IBM celebrates 100th birthday  Today marks the 100th birthday of
IBM, which was founded on June 16, 1911, in New York City as the
awkwardly named Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. (It was
renamed International Business Machines in 1924.)  Over the
decades, Big Blue, as the company is nicknamed, has reinvented
itself many times, offering everything from calculators to
electric typewriters to desktop computers to software to
consulting services. By the mid-20th century, IBM was an icon of
American business whose clean-cut employees in dark suits
followed the mantra “Think,” a favorite slogan of longtime
leader Thomas J. Watson.  Despite a somewhat stodgy reputation
in recent years, IBM holds more patents than any other
U.S.-based technology company and has a long history of
pioneering technological innovations. IBM research has yielded
the computerized airline reservation system, the magnetic strip
on your credit cards, the ATM, the UPC bar code and the excimer
laser used in LASIK eye surgery. IBM compute