The company behind punched cards, floppy disks and the Jeopardy-winning computer system Watson traces its roots to 1911, when New York financier Charles Flint merged three manufacturing companies, creating the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. In time, the company moved away from its computing
A hundred years ago, on June 16, 1911, Charles Flint, also known as the "father of trusts" because of rubber and chewing gum conglomerates he created in the late 1890s, did a mashup of a bunch of hardware companies that sold meat scales and cheese slicers, time recording equipment (the punch clock),
IBM began life as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. (C-T-R), a rag-tag amalgamation of pseudo-information companies assembled in an acquisition by Wall Street financier Charles Flint in 1911. C-T-R was flailing when it hired Watson to take charge in 1914. Morale was down. The division managers foug
--1911: Incorporation on June 16 of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R), which merges Bundy, the Tabulating Machine Co., the Computing Scale Company and the International Time Recording Co. Headed by trust organizer Charles Flint, the company has 1,300 employees.