IBM Celebrates 100th Birthday

The news is a surprise to many who maybe believed that IBM IBM have only ever made computers, but IBM is actually a full 100 years old today. This is an incredible feat for the company, whose full name is International Business Machines, particularly when considering the field that it operates in. It has managed to stick around, quite simply, by changing with the tide. In the past century, technology has changed so dramatically that the company's founders couldn't have begun to conceive of where IBM would be today. Yet, by keeping up with trends and employing only the most intelligent, it has remained at the forefront of technology. The company started out making punch cards, scales and clocks. Now, it makes super computers that can beat the human chess champion. That's quite a leap. It is valued at $197 billion today, which makes it the fifth most valuable U.S. company, just behind Microsoft MSFT. Relatively speaking, a minute amount of companies make the 100 year mark. Those that have in the past include General Electric GE and Chevron CVX. But for IBM, the achievement is all the more incredible because technology has changed so much. Electricity is still electricity. Gasoline is still gasoline. But a super computer is a lot different to a punch card machine.