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Happy 60th Birthday IBM Research
HockeyPuck writes "On Tuesday, IBM Research celebrated it's 60th Birthday "IBM inventions and discoveries include the programming language Fortran (1957), magnetic storage (1955), the relational database (1970), DRAM (dynamic random access memory) cells (1962), the RISC (reduced instruction set computer) chip architecture (1980), fractals (1967), superconductivity (1987) and the Data Encryption Standard (1974). In the last 12 years, IBM has received 29,021 patents--more than any other company or individual in the world.""
Don't forget good old MCA. ^_^
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Does anyone else notice that all of the "Inventions and Discoveries" are actually all inventions? Perhaps a nit-picky point, but there are no discoveries listed... (granted, electron tunneling is mentioned in TFA, but the specific paragraph citing "inventions and discoveries" lists none.
IBM has received 29,021 patents--more than any other company or individual in the world.
In a related note, The SCO Group, Inc. (SCOX) has announced that they are suing IBM for 29,021 counts of using their intellectual property within IBM inventions.
I'm a big tall mofo.
You hardly ever hear about their teleportation research.
This way to the egress...
We should be celebrating the people of IBM research along with the organization. Several very genius individuals were the driving force behind the listed patents. Of course, IBM was great to house them and help them succeed, but let's bless the baby too, not just the carriage.
stuff |
Superconductivity was not discovered by IBM, and it also occurred much earlier than 1987. The BCS theory of superconductivity came out in 1957, and the phenomenon itself was first seen in mercury by Onnes in 1911. And while high-Tc superconducters were first seen at IBM, this occurred in 1986.
Gramps!
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
Whilst it's popular and fashionable here on Slashdot to dismiss large corporations, particularly IT behomoths like Big Blue, as a CS student I am impressed by the quality of IBM's research and development. Real work that deserves real patents, and real recognition.
Rather than talk about inventing Fortran, wouldn't it be slightly more impressive to have invented the first widely used high level programming language? I mean, inventing a programming language that is still in use after 50 or so years is a rather impressive feat, but inventing "programming languages" is an order of magnitude more impressive.
"IBM inventions and discoveries include the programming language Fortran (1957), magnetic storage (1955), the relational database (1970), DRAM (dynamic random access memory) cells (1962), the RISC (reduced instruction set computer) chip architecture (1980), fractals (1967), superconductivity (1987) and the Data Encryption Standard (1974)"
:eyeroll:
pshhh is that all?
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
It's probably appropriate to mention that IBM Research once had a rival of sorts: Bell Labs. Bell Labs and IBM Research were two of the very few commercial institutions that engaged in basic scientific research -- research that would often yield scientific breakthroughs but much less often commercial success. Now Bell Labs is all but gone, but IBM Research thrives. Thank goodness for IBM Research, and kudos to the IBM managers who still keep the "this quarter" Wall Street monsters at bay in order to spend the billions it takes for science.
From the page you linked:
Mandelbrot's contributions
In the 1960s Benoît Mandelbrot started investigating self-similarity in papers such as How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension. This built on earlier work by Lewis Fry Richardson. Taking a highly visual approach, Mandelbrot recognised connections between these previously unrelated strands of mathematics. In 1975 Mandelbrot coined the word fractal to describe self-similar objects which had no clear dimension. He derived the word fractal from the Latin fractus, meaning broken or irregular, and not from the word fractional, as is commonly believed. However, fractional itself is derived ultimately from fractus as well.
From the page on Benoît Mandelbrot
In 1958 the couple moved to the United States where Mandelbrot joined the research staff at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. He remained at IBM for the rest of his working life, becoming an IBM Fellow, and later Fellow Emeritus.
LSD was invented 60 years ago by Professor Albert Hofman, who will celebrate his 100th birthday come January.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
It's analogous to the parent's contention about fractals- Benoit Mandelbrot's paper about the length of England's coastline was certainly very important to the study of fractals (and I didn't know he worked for IBM until looking it up just now), but it doesn't constitute a discovery or invention.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Magnetic storage is a stupid invention. As if anybody would keep their information on magents when hard disks are so cheap!
Not to mention relational databases. How important is keeping track of your family tree anyway? What's wrong with the old flow-chart-on-paper method?
I wish IBM would invent something useful.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Sure, Happy Birthday-- but news has it that internal morale surveys show that IBM (U.S.A.) employees aren't happy campers. Maybe it's the memos and conference calls directing managers to identify every outsourcable position in their U.S. organization? Great lets celebrate those 29K accomplishments- but lets also ask where the research for the next 29K patents is going to be done. Any guesses???
is their contribution to the Nazi party by selling them computers which, unless I'm mistaken
You're mistaken. Computers were not invented until the waning days of WW2, and IBM didn't build the 701 until 1952, and the 702 in 1953. IBM's German sub-corp did sell them tabulating equipment in the 1930's, which was used at concentration camps. This arm of IBM was nationalized by the Nazi's in 1941, and IBM HQ lost control of it. Concentration camps were not illegal in time of war, the fact that they were actually extermination camps only came out later. Trying to hold IBM responsible smacks of revisionism.
IBM has a number of firsts in human rights, including:
The first corperation to support the United Negro College Fund in 1944.
and
The first US corperation to mandate equal opportunity employment in 1953.
Granted your comment may be relevant, but I'm interested in finding the mythical corporation in which the conditions you describe do NOT exist.
Size = bureacracy. Can't be avoided. But where many many other organisations have been choked by their own paperwork, IBM continues to be relevant in a very fast paced industry. Not a perfect company by any means, but better than most based on its track record.
Generally speaking, the weight of "IBM Fellow" on your business card is worth more than a PhD IMHO.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
While SPARC may have been the first VLSI based RISC architecture, I think the IBM 801 architecture may have preceded it. John Cocke at IBM was a seminal thinker in the area and may have developed the RISC concept and was awarded a Turing award for this work, so he might have a claim for the innovation.
Yah, deep down in the code mine, hacking away with picks and shovels. One of Watson's miners pauses, as his shovel strikes something other than dirt. Down on his knees he goes and carefully brushes the dross away from an enormous nugget of raw code ore, as big as your two fists held together! Now it looks like a shiny, irregularly shaped nugget of source, but he knows as soon as its been cut and polished and compiled and link-edited, the beauty of its FORMAT statements and its computed GOTOs will come shining through...truly a great discovery...FORTRAN was a really valuable find.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
> I was always under the impression that David Patterson at
> Berkeley and John Hennessy (now President of Stanford) invented
> the RISC architecture and then took it to Sun? The Patterson bio
> linked to above seems to indicate that he did invent the
> RISC architecture. Huh.
Nope. The IBM 801 project began in 1975, and I'm fairly sure they had a machine up and running 2 or 3 years later, perhaps sooner.
The Stanford work on MIPS didn't begin until 1981. I was in John's group at Stanford at that time, though not working on RISC, and I distinctly remember that among the factors that led to the university work on RISC was early information on the 801 that started to come out of IBM. I believe that the Berkeley work was roughly contemporary with the Stanford project, though perhaps a bit ahead. Dave Paterson's bio claims that RISC I was the first VLSI RISC, and I suspect that's true. Hard as it may be to believe now, the IBM 801 was built at a time when even a simple CPU took many chips. I recall the actual box being perhaps 2-3 feet long, and maybe 1.5 feet high.
In any case, the IBM 801 work clearly came years earlier than either the Stanford or Bekerely projects, and I think John H. and Dave P. would be the first to acknowledge the seminal work of John Cocke and the IBM 801 team. My impression is that the respect was mutual, and that all involved agreed that both the Standford and Berkeley teams made very important later contributions.
I worked at IBM in Toronto for 8 years. And I agree with some of your sentiments, but it's not always as you portray. At the time, promotions were few and far between -- in my observation, you were either on the fast-track, and got promoted, or you weren't. Alias has been much better to me in this regard (and in many other regards as well).
:-) But I do believe that having some smart and talented people who are not always doing what they're told is a very good thing.
:-), I would work there again if circumstances were appropriate, and the right opportunity arose. (That said, I'm not looking to leave Alias unless the Autodesk merger competly butchers the culture here -- have to wait and see what happens.)
I was never a really great fit for IBMs culture (or to be specific, the culture at the Toronto Lab at the time) -- I'm too much of a loose cannon for their tastes. (Although at my present employer, I probably don't qualify for that description, as there are some looser ones around here -- Yes, Duncan, I'm thinking about you
At least one person I worked with there (shared an office with for a time) is now an IBM Fellow. (Deservedly so, I should add -- he (Kevin Stoodley) is one of the sharpest people I've ever met or have the privilege of working with -- I could count the others in his league I've worked with on the fingers of 1 hand.)
In hindsight, overall I found IBM to be a good place to work -- they treated people with respect, and didn't jerk anyone around so far as I could see. Now, being older, and perhaps a bit more grown up (ok not that much
Ian Ameline