and you know you
Speaker 1: may not be able to to push all of them
Speaker 1: the way they need to be in order to succeed.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with that. And selling something off that
Speaker 1: you cannot make succeed and then seeing it succeed, all
Speaker 1: that means is that that the potential was there, you
Speaker 1: just didn't have the resources necessary to make it happen.
Speaker 1: That's true. It could have it could have done poor
Speaker 1: since it's not a core business for IBM at this point. Uh,
Speaker 1: it may actually have been a drag on IBM, and
Speaker 1: IBM may not have been able to put the resources
Speaker 1: behind it that it would take to make it successful.
Speaker 1: So it's just sort of the it turns out that
Speaker 1: that wasn't Yeah, it wasn't. There wasn't anything. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't anything inherently bad about the division itself. Health Well,
Speaker 1: I personally consider that a success for everybody involved, because
Speaker 1: the alternative was that IBM could have held onto it
Speaker 1: and then could have suffered for it, both the division
Speaker 1: and IBM itself. UM IBM put all its workers on
Speaker 1: salary and introduced to stock purchase plan in which was
Speaker 1: again showing a lot of foresight treating its employees well.
Speaker 1: Corporate cultured pioneers. Uh. The seven thousand series computers were
Speaker 1: introduced in nineteen sixty UM, so the vacuum tube machines,
Speaker 1: the seven series now absolutely so, Yeah, vacuum tubes that
Speaker 1: if you guys aren't familiar, I mean that was the
Speaker 1: precursor to the transistor. So you've got vacuum tubes which
Speaker 1: were very efficient, uh comparatively speaking, but they had other
Speaker 1: problems like, for one, they generated a lot of heat,
Speaker 1: and they took up a lot of space. So we're
Speaker 1: talking when we're talking about computers with IBM, we're talking
Speaker 1: mainframe computers. The early mainframe computers were so large they
Speaker 1: could take up an entire room, uh in a building,
Speaker 1: and in fact, some of the supercomputers of the day
Speaker 1: would take up an entire floor of a building. And
Speaker 1: because we're talking about vacuum tubes, that's part of the
Speaker 1: reason why they were so big. It wasn't that they
Speaker 1: were super super powerful, although they were for the time.
Speaker 1: It was because the the individual components that made up
Speaker 1: the supercomputer were much larger than the ones we have
Speaker 1: in our devices today. Sure, sure, so it would get
Speaker 1: pretty warm and steamy in the supercomputer room with all
Speaker 1: those vacuum tubes going. And it wasn't until IBM really
Speaker 1: started to dedicate itself to solid state electronics when we're
Speaker 1: talking about solid state transistors, that we started to see
Speaker 1: a shift away from vacuum tubes and towards alternative means
Speaker 1: of processing. Now, just quickly in the nineteen sixty you
Speaker 1: could tell that that even back in Herman Hollow a
Speaker 1: state Hollow was the person who created the the tabulating Yes.
Speaker 1: Portion of the original companies that formed IBM, they're still
Speaker 1: doing the same kind of work. UM. The Rio five
Speaker 1: Ramack machine was used to score the Winter Olympic Games
Speaker 1: that year in California, was used at political conventions to
Speaker 1: nine point four and processing for presidential election returns UM
Speaker 1: and UH. IBM was used to launch and track Project Echo,
Speaker 1: which was a space communications experiment. It's Project Echo Echo
Speaker 1: and they were using the Mark two language translator to
Speaker 1: translate Russian into English. Yeah that that here's something else
Speaker 1: that I did not know until I started researching this podcast.
Speaker 1: IBM has pioneered some technologies that we're just starting to
Speaker 1: see benefit us today. But they started decades ago. You
Speaker 1: sit there and you think like, there's no way in
Speaker 1: the early sixties that that could have possibly been there,
Speaker 1: And yeah, you find out, Wait a minute, they were
Speaker 1: working on this. We're just now starting to see things
Speaker 1: like like Google's translate uh software or their applications where
Speaker 1: you can translate languages on the fly. That stuff was
Speaker 1: you know it really it has its history way back
Speaker 1: in these days of development and IBM, this is the
Speaker 1: one that I wanted to talk about. And Chris, I
Speaker 1: know you want to talk about two because he just
Speaker 1: showed me a picture of it. I think he's actually salivating,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. It's the selectric typewriter. Yes, yes, So
Speaker 1: what was different about this electric than say, older typewriters. Well,
Speaker 1: I can I can be honest with you here. I
Speaker 1: I know this stuff, uh straight away. My mom had
Speaker 1: a selectric typewriter. I just did my dad, which was
Speaker 1: still in the family. I believe I actually have an
Speaker 1: underwood typewriter. And those typewriters these are the old old type,
Speaker 1: which way about seven tons. Yeah they're heavy, um, but
Speaker 1: they also you know, they're very robust. But they used
Speaker 1: to have keys. And each of the keys and I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about the keyboard keys. Each of the keyboard
Speaker 1: keys was linked to a a key with one letter
Speaker 1: on it. So and they were all arranged in an
Speaker 1: arc facing the paper. So as you pressed one key,
Speaker 1: that little arm would reach up and type that letter
Speaker 1: on the paper. So each each key had its each
Speaker 1: letter had its own dedicated arm. And this is all mechanical, right,
Speaker 1: This is all connected through a series of levers and
Speaker 1: little uh pistons that you press. You pressed the D
Speaker 1: button and the D bar goes forward and stamps the
Speaker 1: paper with the D letter on the end. There's actually
Speaker 1: a ribbon there that has the ink, the the key
Speaker 1: the head of it. The arm hits the ink and
Speaker 1: that prints the letter onto the paper. And when you
Speaker 1: got to the end of that. It's a mechanical typer,
Speaker 1: no electricity and needed to make this work. When you
Speaker 1: get to the end of the line, you need to
Speaker 1: make a carriage return to the next line. Jerry Lewis,
Speaker 1: you press the thing, you have to press the lever
Speaker 1: back and it advances you to the next line. Well,
Speaker 1: this electric was an electric typewriter, and electric typewriters have
Speaker 1: been out for a few decades. This was a new
Speaker 1: design yes, which instead of using those little arms, used
Speaker 1: a ball with all the out dented letters on it. Also,
Speaker 1: you yes. The other cool thing about that well, so
Speaker 1: when you type a key, the typewriter knows which where
Speaker 1: on the ball that letter is and will rotate the
Speaker 1: ball and angle it so that it will type that
Speaker 1: letter in the precise alignment with the rest of the
Speaker 1: letters on the page. That's one thing that makes it cool.
Speaker 1: Another thing that makes it cool is you could change
Speaker 1: the ball, so no longer are you limited to typewriter funt.
Speaker 1: You can change the size and the type face because
Speaker 1: it's a fun when it's not on the paper and
Speaker 1: what it is, it's a type face. I yes, so
Speaker 1: you can remove these and change it out if you
Speaker 1: wanted to. Now this benefited people like my mom, who
Speaker 1: this will astonish. You could type a hundred thirty five
Speaker 1: words a minute. When she used the older style typewriters,
Speaker 1: the keys would jam and rub against one another so
Speaker 1: often that she would have to have her typewriter replaced. Also,
Speaker 1: because it would just completely destroy the type. Since it
Speaker 1: required physical force, you had to actually type a little harder,
Speaker 1: especially on older typewriters. I know this from experience too,
Speaker 1: because I've used one of those. Um that if you
Speaker 1: were typing on an old typewriter, you couldn't go as
Speaker 1: fast because you had to use more force per stroke,
Speaker 1: especially if you know you're you're typing lightly, the the
Speaker 1: arm might not strike the paper hard enough to make
Speaker 1: a good impression, and then you've got this kind of
Speaker 1: faded look even though the paper, even though you've just
Speaker 1: typed it right, and it's almost looks like you're running
Speaker 1: out of ink, but really just means you're running out
Speaker 1: of steam. Um. So, yeah, this electric was pretty cool
Speaker 1: that it looks like if you've ever seen one, and
Speaker 1: you would, you would recognize it immediately. It looks like
Speaker 1: a little golf ball. Is the is the typing interface there?
Speaker 1: And um yeah, you're hundred huh types. My top speed
Speaker 1: was a hundred five. My my mom when she got
Speaker 1: going sounded on the select it sounded like a machine
Speaker 1: gun because it was moving so fast. That explains why
Speaker 1: you you duck around corners a lot. And you know,
Speaker 1: do those weird hand signals whenever you want to go
Speaker 1: down the hallway. Yeah, best I can get is around
Speaker 1: sixties so I'm still it still blows me away. But uh,
Speaker 1: this was also the period in time when IBM they
Speaker 1: were still working on Space program. Yes, they created a
Speaker 1: guidance computer for the Saturn series. Yes, and also the
Speaker 1: gem and I or if you prefer Geminy, I cannot
Speaker 1: stand that pronunciation, which which I forgot, which the astronauts.
Speaker 1: We did this so long ago. Yeah, we did the
Speaker 1: We did the gimin E podcast. It was one of
Speaker 1: the Gemini astronauts. It said it that way and it's no.
Speaker 1: That just makes me think of Eddie Carroll, who was
Speaker 1: the voice for Jiminy Cricket Friend of the family anyway.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, yeah, they developed the guidance computers for
Speaker 1: the space program for for both the Saturn and Jiminy. Uh,
Speaker 1: figure might as well, right, just keep going with Saturn
Speaker 1: and jim and I programs. And so that's kind of cool,
Speaker 1: you know, IBM was This was one of those things
Speaker 1: where IBM had to submit a proposal to the ever
Speaker 1: Ment and they were selected to develop these guidance computer systems.
Speaker 1: It's electric. In nineteen sixty four, IBM announced the next
Speaker 1: really really big development, one of the most important developments
Speaker 1: in the company's histories. You could argue it it's the
Speaker 1: most important at this point. Bread Slicer know the system
Speaker 1: Stroke three sixty, Uh, the controversial system Stroke three sixty?
Speaker 1: Was it controversial? It was controversial? Pray elaborate, Mr Pilette
Speaker 1: um well and doing research on IBM. I can tell
Speaker 1: you right now that there is a lot of information
Speaker 1: on IBM, So I don't know everything there is to
Speaker 1: know about the system Stroke three sixty. Uh. There is
Speaker 1: actually if you if you want to go and really
Speaker 1: want to know more about the system, I would suggest
Speaker 1: going to the Computer History Museum computer history dot org.
Speaker 1: They actually have a seminar on the system Stroke three sixty.
Speaker 1: But in a nutshell, it was a mainframe computer and
Speaker 1: it was a huge gamble because it was the system
Speaker 1: that they came up with was so dramatically different. It
Speaker 1: required a massive investment, and they were not a certain
Speaker 1: that it was gonna work, as in, they weren't certain
Speaker 1: that people would adopt this kind of system. So with
Speaker 1: the amount of money that they poured poured into the
Speaker 1: program in a nutshell, billions of dollars, as I recall,
Speaker 1: a whole lot of R and D money they poured
Speaker 1: into this um as a matter of fact, five well
Speaker 1: five billions according the article that I read in Wired
Speaker 1: magazine or online. Um, yeah, they decided to create the system.
Speaker 1: But what made it so different was, you know, we
Speaker 1: were just talking about how large these mainframe computers were.
Speaker 1: They could take up massive amounts of floor space in
Speaker 1: your your business. Well, this was a modular system. Modular
Speaker 1: it could have you you might have the CPU in
Speaker 1: one device, and a display terminal that goes with it,
Speaker 1: and a control unit and data cell storage and drum storage. Um.
Speaker 1: So if you needed more computing power, you just you
Speaker 1: purchase more modules. Right. The card punch unit that's a
Speaker 1: separate device, still had card punch And if you think
Speaker 1: about it, that's pretty much the way we're doing things
Speaker 1: now on a different scale. But I mean again, this
Speaker 1: is before there are a lot of people using computers
Speaker 1: in you know, personally on their desktop at work. But
Speaker 1: I mean now at this point, you have your server,
Speaker 1: and you have you know, when somebody comes into your company,
Speaker 1: they get their own computer and in some cases printer
Speaker 1: and you know, whatever else they happen to need. Sometimes
Speaker 1: a monitor if they want to see what's going on
Speaker 1: external hard drive. You have your server. If you need
Speaker 1: more server space, you add another disk drive to the server. So,
Speaker 1: I mean the model took it really Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a big gamble, but it ended up being the right one. Also,
Speaker 1: there was another big gamble that they introduced with the
Speaker 1: system Stroke three sixty, which was that they introduced the
Speaker 1: eight bit byte. Before that, there what they really pushed
Speaker 1: the eight bit byte. It was it wasn't the first
Speaker 1: time that that had ever been around, but that's what
Speaker 1: this system used. Now, there were other computers that used
Speaker 1: twelve bit and thirty six bit based computers, so they
Speaker 1: were around. But because IBM pushed this, because it got adopted,
Speaker 1: because the gamble paid off, the eight bit byte became standard,
Speaker 1: and just thinking without this system, we might have a
Speaker 1: lot more confusion in the marketplace. But uh so each
Speaker 1: computer you're do, you know, happen to know how much
Speaker 1: they cost when they started to uh to sell them. Well,
Speaker 1: according to Wired, in nineteen sixty six, IBM was selling
Speaker 1: a thousand of these in a month at about two
Speaker 1: and a half to three million dollars a piece piece.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a lot, Mullah, even in nineteen sixty Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this ended up being the basis for IBM suh,
Speaker 1: most of IBMS computer businesses moving forward. So yeah, like
Speaker 1: we said, big, big gamble, big payoff. Do you have
Speaker 1: anything pre ninety eight, that's the next thing I have
Speaker 1: pre nine, between sixty four and sixty eight. They I
Speaker 1: would like to point out that they are they are
Speaker 1: working with lasers this point. They're using lasers to carry information.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, they were also looking into
Speaker 1: storage media using lasers. So this is a precursor to
Speaker 1: compact discs, laser discs, DVDs, that kind of thing. They're
Speaker 1: still they're still working with the Gemini flights. They actually
Speaker 1: have onboard computers. As it is joked very often, a
Speaker 1: common or sixty four was more powerful than these machines.
Speaker 1: But at the time, when you think about it, they
Speaker 1: were going out into space and coming back safely with
Speaker 1: these devices, so they you know, they're pretty sophisticated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And really, when you get down to it, they were
Speaker 1: able to crunch the numbers, which is what the computers
Speaker 1: had to do, right, they weren't. They didn't have to
Speaker 1: play Hunt the Wumpus. As awesome as that game was.
Speaker 1: I keep bringing it up because it's the first video
Speaker 1: is the first computer game I can remember playing everts.
Speaker 1: The first one I remember having is Hunt the Wumpus,
Speaker 1: a terrible game. By the way, do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about? No, I'll tell you about it after
Speaker 1: the show. In seven they IBM had an exhibited Canada's
Speaker 1: Expo sixty seven. But um, they were also working on
Speaker 1: UM the first monolithic integrated germanium circuits. Is that what
Speaker 1: was in the beginning of two thousand one, the thing
Speaker 1: that fell to earth and all the apes were dancing
Speaker 1: around it? No, that is a monolith. But yes, you
Speaker 1: remember we we talked about germanium before on the podcast.
Speaker 1: When we started talking about semiconductors, I was thinking of flowers, okay, um,
Speaker 1: so yes. And they also had a trillion bit photo
Speaker 1: digital storage system for the Atomic Energy Commission. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's funny because the information on i M dot com.
Speaker 1: They have a very very very comprehensive timeline with all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. But it's funny because if you look
Speaker 1: at these documents, and I encourage you to do so,
Speaker 1: I mean and free download them at at your leisure,
Speaker 1: but they break it down into Jonathan and I are
Speaker 1: kind of concentrating on the stuff that everyone I mean,
Speaker 1: like the stuff that the public would sort of be
Speaker 1: aware of. So they were making contributions to business in general,
Speaker 1: their business practices, business culture. They were also doing science
Speaker 1: in the background. Look at me still talking when they're
Speaker 1: science to be done. Um so but yeah they uh so,
Speaker 1: they're working on all this stuff in particular. So I
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to note a few of them, like
Speaker 1: the brails hipewriter. That's that's pretty cool. Yeah, nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: was a neat year they started working on the Apollo program.
Speaker 1: I started started to produce computers for the Apollo program.
Speaker 1: In fact, IBM is very proud to to say that
Speaker 1: the IBM computers at the Control center were part of
Speaker 1: the reason why we were able to get our astronauts
Speaker 1: back home safely during the Apollo thirteen near disaster. Could
Speaker 1: have out right, yes, that they that it was IBM
Speaker 1: systems that helped the engineers at back at ground control
Speaker 1: to get the astronauts back to Earth safely. Um and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, that's that's a pretty big deal. They also
Speaker 1: in that's specifically when they started to develop a laser
Speaker 1: optical memory system. Um. We can start jumping forward a
Speaker 1: little bit because like you said, the developments are coming
Speaker 1: fast and furious at this point, and to cover all
Speaker 1: of them we would need an entire afternoon, and we
Speaker 1: just don't have that time. And we haven't even been
Speaker 1: touching on all the scientists who have been awarded the
Speaker 1: National Technology Prize and all sorts of other medals and
Speaker 1: recognitions for the stuff that they've or we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about Endicott. We haven't talked about how IBM was investing
Speaker 1: in scientific uh knowledge and advancements through their own IBM campuses.
Speaker 1: I mean you it wasn't just a place to go
Speaker 1: and work. It was a place to go learn and pioneer.
Speaker 1: Like you know, think that that motto that came from
Speaker 1: Thomas Watson, Sr. I think really did become the central
Speaker 1: foundation for what IBM was all about. So so nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: IBM announces the system Stroke three seventy, which was the
Speaker 1: of course, the successor to the three sixty. This is
Speaker 1: a small snicker moment because of course the systems Stroke
Speaker 1: three sixty was supposed to be a comprehensive package. So
Speaker 1: you have your sixty degrees, so I guess now you
Speaker 1: have ten more degrees, right, Well, you know. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying it's in case it gets cold, and then there's uh.
Speaker 1: They also introduced in nineteen seventy the first IBM copier,
Speaker 1: which became a bigger business for them. Further down the road,
Speaker 1: the first IBM copier. Yeah, the first IBM copier. The
Speaker 1: and they're supposed to get less strong as you go
Speaker 1: on the first IBM cop here machine. That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1: So in in nineteen seventy one, that's when those rail
Speaker 1: printers really started hitting the market. They started to experiment
Speaker 1: with speech recognition technology and seventy one, again, decades before
Speaker 1: we started seeing this in in applications that we would recognize, right,
Speaker 1: they were working on it in seventy one. Nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: I'm jumping much further ahead because this electric too. Well, no,
Speaker 1: because we talked about this electric enough, I thought, and
Speaker 1: we're running out of time. Seventy three they introduced the
Speaker 1: IBM diskette, which was a new storage medium that became
Speaker 1: very important. Yes it is. Yeah, I loved those diskets.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not even joking. There's something about being
Speaker 1: able to physically see how much data you have because
Speaker 1: you're looking at the discs. That is really satisfying to me.
Speaker 1: You know, when you look at a hard drive, you
Speaker 1: know how much it can store, But that doesn't you know,
Speaker 1: you don't. It doesn't give you a visual queue of Wow,
Speaker 1: I got a stuff. Are our middle school and junior
Speaker 1: high school student listeners, and we have quite a few
Speaker 1: of them, are going to laugh because they all have
Speaker 1: pocket flash drives with yeh they can hold a hundred times.
Speaker 1: They can hold the entire library I had on diskette
Speaker 1: on one thumb drive. I was I was joking. Don't
Speaker 1: write me in to tell me I was wrong. It
Speaker 1: was just a saying. Nineteen seventy six, IBM computers are
Speaker 1: used on the Space Shuttle Enterprise. I remember that the
Speaker 1: the prototype of the Space Shuttle program, Enterprise, which was
Speaker 1: used to test the model. It was not not meant
Speaker 1: to actually take astronauts into space. Um, but yeah, they
Speaker 1: used the computers aboard that. And jumping all the way
Speaker 1: up to nineteen eighty, We're just gonna end this episode
Speaker 1: on nineteen eighty because nineteen eighty one we enter a
Speaker 1: new era in IBM history. So nineteen eighty the gross
Speaker 1: income for IBM at this point. Keeping in mind when
Speaker 1: it started four million gross income one million or things
Speaker 1: twenty six point to one billion with a B dollars.
Speaker 1: The earnings three point three nine billion, three hundred forty
Speaker 1: one thousand, two hundred seventy nine employees, so more than
Speaker 1: a quarter of a million employees at this point. And
Speaker 1: their products at this time included ultra fast processors for
Speaker 1: business computer systems. They did word processors. They still had
Speaker 1: the typewriters. They were doing data storage media. They had
Speaker 1: analytical instruments for scientific research, development, uh, applications. All of
Speaker 1: this is going on in nineteen eighty and in ninety
Speaker 1: one they really strike a new uh they head into
Speaker 1: a new market. Before we move on to eighty one
Speaker 1: for our next podcast, we have to add a science
Speaker 1: thing that they did. Please do according to the company, Uh,
Speaker 1: they did. Some of the researchers were able to start
Speaker 1: using computers to transcribe human speech with Now we're talking
Speaker 1: rudimentary a thousand word vocabulary here, so it's not like Watson. Uh,
Speaker 1: but it was able to read and convert tech speech
Speaker 1: to print with about accuracy. See they've been walking they've
Speaker 1: been working on Watson for quite some time. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: was that was that was a long tail game right there. Yes,
Speaker 1: but of course it paid off in the end, Yeah,
Speaker 1: by by several thousand dollars as there recall, because it
Speaker 1: won the whole championship, right, I'm sure that that helped
Speaker 1: offset the billions of dollars of research and development. Yes,
Speaker 1: but they do expect that it will have applications. And
Speaker 1: if you wondered where Watson's name came from, if you
Speaker 1: didn't listen to the podcast the machine that we're talking
Speaker 1: about that one Jeopardy be Too Human opponents that the
Speaker 1: game show Jeopardy. Um, it came from the company's founder,
Speaker 1: founder Ish, the guy, the guy who instilled in the
Speaker 1: company all of the philosophies that have guided it since
Speaker 1: then and really built it into a single company from
Speaker 1: the three composit companies, the original Thomas J. Watson Senior.
Speaker 1: Al Right, well, we are going to wrap this part up.
Speaker 1: We have one more part to come about the personal
Speaker 1: computer era of IBM's history. It was it played a
Speaker 1: very important role in that in that whole market, and
Speaker 1: then we're going to get away from IBM after that.
Speaker 1: For those of you who are thinking that three podcasts
Speaker 1: about a company is too much, well, IBM really is
Speaker 1: instrumental in so many areas of tech. It was hard
Speaker 1: to to be able to shrink it into fewer than three.
Speaker 1: In fact, we probably could do four or five, but
Speaker 1: we're not. The third will be our final one, at
Speaker 1: least for the time being. Oh, I forgot one small
Speaker 1: thing you PC codes. So anyway, if you guys want
Speaker 1: to hear more information about a particular favorite company, wait,
Speaker 1: there's another one introduced risk Architecture. Please, for the love
Speaker 1: of all that is good, send us a message on
Speaker 1: Twitter or Facebook. Are handled. There is text stuff hs W,
Speaker 1: or you can shoot us an email that addresses tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again about IBM really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. So learn more about the podcast,
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