Articles
Showing 6 articles by James Cortada
April 26, 2018
Are Americans in danger of losing their Internet?
It’s hard to imagine life without the Internet: no smart phones, tablets, PCs, Netflix, the kids without their games. Impossible, you say? Not really, because we have the Internet thanks to a series of conditions in the United States that made it possible to create it in the first place and that...
August 3, 2015
Help on a History of IBM
Dear fellow members of ITHS, I am an historian, serve on the board of ITHS, and worked at IBM for 38 years. Some of you may have seen books I have written on the history of the IT industry over the years. I am now going to write a large, full history of IBM from the 1880s to the present and need...
April 7, 2014
Happy 50th Birthday S/360!
I consider this set of 150 products announced on April 7, 1964, to be the most important introduced by an American company in the 20th century. And I am not alone in that view. How we used computers around the world was shaped directly by these machines and software, including your cell phone....
January 21, 2014
Why Care Who Invented the First Computer?
During January some of you might have noticed a running dialogue among historians and other interested parties about who invented the “first” computer. There was no agreement reached on the correct answer to that question. Discussions about “firsts” pop up about every five years, almost like...
April 4, 2011
How Does a Company Make it to 100? The Short History.
We all know very few organizations do live to the age of 100, especially corporations. Those that do obviously tend to get more things right than wrong, and the market rewards them for their behavior. Luck and circumstances are important factors, but increasingly historians observe corporate...
February 28, 2011
Happy Birthdays IBM
James W. Cortada IBM Corporation Happy Birthdays?! Yes, the company has potentially three birthdays, so which one is the “real” birthday? In 2011 IBM is celebrating its 100th birthday, a remarkable achievement for any company, but especially one in such a volatile high-tech industry as ours. But...