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IBM Did Not Invent the Personal Computer

Posted by timothy on from the you-help-one-just-one-reich dept.

theodp writes "As IBM gives itself a self-congratulatory pat on the back as it celebrates its 100th anniversary, Robert X. Cringely wants to set the record straight: 'IBM didn't invent the personal computer', writes Cringely, 'but they don't know that.' Claiming to have done so, he adds, soils the legacy of Ed Roberts and pisses off all real geeks in the process. Throwing Big Blue a bone, Cringely is willing to give IBM credit for 'having helped automate the Third Reich'."

10 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. "Automate the Third Reich"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I know that not every comparison involving the Nazis is invalid, but does this strike anyone else as being more than a bit reductio ad Hitlerum?

    1. Re:"Automate the Third Reich"? by CharlyFoxtrot · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, a bit hypocritical to just lay the blame at IBM's feet too. The US has a long history of doing business with criminal regimes from banana republics, to the nazi's, to apartheid South Africa, to regimes like Saudi Arabia today.

      --
      If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
    2. Re:"Automate the Third Reich"? by mother_reincarnated · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually lets totally forget that, m'kay? Sometimes there is no need for shades of grey.

    3. Re:"Automate the Third Reich"? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You missed the point.

      IBM supplied Germany with machines and intelligence during the war, with full knowledge of Thomas Watson himself. Which at the time, if he were caught, would probably have gotten him charges of treason and aiding and abetting the enemy, at the very least.

      There is strong physical evidence, including memos, invoices, and receipts, indicating that IBM (and I mean the US offices, not just some German branch) actively, during the war, supplied the Nazis with machines that were used to keep track of prisoners at concentration camps, and instruction on how to use them.

    4. Re:"Automate the Third Reich"? by NoOneInParticular · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All IBM has to do to corroborate your hypothesis is to open up their archives, and show through written communication that the international leadership was indeed side-stepped by the SA goons. IBM hasn't opened up these archives, unlike most other companies involved with the Nazis, therefore I highly doubt that the head-honchos in New York at the time were innocent.

    5. Re:"Automate the Third Reich"? by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Uhh they helped them put people into categories for eugenics purposes just like they did here in the USA or did you forget that we were sterilizing undesirables and putting out books on how negroid and mongoloid features were proof they were inferior to white races?

      As someone who actually got to hear about liberating one of the polish camps from my grandfather who was there frankly nobody believed the stories until we actually got to the first camps, which is why Patton and Ike made the scenes be recorded and shuffled the townspeople of the nearby villages through the camps to witness the horror. We thought the stories were just so much bullshit just as the stories being spread by Lord Haw Haw and Axis Sally, which had the Nazis slaughtering the Americans in huge numbers while kicking the Russian ass.

      So while hindsight is 20/20 most people at the time thought it would be used for sterilization (not nice either, but what we in the USA were doing) not for systemic slaughter. Sadly there are no true good guys with clean hands in that war, you had the Russians and the rape of Berlin as well as mass slaughter of German POWs, the rape of Nanking by the japs as well as experimenting on prisoners (which we let them get away with in return for the data) and you had the USA doing terror bombings as well as two atomics on a country that frankly had had it and was no longer able to put up any real defense.

      Despite all the "America Fuck yeah!" attached to that war the simple fact is total war is a brutal thing but we were a little more naive back then and as my grandfather said "If I wouldn't have seen the cattle cars with my own eyes I would have called you a liar." because until they got to the camps they just hadn't seen any indication that the truth wasn't they had sent the Jews east, which is what everyone believed at the time.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Invented -- no. Delivered -- yes. by tygr6x · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just like Columbus did not actually discover America, IBM did not invent the personal computer. However, just like Columbus for all intents and purposes put America on the map, IBM did deliver the PC to the world in a way that no other did (or could) at the time.

  3. "Invented" is overused by sunderland56 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nobody "invented" the personal computer. Taking an existing product and making it cheaper/faster/smaller/cooler is not "inventing" anything, it is merely developing a better product.

    Apple did not "invent" the smartphone, Toyota did not "invent" the hybrid, and Tivo did not "invent" recording video on hard disks either.

  4. Re:Yes, they did by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The Apple II was plastic, toylike and very expensive for what you got. (You might as well have bought a TRS-80 and saved yourself a good chunk of change.)

    The IBM PC was also expensive, but had top quality hardware similar to their mainframe terminals, including: a substantial steel chassis and case, a crisp monochrome monitor that you could actually work with all day without going blind, and one of the best keyboards ever made. It was a serious personal computer that PHBs felt comfortable buying for their businesses.

    So the definition depends on your perspective. If based on technicalities, the Apple II, the Altair 8800, the Atari 2600, the Commodore PET, etc. were all "personal computers" because they had microprocessors. If based on what was understood to be a computer in the business word, the IBM PC was one of the first business computers that was small enough and inexpensive enough so that most were bought to be used by one person.

  5. Re:Yes, IBM invented the IBM PC, but not the PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Once the BIOS was opened up"

    Well, yeah. Thanks to Phoenix, the IBM PC compatible market opened up, and all the technical superior microcomputers (lacking clones) were doomed. (I'm aware of the other clones before Phoenix, when each manufacturer did their own reverse-engineering and built their own BIOS -- I assume you're referring to Phoenix's commercially available BIOS, and if not, I think you should be.)

    But does IBM deserve any credit for that? They fought tooth and nail against it. The main reason IBM's box happened to be cloned was their heavy-weight name, not anything they "invented".