Google, Apple and Facebook get all the attention. But the forgettable everyday tasks of technology - saving a file on your own laptop, swiping your ATM card to get 40 bucks,

scanning a gallon of milk at the checkout line - that's all IBM.

International Business Machines turns 100 on Thursday without having much fanfare. But coach blog its much younger

competitors owe a lot to Big Blue.

After all, where would Groupon be without having the supermarket bar code? Or Google without having the mainframe computer?

"They had been kind of like a cornerstone of that whole business venture that has become the center belonging to the personal computer community in the U.S.," says Bob Djurdjevic, a former IBM employee and

president of Annex Research.

IBM dates to June 16, 1911, when three companies that made scales, punch-clocks for work and other machines merged to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Co. The modern-day

name followed in 1924.

With a plant in Endicott, N.Y., the new business also made cheese slicers and - significantly for its long term - machines that read data stored on punch cards. By the 1930s,

IBM's cards had been maintaining track of 26 million Americans for the newly released Social Security program.

These old, sprawling machines might seem quaint in the ipod nano era, but they had layout components similar to modern computers. They had places for data storage, math digesting

areas and output, says David A. Mindell, professor belonging to the history of technology at the Massachusetts school of Technology.

Punch cards carted from station to station represented what business today might contact Coach Tote Bags Black Chain "data flow."

"It was pretty sophisticated," Mindell says.

The force behind IBM's early growth was Thomas J. Watson Sr., a demanding boss with exacting standards for anything from office wear (white shirts, ties) to creativeness (his

slogan: "Think").

Watson, and later his son, Thomas Watson Jr., guided IBM into the personal computer age. Its machines had been used to calculate anything from banking transactions to space shots. As the

company swelled after World War II, IBM threw its considerable sources at investigation to maintain its dominance in the market for mainframes, the hulking computers that power

whole offices.

"When we do semiconductors, we had hundreds and hundreds of people," Coach Tote Bags Black Canvas says Donald Seraphim, who worked at IBM from 1957 until 1986 and was named a fellow, the company's highest honor for technical

achievement. "They just know how to put the force behind the entrepreneurial things."

By the late '60s, IBM was consistently the only real high-tech company in the Fortune 500's top 10. IBM famously spent $5 billion during the decade to develop a family of computers

designed so growing businesses could easily upgrade.

It introduced the magnetic very difficult drive in 1956 and the floppy disk in 1971. In the 1960s, IBM formulated the pretty first bar code, paving the way for automated supermarket checkouts.

IBM introduced a high-speed digesting system that allowed ATM transactions. It created magnetic strip technology for credit cards.

For much belonging to the 20th century, IBM was the model of a dominant, paternalistic corporation. It was one of many pretty first to provide workers paid out holidays and life insurance.

It ran country clubs for employees generations before Google offered subsidized massages and free meals.

"The model really was you joined IBM and you built your career for life there," Coach Tote Bags Black C says David Finegold, dean belonging to the School of Management and labour Relations at Rutgers University. Transfers to other cities had been still

common enough that employees joked IBM really stood for "I've Been Moved."

The origins belonging to the company's nickname, Big Blue, are a little something of a mystery. It may strictly derive from IBM's worldwide size and the color of its logo.

IBM's gold-plated standing was based in part on ubiquity and reliability, as well as a relentless sales force. But its fortunes began to modify as bureaucracy stifled

innovation. Information-technology administrators used to joke that nobody at any time got fired for getting IBM. But by the 1980s, Big Blue observed itself adrift in a changing technology

environment.

IBM had slipped with the rise of cheap microprocessors and quick changes in the industry. In an infamous blunder, IBM introduced its influential personal personal computer in 1981, but

it passed on getting the rights to the software that ran it - made by a startup called Microsoft.

IBM aided make the PC a mainstream product, nevertheless it quickly observed itself outmatched in a market it aided create.Coach Tote Bags Black Aureate It relied on Intel for chips and Microsoft for software, leaving it vulnerable when the PC

industry took off and rivals began using the same technology.

The PC's casing wasn't as important as the technology inside it, and IBM didn't own the intellectual property inside its own machines. In addition, the rise of smaller computers

that done some belonging to the same functions as mainframes threw IBM's main moneymaking business into disarray.

With its legacy and pretty survival at stake, the organization was forced to embark on a wrenching restructuring.

One of its major achievements turned out to be re-engineering itself during the upheavals belonging to the 1990s. Viewed as as well bureaucratic to compete in fast-changing times, IBM tapped

an outsider as CEO in 1993 to help with a turnaround.

Louis Gerstner, a former executive with American Express and RJR Nabisco, Coach Mixed Op fine art With company logo center Necklace Pendants advert little knowledge of technology or IBM culture. In his first meeting with top IBM

executives, he was the only real one in the room with a blue shirt.

But he broke up long-standing fiefdoms, slashed price ranges and removed jobs. IBM, which had peaked at 406,000 employees in 1985, shed more than 150,000 in the 1990s as the organization lost

nearly $16 billion in excess of five years.

Gerstner resisted pressure to break in the organization and instead focused on services, such as data safe-keeping and technical support. Services could be sold being an add-on to companies

that had already purchased IBM computers. Even barely profitable pieces of hardware had been used to open the door to more profitable deals.

The shift allowed IBM to trip out two recessions: When times are tough, businesses pay IBM to help them find ways to cut costs and handle technology chores which will be more

expensive to perform in-house.

The modify in strategy was risky for an organization that aided build the PC industry, Coach Mixed Op fine art With company logo center Necklace Gold yet IBM rose to become the world's biggest technology services provider.

With around $100 billion in yearly revenue today, IBM is ranked 18th in the Fortune 500. It's three times the size of Google and almost twice as big as Apple. Its market

capitalization of around $200 billion beats Google and allowed IBM last month to briefly surpass its long-standing nemesis, Microsoft.

Though transformed, IBM remains a pioneer, the envy belonging to the technology industry. Hewlett-Packard Co.'s new CEO, Leo Apotheker, says among his primary goals is usually to strengthen the

company's software and services businesses to compete better with IBM.

Some things haven't changed. the organization still spends heavily on research, about $6 billion a year. It still comes up with flashy feats of computing prowess, most recently when

its Watson personal computer system handily defeated the world's best "Jeopardy!" players.

And, just as in 1911, it's still in the business of finding data solutions.

While IBM's Watson attracted buzz by beating two human "Jeopardy!" champions,Coach Mixed Op fine art With company logo Circle Necklace Golden the organization wants to put it to real-world use as a medical diagnostic tool which will

understand plain language and analyze mountains of information. That's in line with IBM's focus on other big data projects, such as analyzing traffic patterns citywide to

predict and stave off traffic jams.

The company that built its achievement making sense of enormous punch card records sees long term innovations in the analysis belonging to the billions and billions of bits of data being

transmitted in the 21st century.

"The scale of that enables you to do discovery, regardless of whether it's in the situation of drugs, medicine, crime - you name it," says Bernard Meyerson, IBM's vice president for innovation.