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In ways good and bad, IBM has been at
the forefront of changes in American
business and in America’s relationships with the world.
Chasing Greatness
IBM’s roots go back to the Tabulating
Machine Company, founded by Her-
I ask what the history of one mighty
corporation—IBM—can tell us about
the rise and fall of a particular kind of
American greatness.
Decade after decade, IBM has been
one of the world’s largest, most profit-
able, and most admired companies. Of
all American businesses, only General
Electric, Apple, Microsoft, and Exxon-
Mobile have generated more wealth.a
Despite recent troubles, it has been
ranked in the 2010s as the number
one company for leaders (Fortune),
the greenest company (Newsweek), the
second most valuable global brand (In-
terbrand), the second most respected
company (Barron’s) and the fifth most
admired (Fortune). IBM technical con-
tributions to computing are second to
none. Its researchers won six Turing
awards and, more startling, four Nobel
prizes. Its engineers produced the first
hard disk drive, the first floppy disk
drive, the first architecture implement-
ed over a range of diverse but compat-
ible machines, the first widely used
high-level programming language, the
a See http://nyti.ms/2wESvrA
As recently as 2014, IBM ranked
ahead of its old adversary Microsoft
on Fortune’s lists of the largest U.S.
companies (20th place) and of the firms
most admired by managers (16th place).
Historical Reflections
Defining American
Greatness: IBM from
Watson to Trump
Reflections on a firm that encapsulated the American Century.
DOI: 10.1145/3163909
Thomas J. Watson
