Fun Facts About IBM

Fun facts about IBM are better than most company trivia, because IBM has been going since 1911. It helped put men on the moon, it has five Nobel Prize winners on the payroll history, and it built the laptop line that half our customers still buy second hand. Here are the ones worth knowing.

Quick answer: IBM was founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, took the name International Business Machines in 1924, and sold its PC division, ThinkPad included, to Lenovo in 2005.

Key takeaways

• IBM stands for International Business Machines and began life as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company.
• Charles Ranlett Flint founded the business in 1911.
• Five Nobel Prize winners have worked at IBM.
• The ThinkPad line IBM created now belongs to Lenovo, which is why used ThinkPads are still everywhere in South African offices.

It did not start as a computer company

Charles Ranlett Flint assembled the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in 1911 out of several existing businesses that made scales, time clocks and punch card tabulators. The International Business Machines name came in 1924. For decades the company was about counting and sorting rather than computing as we understand it now.

IBM helped get Apollo to the moon

The System/360 mainframe, launched in the 1960s, brought a level of compatibility across a whole family of machines that had not existed before. NASA leaned on IBM systems through the Apollo programme that landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Five Nobel Prizes

• Leo Esaki, 1973, for his work on semiconductors.
• Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, for the scanning tunnelling microscope.
• Georg Bednorz and Alex Mueller, for their research into superconductivity.

Not many hardware companies can point to a research arm of that weight.

The first smartphone was an IBM

The Simon, released in 1994, is widely credited as the first smartphone. It had a touchscreen, it sent email and faxes, and it weighed about half a kilogram. It arrived thirteen years before the first iPhone.

The dress code was legendary

IBM salesmen in white shirts and dark suits were a recognisable type for most of the twentieth century. The rules have relaxed a great deal since, but the reputation stuck.

Why any of this matters when you are buying a used laptop

IBM launched the ThinkPad in 1992, then sold its personal computing division to Lenovo in 2005. Lenovo kept the design language and the engineering: the red TrackPoint, the hinge, the keyboard people still argue is the best on any laptop. That lineage is why a ten year old ThinkPad still feels solid in the hand.

It also explains the resale market. Machines built for corporate fleets come off lease in volume and hold up well, which describes most of our used Lenovo stock. A ThinkPad T490 with a Core i5-8365U runs about R5 050 in grade B at the time of writing, which is a lot of laptop for the money.

Tip: If you like the ThinkPad keyboard but want more screen, dock a 14 inch model to a monitor at your desk. A dock and a second hand screen cost less than stepping up to a 15 inch machine.

How the old business brands compare today

HP, Dell and Lenovo all build to a similar standard at the business end of their ranges, and used prices usually come down to condition and processor generation rather than badge. We put the three head to head in our comparison of the main business laptop families. The short version: pick on spec and grade first, brand second.

For most buyers the sensible starting point is a Core i5 machine with 8GB of RAM and an SSD. Browse the full laptop range if you want to compare generations, or look at the desktop side if the machine is going to live on one desk anyway.

Frequently asked questions

Does IBM still make laptops?

No. IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo in 2005. Any laptop carrying an IBM badge today is at least two decades old.

Are ThinkPads still made the way IBM made them?

Lenovo has kept the core of the design, including the TrackPoint and the keyboard feel, and the ThinkPad is still a business fleet machine rather than a consumer one. Current models are Lenovo products through and through.

Is a used ThinkPad a safe buy?

It is, if you buy from someone who grades and tests. Ask what condition grade you are getting, whether Windows is genuine, and what the warranty covers. Ours ship with genuine Windows 11 Pro and a one year warranty.

IBM trivia is entertaining, but the practical lesson is simple. The machines that last are the ones designed for organisations that could not afford downtime. That was true of the System/360, it was true of the ThinkPad, and it is still the reason ex-corporate hardware is the best value on the South African second hand market.