IBM Corp.

IBM Corp.

 in full International Business Machines Corporation

Leading U.S. computer manufacturer, headquartered in Armonk, N.Y. It was incorporated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co., a consolidation of three office-products companies. It adopted its present name in 1924 under the leadership of Thomas J. Watson, Sr., who built it into the major U.S. manufacturer of punch card tabulators. IBM bought an electric typewriter company in 1933 and soon secured a large share of that market. In the early 1950s it entered the computer industry, investing heavily in development, and in the 1960s it produced 70% of the world's computers. Its initial specialty was mainframe computers, but in 1981 it produced its first personal computer, the IBM PC. IBM quickly became a leader in this field, but fierce competition undermined its market share and forced the company to retrench in the 1990s. In 1995 IBM bought the software manufacturer Lotus Development Corp.