IBM’s $5bn gamble: revolutionary computer turns 50
Fifty years ago today IBM unveiled the first mainframe computer, capable of powering everything from banks to governments. It was so expensive to design that failure would have destroyed the company. Luckily, the System/360 sold in the thousands, and revolutionised computing into the bargainIn 1961 a small group of IBM staff were asked to come up with a plan to ensure the long-term future of the company. Current computers were selling well, but had huge limitations. A whole new approach was needed.
After eight weeks of deliberation they delivered a controversial report to executives which proposed discarding all of the company's previous work and starting from scratch on a new architecture.
Not only would this require a total redesign of IBMs product range, but groundbreaking manufacturing techniques and new factories. Because the revolutionary machines would not work with old models, existing customers would be forced to upgrade all their equipment. It was a risky proposal. In fact, failure would mean bankruptcy.
It was a surprise, then, when the idea was eventually given the go-ahead. IBM spent more than $5 billion developing the next-generation machine. At the time that represented two years revenue. Company president Tom Watson Jr - the son of IBMs founder - had literally bet the company on it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10719418/IBMs-5bn-gamble-revolutionary-computer-turns-50.html
JayhawkSD
(3,163 posts)IBM chose to use "open source" framework, unlike Apple, which used closed source and jealously guarded its process. If IBM had followed the Apple model, there would likely be no personal computing industry as we know it today.
IBM knew their computer would be copied and their patents infringed. They also knew that, in the long run, the growth of the industry as a whole would benefit society and make the technology more widely available. It was not a purely selfless decision, because they also knew that the growth of the market would benefit themselves as well. It was "enlightened self interest," and it worked. For a long time it kept Apple a bit player and maintained IBM as the "big dog" in the industry, an industry orders of magnitude bigger because of their decision.
Digital Computer also tried a closed source personal computer. It died a painful and embarrassing death.
ogsball
(356 posts)Corporate IBM didn't see the personal computer as a big market they were just providing a dignified service, from a dignified company.
The IBM Personal Computer Team was truly exceptional and like you said did usher in a new era, without ever knowing what they were bringing in. From what I recall they were just cobbling together already available components, 'dressed up' and 'marked up.' Credit Bill Gates for seizing the opportunity and playing ball to bring us the market that exists today.
Conventional wisdom speculates that if the IBM corporate understood what was happening in the PC market they would have screwed it up.
I agree with your assessment of Apple, early and now.
jmowreader
(50,522 posts)The reason the PC clones exist, is the IBM PC was thrown together so quickly it was easy to copy. (This is no shit: they sent a handful of IBM engineers to Boca Raton, Florida, and told them to create a machine that would compete with Apple; they finished in two weeks.) There aren't that many ways to build an interrupt-driven 8088 computer; once Phoenix Computer Technology figured out the very bare-bones BIOS and Rod Canion figured out the pinout of the expansion bus, clones were sure to follow. I don't think IBM actually gave a damn about the PC; they thought they'd sell 250,000 of them in the product's lifetime because the thing wasn't supposedly powerful enough to run real business applications; people would buy them for their kids but anyone with real data to crunch would pick an IBM mini like a Series/1.
I don't know if you remember back that far, but in the pre-AT days there were computers that ran MS-DOS but not programs written for IBM's computer (the "compatibles" , computers that would run some of IBM's programs but not necessarily Lotus 1-2-3 (these were called clones and they'd tell you the percentage of software that would run on them - you could tell a really good computer store because they'd let you return a program that wouldn't run on your machine) or "true clones" that would run 1-2-3.
IIRC there were a lot of patent-infringement lawsuits after PC clones got popular, and they got thrown out because IBM didn't start defending their patents until they realized how bad they fucked up.
bananas
(27,509 posts)This article is about the 50th anniversary of the IBM 360 mainframe, not the IBM PC which came 20 years later.
Gidney N Cloyd
(19,813 posts)Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)Specifically, the IBM 360.