ENDICOTT, N.Y. - Google, Apple and Facebook get all the attention. But the forgettable everyday tasks of technology - saving a file on your laptop, swiping your ATM card to get cash, scanning a gallon of milk at the checkout line - that's all IBM.
International Business Machines turns 100 today without much fanfare.
As part of its centennial celebration, IBM employees worldwide today are taking part in a "Celebration of Service," volunteering their time on more than 5,000 community projects in 120 countries. The company employs about 1,300 workers in Tucson.
Its much younger competitors owe a lot to Big Blue, perennially the top producer of U.S. patents.
After all, where would Groupon be without the supermarket bar code? Or Google without the mainframe computer?
"They were kind of like a cornerstone of that whole enterprise that has become the heart of the computer industry in the U.S.," says Bob Djurdjevic, a former IBM employee and president of Annex Research.
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IBM dates to June 16, 1911, when three companies that made scales, punch-clocks for work and other machines merged to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Co. The modern-day name followed in 1924.
The company began making punch-card computing systems in the 1930s, introduced the magnetic hard drive in 1956 and the floppy disk in 1971. In the 1960s, IBM developed the first bar code, paving the way for automated supermarket checkouts. IBM introduced a high-speed processing system that allowed ATM transactions. It created magnetic strip technology for credit cards.
IBM introduced its influential personal computer in 1981, but it passed on buying the rights to the software that ran it - made by a startup called Microsoft.