The History of IBM: Part 2

we're going to talk about, but people think it does. Okay, because how h a L that's one letter off from IBM. Yeah. So this is part two of our episode about the history of IBM and it's impact on technology, which I think it's safe to say it cannot be understated. Okay, So I'm kidding, it can't be overstated. That's where you're supposed to jump on me for using the wrong word. Okay. Well, it's funny. We we didn't talk about at all, and I'm just gonna throw this in as a footnote before

we get started. We didn't talk about it in the first episode. One of the uh reasons that we've got three episodes on IBM is because the company has been around for a very long time, has done a lot of technological innovation, has a very rich company culture, which includes music. In fact, is one of the few companies that has its own anthem. Um you know. In fact, Thomas J. Watson Sr. Who who became we're starting this

episode in ninety two. He became IBM president in nineteen fifty two officially, although he led the company before that. Um he established the first company band in nineteen fifteen, so all along the entire company hit one on the entire company history, but a lot of the company history for almost a hundred years now, they've had a company band, they have a company anthem, play all their music on

tabulating machines. It's very rhythmic, but not melodic. The IBM Songbook was printed the year after we're starting this, in nineteen fifty three. You can actually you can listen to this on the at the archives at IBM dot com. So if you want to hear the IBM anthem, the IBM fight song, the IBM fight song, there is one. Well,

it's a rally song. It's called ever Onward and the I just want it down with you, Apple down with you Not then there wasn't because Apple wasn't established until so, yeah, it would actually be more like down with you burrows. We should do burrows. That would be kind of fun, I guess sometimes after we give a definition of the word fun. Yes, well, just because they were a computer innovator, Yes, this is true. But we decided to start again with

IBM in nineteen fifty two. Again, Watson, I'm sorry, Watson Jr. Became the company president in NIFO. His dad was leading the company before that. I was right, I miss spoke earlier, and Watson Sr. Was was a chairman of the board. That's fine. Not about Sinatra. Oh well, no, he was over there with Dino and uh hey, what where am I going with this? Ain't that a kick in the head. I was listening to that this morning. So you wanted to talk about the seven and one, did I? Yes? Yes,

production computer. Yes. So nineteen fifty two, IBM introduces the seven oh one, starting a long line of catchy IBM product names. Well, let's let's face it, Okay, we're talking about a kind of industry where that it just isn't sexy in terms of consumers. People weren't buying computers for their homes. The customers here were businesses. So why do you need a fancy name. Yeah, you just need something that's easy to look up. You don't need something that's

you know, you don't need the Jaguar. Well, hey, if you're if you're going to get right down to it. It still works for Peugeot, which sells cars with three digit names with zero in the middle, so and then would be right up there. So the seven oh one comes outwo It is the first IBM large scale electronic

computer manufactured in mass quantities. It was the first commercially available scientific computer and it uh had a program stored in an internal addressable electronic memory, which was brand new for the time. That's something that we all take for granted now because we've had it for decades. But this was a brand new idea and it only took two years from the time when IBM first sketched out the idea for the seven oh one to win it rolled

off the production lines. So two year development cycle for a brand new, groundbreaking computer is phenomenal. That shows that IBM was really putting some of their smartest, hardest working engineers on this project, and it seems like they had taken the IBM motto that you spoke of in the last podcast about Thomas J. Watson Senior. I think very much too, hearty. Um. It was only a year later that they came up with a seven oh two, which was a commercial version of the computer, and the six

fifty magnetic drum calculator, which apparently calculated drums. Yeah, and uh wait a minute, no it didn't. No, no, no, So anyway that the reason for these um these, one of the reasons I should say for the rapid development of the seven oh one and the seven oh two

was actually the outbreak of another conflict. It was the Korean War, which broke out in June, and Thomas J. Watson Sr. Asked the US government what IBM could do to help the war effort, and the government said, build us some really powerful scientific computers that we can use for our you know, for our strategic needs. And that was what got IBM to work. And the seven oh one and seven oh two are kind of wrecked results

of that discussion. It's pretty kind of it's kind of an interesting story in the idea that Watson at this point is he's offering. He's like, look, I have this huge corporation we have all this this uh power of of mind. Here, We've got some of the finest engineers in all the world working for my company. What can I do to help? And that's kind of phenomenal. It's not just hey, you know what would make us a lot of money, Let's do this. It's I think that's

a pretty interesting Now. It shows a certain philosophy that Watson had that I thought was was pretty interesting. Also kind of interesting to note just on a corporate culture side. Uh. In nine three, that's when Thomas J. Watson Jr. Wrote the first equal opportunity policy for the company, which came a full year before Brown versus the Board of Education, so before the Supreme Court had even heard that case. Uh,

Watson j you'r. Was saying that, you know, he was establishing that there should be an equal opportunity employment uh culture at IBM. So again we're starting to see that IBM is not just leading the way technology wise, they're leaning the way as far as corporate culture goes. Yes, they they are pioneers in multiple avenues. Its kind of interesting. So you know, and you know what they did in nineteen four, you know what kind of what military computer

they developed? Then no, what the Naval Ordinance Research Computer or Yeah, fastest electronic computer at that time. So again IBM working with the United States government on that. Yeah, they they says they succeeded the seven oh one with the seven oh four and the seven oh two with the seven oh five. UM and introduced new like uh new typewriters as well, um, including the executive typewriter, except they didn't think executives typed back in those days. I

think they had somebody to do that for them. Yeah, the executive assistant typewriters really much should have been called. Nineteen fifty five, IBM develops magnetic core storage units, so that that research they had been doing a couple of years previously, it was starting to pay off. Uh. Ninety six was a big year for IBM for a a sad reason because that was when Thomas J. Watson Sr. Died.

He passed away in nineteen fifty six. So at the time that that Watson Sr. Passed away, if you remember from our previous podcast on IBM, we talked about when Watson took control, the gross income was four million dollars and the net earnings was one million. Let's compare that

to when he passed away in nineteen fifty six. At that time, IBM's gross income was eight hundred ninety two million dollars, the earnings was eighty seven million dollars, and they employed seventy two thousand, five hundred four employees even adjusted for inflation. That's a significant increase. And you know that when when wants into control, there were what six employees now and four by the time he passes away. Also,

I'm sorry, no, go ahead, I was gonna say. Also, as their innovation has gone on, they've increased, uh, not only the ability for machines to process information, increase the speed with which it's processing information, but they're also moving gradually, uh, from electro mechanical devices to electronic devices. Yes, by the time you're hitting the seven oh one seven or two and seven oh four and seven oh five machines, you're really moving away from the punch card era. It's there.

They're starting to be able to phase out punch cards to some extent. Now, punch cards would remain an important part of IBM for years to come, just because you know, just as IBM is developing this new technology, that doesn't mean that all the companies that are IBMS customers can adopt that that technology immediately. So IBM continued to support that older technology for years, although it was also driving the innovation that made it possible to move away from

the old punch card system. Yeah, before before anyone writes in to say this, unless, of course, you've paused a podcast, in which case you're violating rule number seven of the podcast. Um, Yeah, we were aware that that people were still programming with punched cards into the seventies and possibilities. I wouldn't be surprised that there's not somebody doing it now because they're on some legacy system requires you to use this, you know,

some some antiquated programming language. So don't you know they're moving away from it, but they haven't completely. Yeah, like I said, they support it, but they don't. It's that's not where the innovation is. And also, by the way, rule number six of the podcast is there is no rule number six of the podcast in case you guys are keeping track. Uh So that's when they developed the seven O nine computer. That's also do you know what

language came out in nine? In in that year programming language to developed by IBM trans Yes four tran This is again a big, big step. IBM makes four Trend programming language available to consumers. Uh. Before that, you know, you you didn't really have access to a way of programming your computer. It pretty much ran on whatever protocols you happen to have. Four Trend. Now you can develop

your own. Uh. Not easy for treand was not necessarily something you could just quickly pick up in an afternoon, but it still was a big leap as far as computers are are concerned. Yeah, it's it's not Python. Let's just say that. No. Uh, do you have anything between fifty seven and sixty one? Because my next thing that I want to really talk about is comes in sixty one. Yes, well I have a I have another giggle moment. Okay,

if you listen to the last podcast. I was giggling because originally, when when IBM was founded, it was as a merger between three companies making equipment for businesses UM, one of which was a scale company, one of which was tabulating machine Company, which is essentially a computer part,

and then the other was a a time recording company. UM. Now, of course, you know clock's very important computers, but they decided at an earlier point to get rid of the Scale company because it just wasn't doing what they thought it would. So Mr Watson Senior decided to get rid of it and it immediately took off. Was now part of a very large company that still sales things, so did not fail. Neither did the Time Equipment division when they decided to sell it to Simplex Time Recorder Company,

which is now Simplex Grenell. So they're there. They are dividing themselves up. We didn't mention that just as a note. As the company is moving on, especially now in the nineteen fifties, the company is splitting off divisions. Um. They now have a military division even to help develop products for the military, UM, as well as you know, different kinds of businesses. Uh So, apparently they decided to divest themselves at this one which continue to succeed without them.

But you know what, I think I think that's still I think it shows I think it still shows wisdom though, right because because there there is the possibility that you're let's say you're in you're running an enormous corporation and you have a lot of balls to juggle, right, You're you're trying to you get a lot of irons in

the fire, if you prefer that metaphor. So, you got all these irons in the fire, and you know you may not be able to to push all of them the way they need to be in order to succeed. There's nothing wrong with that. And selling something off that you cannot make succeed and then seeing it succeed, all that means is that that the potential was there, you just didn't have the resources necessary to make it happen. That's true. It could have it could have done poor

since it's not a core business for IBM at this point. Uh, it may actually have been a drag on IBM, and IBM may not have been able to put the resources behind it that it would take to make it successful. So it's just sort of the it turns out that that wasn't Yeah, it wasn't. There wasn't anything. Yeah, it

wasn't anything inherently bad about the division itself. Health Well, I personally consider that a success for everybody involved, because the alternative was that IBM could have held onto it and then could have suffered for it, both the division and IBM itself. UM IBM put all its workers on salary and introduced to stock purchase plan in which was again showing a lot of foresight treating its employees well.

Corporate cultured pioneers. Uh. The seven thousand series computers were introduced in nineteen sixty UM, so the vacuum tube machines, the seven series now absolutely so, Yeah, vacuum tubes that if you guys aren't familiar, I mean that was the precursor to the transistor. So you've got vacuum tubes which were very efficient, uh comparatively speaking, but they had other problems like, for one, they generated a lot of heat,

and they took up a lot of space. So we're talking when we're talking about computers with IBM, we're talking mainframe computers. The early mainframe computers were so large they could take up an entire room, uh in a building, and in fact, some of the supercomputers of the day would take up an entire floor of a building. And because we're talking about vacuum tubes, that's part of the reason why they were so big. It wasn't that they were super super powerful, although they were for the time.

It was because the the individual components that made up the supercomputer were much larger than the ones we have in our devices today. Sure, sure, so it would get pretty warm and steamy in the supercomputer room with all those vacuum tubes going. And it wasn't until IBM really started to dedicate itself to solid state electronics when we're talking about solid state transistors, that we started to see a shift away from vacuum tubes and towards alternative means

of processing. Now, just quickly in the nineteen sixty you could tell that that even back in Herman Hollow a state Hollow was the person who created the the tabulating Yes. Portion of the original companies that formed IBM, they're still doing the same kind of work. UM. The Rio five Ramack machine was used to score the Winter Olympic Games that year in California, was used at political conventions to nine point four and processing for presidential election returns UM

and UH. IBM was used to launch and track Project Echo, which was a space communications experiment. It's Project Echo Echo and they were using the Mark two language translator to translate Russian into English. Yeah that that here's something else that I did not know until I started researching this podcast. IBM has pioneered some technologies that we're just starting to

see benefit us today. But they started decades ago. You sit there and you think like, there's no way in the early sixties that that could have possibly been there, And yeah, you find out, Wait a minute, they were working on this. We're just now starting to see things like like Google's translate uh software or their applications where you can translate languages on the fly. That stuff was you know it really it has its history way back in these days of development and IBM, this is the

one that I wanted to talk about. And Chris, I know you want to talk about two because he just showed me a picture of it. I think he's actually salivating, ladies and gentlemen. It's the selectric typewriter. Yes, yes, So what was different about this electric than say, older typewriters. Well, I can I can be honest with you here. I I know this stuff, uh straight away. My mom had a selectric typewriter. I just did my dad, which was still in the family. I believe I actually have an

underwood typewriter. And those typewriters these are the old old type, which way about seven tons. Yeah they're heavy, um, but they also you know, they're very robust. But they used to have keys. And each of the keys and I'm not talking about the keyboard keys. Each of the keyboard keys was linked to a a key with one letter on it. So and they were all arranged in an arc facing the paper. So as you pressed one key, that little arm would reach up and type that letter

on the paper. So each each key had its each letter had its own dedicated arm. And this is all mechanical, right, This is all connected through a series of levers and little uh pistons that you press. You pressed the D button and the D bar goes forward and stamps the paper with the D letter on the end. There's actually a ribbon there that has the ink, the the key the head of it. The arm hits the ink and that prints the letter onto the paper. And when you

got to the end of that. It's a mechanical typer, no electricity and needed to make this work. When you get to the end of the line, you need to make a carriage return to the next line. Jerry Lewis, you press the thing, you have to press the lever back and it advances you to the next line. Well, this electric was an electric typewriter, and electric typewriters have been out for a few decades. This was a new design yes, which instead of using those little arms, used

a ball with all the out dented letters on it. Also, you yes. The other cool thing about that well, so when you type a key, the typewriter knows which where on the ball that letter is and will rotate the ball and angle it so that it will type that letter in the precise alignment with the rest of the letters on the page. That's one thing that makes it cool. Another thing that makes it cool is you could change the ball, so no longer are you limited to typewriter funt.

You can change the size and the type face because it's a fun when it's not on the paper and what it is, it's a type face. I yes, so you can remove these and change it out if you wanted to. Now this benefited people like my mom, who this will astonish. You could type a hundred thirty five words a minute. When she used the older style typewriters, the keys would jam and rub against one another so often that she would have to have her typewriter replaced. Also,

because it would just completely destroy the type. Since it required physical force, you had to actually type a little harder, especially on older typewriters. I know this from experience too,

because I've used one of those. Um that if you were typing on an old typewriter, you couldn't go as fast because you had to use more force per stroke, especially if you know you're you're typing lightly, the the arm might not strike the paper hard enough to make a good impression, and then you've got this kind of faded look even though the paper, even though you've just typed it right, and it's almost looks like you're running out of ink, but really just means you're running out

of steam. Um. So, yeah, this electric was pretty cool that it looks like if you've ever seen one, and you would, you would recognize it immediately. It looks like a little golf ball. Is the is the typing interface there? And um yeah, you're hundred huh types. My top speed was a hundred five. My my mom when she got going sounded on the select it sounded like a machine gun because it was moving so fast. That explains why

you you duck around corners a lot. And you know, do those weird hand signals whenever you want to go down the hallway. Yeah, best I can get is around sixties so I'm still it still blows me away. But uh, this was also the period in time when IBM they were still working on Space program. Yes, they created a guidance computer for the Saturn series. Yes, and also the gem and I or if you prefer Geminy, I cannot stand that pronunciation, which which I forgot, which the astronauts.

We did this so long ago. Yeah, we did the We did the gimin E podcast. It was one of the Gemini astronauts. It said it that way and it's no. That just makes me think of Eddie Carroll, who was the voice for Jiminy Cricket Friend of the family anyway. So so yeah, yeah, they developed the guidance computers for the space program for for both the Saturn and Jiminy. Uh, figure might as well, right, just keep going with Saturn

and jim and I programs. And so that's kind of cool, you know, IBM was This was one of those things where IBM had to submit a proposal to the ever Ment and they were selected to develop these guidance computer systems. It's electric. In nineteen sixty four, IBM announced the next really really big development, one of the most important developments in the company's histories. You could argue it it's the

most important at this point. Bread Slicer know the system Stroke three sixty, Uh, the controversial system Stroke three sixty? Was it controversial? It was controversial? Pray elaborate, Mr Pilette um well and doing research on IBM. I can tell you right now that there is a lot of information on IBM, So I don't know everything there is to

know about the system Stroke three sixty. Uh. There is actually if you if you want to go and really want to know more about the system, I would suggest going to the Computer History Museum computer history dot org. They actually have a seminar on the system Stroke three sixty. But in a nutshell, it was a mainframe computer and it was a huge gamble because it was the system

that they came up with was so dramatically different. It required a massive investment, and they were not a certain that it was gonna work, as in, they weren't certain that people would adopt this kind of system. So with the amount of money that they poured poured into the program in a nutshell, billions of dollars, as I recall, a whole lot of R and D money they poured into this um as a matter of fact, five well five billions according the article that I read in Wired

magazine or online. Um, yeah, they decided to create the system. But what made it so different was, you know, we were just talking about how large these mainframe computers were. They could take up massive amounts of floor space in your your business. Well, this was a modular system. Modular it could have you you might have the CPU in one device, and a display terminal that goes with it,

and a control unit and data cell storage and drum storage. Um. So if you needed more computing power, you just you purchase more modules. Right. The card punch unit that's a separate device, still had card punch And if you think about it, that's pretty much the way we're doing things now on a different scale. But I mean again, this is before there are a lot of people using computers

in you know, personally on their desktop at work. But I mean now at this point, you have your server, and you have you know, when somebody comes into your company, they get their own computer and in some cases printer and you know, whatever else they happen to need. Sometimes a monitor if they want to see what's going on external hard drive. You have your server. If you need more server space, you add another disk drive to the server. So, I mean the model took it really Yeah, it was

a big gamble, but it ended up being the right one. Also, there was another big gamble that they introduced with the system Stroke three sixty, which was that they introduced the eight bit byte. Before that, there what they really pushed the eight bit byte. It was it wasn't the first time that that had ever been around, but that's what this system used. Now, there were other computers that used twelve bit and thirty six bit based computers, so they

were around. But because IBM pushed this, because it got adopted, because the gamble paid off, the eight bit byte became standard, and just thinking without this system, we might have a lot more confusion in the marketplace. But uh so each computer you're do, you know, happen to know how much

they cost when they started to uh to sell them. Well, according to Wired, in nineteen sixty six, IBM was selling a thousand of these in a month at about two and a half to three million dollars a piece piece. Yeah that's a lot, Mullah, even in nineteen sixty Yeah. Yeah, So this ended up being the basis for IBM suh, most of IBMS computer businesses moving forward. So yeah, like we said, big, big gamble, big payoff. Do you have anything pre ninety eight, that's the next thing I have

pre nine, between sixty four and sixty eight. They I would like to point out that they are they are working with lasers this point. They're using lasers to carry information. As a matter of fact, they were also looking into storage media using lasers. So this is a precursor to compact discs, laser discs, DVDs, that kind of thing. They're still they're still working with the Gemini flights. They actually

have onboard computers. As it is joked very often, a common or sixty four was more powerful than these machines. But at the time, when you think about it, they were going out into space and coming back safely with these devices, so they you know, they're pretty sophisticated. Yeah, And really, when you get down to it, they were able to crunch the numbers, which is what the computers had to do, right, they weren't. They didn't have to play Hunt the Wumpus. As awesome as that game was.

I keep bringing it up because it's the first video is the first computer game I can remember playing everts. The first one I remember having is Hunt the Wumpus, a terrible game. By the way, do you know what I'm talking about? No, I'll tell you about it after the show. In seven they IBM had an exhibited Canada's Expo sixty seven. But um, they were also working on

UM the first monolithic integrated germanium circuits. Is that what was in the beginning of two thousand one, the thing that fell to earth and all the apes were dancing around it? No, that is a monolith. But yes, you remember we we talked about germanium before on the podcast. When we started talking about semiconductors, I was thinking of flowers, okay, um, so yes. And they also had a trillion bit photo

digital storage system for the Atomic Energy Commission. Uh. It's it's funny because the information on i M dot com. They have a very very very comprehensive timeline with all kinds of stuff. But it's funny because if you look at these documents, and I encourage you to do so, I mean and free download them at at your leisure, but they break it down into Jonathan and I are kind of concentrating on the stuff that everyone I mean, like the stuff that the public would sort of be

aware of. So they were making contributions to business in general, their business practices, business culture. They were also doing science in the background. Look at me still talking when they're science to be done. Um so but yeah they uh so, they're working on all this stuff in particular. So I kind of wanted to note a few of them, like the brails hipewriter. That's that's pretty cool. Yeah, nineteen sixty was a neat year they started working on the Apollo program.

I started started to produce computers for the Apollo program. In fact, IBM is very proud to to say that the IBM computers at the Control center were part of the reason why we were able to get our astronauts back home safely during the Apollo thirteen near disaster. Could have out right, yes, that they that it was IBM systems that helped the engineers at back at ground control to get the astronauts back to Earth safely. Um and

uh yeah, that's that's a pretty big deal. They also in that's specifically when they started to develop a laser optical memory system. Um. We can start jumping forward a little bit because like you said, the developments are coming fast and furious at this point, and to cover all of them we would need an entire afternoon, and we

just don't have that time. And we haven't even been touching on all the scientists who have been awarded the National Technology Prize and all sorts of other medals and recognitions for the stuff that they've or we haven't talked about Endicott. We haven't talked about how IBM was investing in scientific uh knowledge and advancements through their own IBM campuses. I mean you it wasn't just a place to go and work. It was a place to go learn and pioneer.

Like you know, think that that motto that came from Thomas Watson, Sr. I think really did become the central foundation for what IBM was all about. So so nineteen seventy, IBM announces the system Stroke three seventy, which was the of course, the successor to the three sixty. This is a small snicker moment because of course the systems Stroke three sixty was supposed to be a comprehensive package. So you have your sixty degrees, so I guess now you

have ten more degrees, right, Well, you know. I'm just saying it's in case it gets cold, and then there's uh. They also introduced in nineteen seventy the first IBM copier, which became a bigger business for them. Further down the road, the first IBM copier. Yeah, the first IBM copier. The and they're supposed to get less strong as you go on the first IBM cop here machine. That's true. That's true. So in in nineteen seventy one, that's when those rail

printers really started hitting the market. They started to experiment with speech recognition technology and seventy one, again, decades before we started seeing this in in applications that we would recognize, right, they were working on it in seventy one. Nineteen seventy three. I'm jumping much further ahead because this electric too. Well, no, because we talked about this electric enough, I thought, and

we're running out of time. Seventy three they introduced the IBM diskette, which was a new storage medium that became very important. Yes it is. Yeah, I loved those diskets. I'm not I'm not even joking. There's something about being able to physically see how much data you have because you're looking at the discs. That is really satisfying to me. You know, when you look at a hard drive, you know how much it can store, But that doesn't you know,

you don't. It doesn't give you a visual queue of Wow, I got a stuff. Are our middle school and junior high school student listeners, and we have quite a few of them, are going to laugh because they all have pocket flash drives with yeh they can hold a hundred times. They can hold the entire library I had on diskette on one thumb drive. I was I was joking. Don't write me in to tell me I was wrong. It was just a saying. Nineteen seventy six, IBM computers are

used on the Space Shuttle Enterprise. I remember that the the prototype of the Space Shuttle program, Enterprise, which was used to test the model. It was not not meant to actually take astronauts into space. Um, but yeah, they used the computers aboard that. And jumping all the way up to nineteen eighty, We're just gonna end this episode on nineteen eighty because nineteen eighty one we enter a new era in IBM history. So nineteen eighty the gross

income for IBM at this point. Keeping in mind when it started four million gross income one million or things twenty six point to one billion with a B dollars. The earnings three point three nine billion, three hundred forty one thousand, two hundred seventy nine employees, so more than a quarter of a million employees at this point. And their products at this time included ultra fast processors for business computer systems. They did word processors. They still had

the typewriters. They were doing data storage media. They had analytical instruments for scientific research, development, uh, applications. All of this is going on in nineteen eighty and in ninety one they really strike a new uh they head into a new market. Before we move on to eighty one for our next podcast, we have to add a science thing that they did. Please do according to the company, Uh,

they did. Some of the researchers were able to start using computers to transcribe human speech with Now we're talking rudimentary a thousand word vocabulary here, so it's not like Watson. Uh, but it was able to read and convert tech speech to print with about accuracy. See they've been walking they've been working on Watson for quite some time. Yeah. That

was that was that was a long tail game right there. Yes, but of course it paid off in the end, Yeah, by by several thousand dollars as there recall, because it won the whole championship, right, I'm sure that that helped offset the billions of dollars of research and development. Yes,

but they do expect that it will have applications. And if you wondered where Watson's name came from, if you didn't listen to the podcast the machine that we're talking about that one Jeopardy be Too Human opponents that the

game show Jeopardy. Um, it came from the company's founder, founder Ish, the guy, the guy who instilled in the company all of the philosophies that have guided it since then and really built it into a single company from the three composit companies, the original Thomas J. Watson Senior. Al Right, well, we are going to wrap this part up. We have one more part to come about the personal

computer era of IBM's history. It was it played a very important role in that in that whole market, and then we're going to get away from IBM after that. For those of you who are thinking that three podcasts about a company is too much, well, IBM really is instrumental in so many areas of tech. It was hard to to be able to shrink it into fewer than three. In fact, we probably could do four or five, but we're not. The third will be our final one, at

least for the time being. Oh, I forgot one small thing you PC codes. So anyway, if you guys want to hear more information about a particular favorite company, wait, there's another one introduced risk Architecture. Please, for the love of all that is good, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook. Are handled. There is text stuff hs W, or you can shoot us an email that addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again about IBM really soon.

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