Talk:History of IBM

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[edit] POV check

POV check tags added for passages pasted in from external source without consideration of Wikipedia's content policies. Gazpacho 18:26, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The tagged sections don't appear to be copyvios. Other than some minor tone issues ("surprisingly", "amazingly", and some hyperbole), the article seems fairly well sourced and balanced. Do you have any specific concerns? Right now, so much is tagged that its hard to see what exactly the concern is. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 13:28, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't think I agree. For example, the cited document has this text (http://futureobservatory.dyndns.org/9065.htm#Plug_Compatible); note stressed sections:
Plug Compatible…the second, more important, problem was that of the 'plug compatible' manufacturers. In the 1970's these became IBM's most direct form of competition; on the principle if you can't beat IBM then look just like it (and charge a lower price). These plug took sales directly from where it hurt IBM most. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but where it cut into sales and profits IBM could not afford to be sanguine about it. At first the competition was in the area of 'peripherals'. In particular companies such as Memorex and Telex challenged IBM's hold on storage products (disk, tape and memory). IBM's reaction, to shake off these gnats, was simply to let loose its most advanced technology and suck its competitors into a crushing race to produce ever more advanced equipment....
And here's what we have:
A more important problem was created in the 1970s by the 'PCMs'—plug-compatible manufacturers—working on the principle that if you can't beat IBM, then look like it but charge a lower price. Initially, they competed in the area of peripherals—disk, tape and memory. IBM's response, to shake off the likes of Memorex and Telex, was to release its most advanced technology.
This article seems to have been lifted pretty systematically, with some rewording. The simple fact that the topics seem to be structured and presented in the same way is striking. I'm quite willing to stipulate that whoever did this thought the text was sufficiently changed to meet Wikipedia goals. But I believe it really needs to be rewritten (or perhaps I should just say "written") – unless the person who wrote the referenced text was in fact the submitter, and was in a position to contribute the material.
This (IBM's history) is an important topic, and deserves the attention of an historian rather than a transcriber. Trevor Hanson 23:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Duh, I somehow missed the prominent first post on this page. So I guess my copyvio comment is kind of irrelevant. Sorry. Trevor Hanson 00:41, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
      1. Hi, this is Michael (mpauliks@yahoo.com): I think it is important to support the 0 and the # by taking a look on following url too: Julius E. Pitrap

http://it.sohu.com/03/96/article15209603.shtml

[edit] Rewrite

I've just suggested that this article needs a rewrite - it's ungrammatical, huge and confusing, the chronological order is messed up, there's barely anything on the history of IBM's PC and PowerPC ventures (2 of the more important aspects of the company) and the flow of the article has clearly been messed up by various cuts (eg. Watson, the 1st President, is referred to without being introduced). I'll get to work on some of these issues when I have time, but if someone else could help out with this mammoth task that'd be much appreciated. Thomas Ash 16:20, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree. I am an ex-IBM'er and I found this articule to be particularly confusing and poorly written (for example the dealing with competition section). The history seems technially accurate (at least it lines up with my own personal knowledge), and the analysis seems to also be correct (although I'm not sure how much of it is appropriate, as helpful as it may be). The major problem is, to me, the poor grammar and organization. I was going to copyedit the article (as I am in the process of doing for IBM, however after reading 70% of this article I'm of the opinion that it needs to be started over from scratch. Any takers? /Blaxthos 22:27, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
This is such a major undertaking. We're essentially asking for a volunteer who will author a short book on the subject, and then (as author) release all or part of the content through Wikipedia. Another approach might be for someone to write a very abbreviated history – essentially just a framework – which could then be used by the community to structure topic-by-topic rewriting. (Few will take on "The History of IBM"; but many would consider tackling "The 1956 Consent Decree" or "Early IBM Research".) As I noted in an earlier post, I see (at least on a cursory glance) a good deal of material in the current article that apparently was transliterated from http://futureobservatory.dyndns.org/9065.htm; much of that in turn seems to be based on a book by David Mercer: IBM: How the World's Most Successful Corporation Is Managed. (A sign of this is in the somewhat curious section headings: "Selling the family silver", "Lowest cost producer", "Buying in".) We clearly need multi-sourced, original text. Trevor Hanson 00:42, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, starting from scratch might be the best thing to do... Thomas Ash 16:21, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I suggests that we use the text before text based on the book by David Mercer was inserted, when history was a section of the main IBM article, as a start for this article instead of starting from complete scratch. Good idea or bad? - David Björklund (talk) 01:12, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Very good idea. Go ahead - I'll try to add back in some of what's good in the current article when you've done so. Thomas Ash 09:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm. My first reaction also was "great idea"; but reading over the old text is a bit deflating. The various events and facts cited seem to be an almost random sprinkling of detail. (Of course the topic is huge.) So what Kesla proposes is a good idea, but by all means take a blue pencil and edit the heck out of it. In particular, if the two of you can restructure the outline, so that it reflects the salient events in IBM's history, that could help guide others in filling in the gaps. Trevor Hanson 19:30, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. However, I feel that I do not have the knowledge of IBM's history to make such an outline. Maybe that is the next thing to discuss. - David Björklund (talk) 00:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
See below. Trevor Hanson 06:47, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted the text to the one that I suggested earlier, and added some text from the previous article. I also used the proposed timeline. There's quite a lot of cleanup to do, but at least it's a start. Please add more things from the previous article you found good, so that it don't get wasted! - David Björklund (talk) 15:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent changes by 220.233.221.252 removing exclamation marks

A systematic edit was just made replacing exclamation marks with periods. However, this resulted in many instances of incorrect punctuation (e.g. double periods, or mid-sentence periods), and it also retitled Feynman's book Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman! I have fixed the errors that stood out. I can understand 220.233.221.252 wanting to get rid of some of those exclamation marks; but the underlying problem would seem to be in the sentences where they were used, rather than in the punctuation. This article is, after all, flagged for rewrite. Trevor Hanson 19:41, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New outline for History of IBM article

Discussion above suggests that the rewrite effort begin by a) reverting to an older version of the text, viz. the text here, and b) expanding the outline to include salient events and issues that should be addressed in subsequent revisions. Some of that material might be taken from the later updates to the article; other material should be written anew.

I suggest that we use this thread to start assembling a list of major topics that should be covered. A good reference source for significant events would be http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/documents/index.html, which is IBM's corporate take on what has happened.

As a starting point, I will paste in a list of topics for consideration. This is essentially a random list of issues that come to mind, grafted onto an edited version of the current structure. I'm sure I've omitted many key issues but we must start somewhere. I suggest we jointly edit this directly, adding and reorganizing topics, to see if we can come up with something that looks workable. I expect we'll add lots and lots of detail, which we'll need to cull out (or preferably insert as subheadings) to produce a reasonable top-level structure. A key question will be: Which topics should be segregated into sub-articles, so we can keep the main article to a reasonable length? (I should add as an aside that I believe many of these issues need to be addressed here separately from an historical perspective, distinct from their treatment in subject-matter articles. Thus I think the history article and its subarticles need to address aspects of the S/360 and S/370 that do NOT belong in their primary articles. At least, I think that's what I think. I don't see how we stitch perspectives on what the S/360 project did to IBM into an already-full article about the wires-and-pliers aspects of that system. I need to think more about this, however.)

The following is merely a suggestion; feel free to butcher it, or replace it with a different approach. Sorry for using <pre> but I thought this would probably be easiest for hackery. Trevor Hanson 06:47, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Timeline
    * 1880s–1911: Herman Hollerith and The Tabulating Machine Company
    * 1911–1924: Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR)
    * 1924–1938?: Between the wars 
    * 1938-1949: World War II and Holocaust period
    * 1950-1959: Postwar recovery and the rise of business computing
    * 1960-1969: The System/360 era
    * 1970-1979: The System/370 era
    * 1980-1989: Information revolution, rise of software and PC industries
    * 1990-1999: IBM's rebirth
    * after 2000: Recent trends

Major historical events and trends
    * Non-computer lines of business
    * IBM service organizations
    * IBM Research and academic relations
    * Air Force and airline projects in the 50s
    * Scientific computing in the 50s and 60s
    * Federal Systems Division
    * Antitrust: 1959 consent decree, 1969 litigation, 1982 dismissal
    * Unbundling of software and services in 1969
    * Evolution of IBM's computer hardware
    * Evolution of IBM's operating systems
    * High-level languages
    * IBM and AIX/UNIX/Linux/SCO

Competition and market forces

    * In the 1950s/1960s: 
        - Evolution of the computer industry
        - IBM's competitors
        - IBM's response to competition, and eventual industry dominance

    * In the 1970s/1980s
        - Dominance of the mainframe, and its transformation of organizations
        - Evolution of ADP/MIS departments into IT organizations: changing roles, goals, and methods
        - Emergence of departmental computing and minicomputers
        - Emergence of time-sharing and the "Information Center"
        - Emergence of software industry versus "bespoke software"
        - Leasing Companies
        - PCMs (Plug-Compatible Manufacturers)
        - IBM's response to competition

    * After the PC revolution
        - Rise of the "knowledge worker"
        - Computing becomes utility/commodity
        - IBM PC versus Apple
        - IBM versus PCMs
        - IBM's responses to a changing marketplace

Critical projects/technologies in IBM history
    * The IBM S/360 project
    * OS/360 and the Mythical Man Month
    * CP/CMS and VM
    * Key software technologies: COBOL, CICS, IMS, DB2
    * The canceled IBM FS project
    * 3270 display terminal family
    * IBM PC
    * IBM PowerPC and RISC technology
    * AIX

I continue to believe that, in addition to the straight timeline headings currently present in the article, a number of "major events and trends" headings should be included. One example is "Unbundling of software and services", which is referenced as a subheading in a link (now broken) in another Wikipedia article. Other topics such as those listed above also seem important, independent of their slots in a chronology, and could be useful for reference from other Wikipedia articles. I will resist adding such headings unless I feel like taking on the larger project of shepherding the article; but if others agree, perhaps at least creating some placeholders would help encourage contributions. Trevor Hanson 21:15, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

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