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.