IBM@70

Blue Beneath the Southern Cross
Celebrating 70 years in Australia

"This business of ours has a future... it has a past of which we are all proud...
but it has a future beyond your lifetime and mine."
- Thomas J Watson Sr (1926-1956)

1930s The new Australian operation had a humble start. Fortunately for IBM, it's time recording equipment and weighing scales were useful aids for companies aiming to improve their productivity and fight off the nation's economic downturn.     1940s By the end of the war, IBM Australia was showing the modest annual profit of ?,000 and was ready for percentage growth. And Australia was ready for the era of computing.     1950s A new era began in 1956 when Thomas J Watson Jr became Chief Executive Officer of IBM. The younger Watson set the company on an ambitious program to develop a radical kind of computer that would set a new benchmark for the industry.     1960s At the System/360 launch in 1964, Fortune magazine dubbed the machine "IBM's $5 billion gamble". It didn't take long for the wager to pay off handsomely.     1970s The company introduced systems for small offices, including the portable 5100 and the System/32, leading to the formation of the Australian company's general Business Group in 1975.     1980s It took most of the 1980s for the PC to be widely used in business and even longer before mainstream culture experienced the freedom and power of developments like computer games, word processing, educational CD-ROMs, email and the World Wide Web.     1990s A major challenge for IBM at this time was preparing for the Y2K. Not only did the company spend significant resources on ensuring its own systems were Y2K ready, it played a crucial role in helping its customers conduct their own Y2K preparation.     2000s One aspect of IBM's future is as certain as its past: development of advanced materials will continue to define everything else in computing.