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The Computer Blues
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11732 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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4 / 1987 |
4,089 Words |
| Author
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Robert L. Ashenhurst
Robert L. Ashenhurst is professor of business at the
University of Chicago and has published articles in switching
theory, computer arithmetic, network configurations, and
management information systems. |
LESSONS
An Autobiography
An Wang, with Eugene Linden
Reading, Mass.: Addison- Wesley Publishing,
1986
BIG BLUE
IBM'S Use and Abuse of Power
Richard Thomas DeLamarter
New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.,
1986
In the firmament of the computer business, International Business Machines Corporation and Wang Laboratories are both stars, albeit of different magnitudes. Both are Fortune 500 companies - IBM has $50 billion in sales and 400,000 employees, and Wang $2.5 billion in sales and 30,000 employees. In recent years both have been, in separate ways and on separate exchanges, darlings of Wall Street. And at this time, the early part of 1987, both are in trouble. The recent publication of Big Blue and Lessons may be welcomed as possible insights into the origin and character of their separate falls from grace.
IBM was started in 1924 by Thomas J. Watson, who gained control of, and then reorganized, its predecessor, Computing-Recording-Tabulating Company. Wang Labs was started in 1951 by An Wang, on a shoestring (a basic patent and a few hundred dollars personal savings). In 1924 there was no computer business as such; IBM was mainly in the tabulating (punched-card) machine business until the introduction of the IBM 701, its first commercial electronic computer, in 1952. Likewise,
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