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A census solved with cardboard, a company remade by a $5 billion gamble, and a tiny firmware layer that cracked open the PC market—this is the human story behind how computing became a platform, not a product. We go from Hermann Hollerith’s 1890 insight to IBM’s sales-first system that taught the world to think in fields and records, and then to the cultural and ethical crosscurrents that come with scale. Those punched holes didn’t just count people; they trained generations to quantify work, plan logistics, and make decisions with data.

The narrative turns at a crossroads in the early 1960s. Thomas J. Watson Jr. sees a maze of incompatible machines and bets the company on a single, compatible architecture: System/360. It demanded new chips, code, factories, and nerve. Launch day lands with shock and relief—orders flood in for a family of computers that finally speak the same language. That choice redefined the industry’s economics: software could live longer than hardware, upgrades didn’t mean rewrites, and customers stopped fearing growth. Architecture became destiny, and IBM set the standard that everyone from Apple to ARM would later emulate in their own ecosystems.

Then the stage shifts again to 1981, where a humble BIOS turns one machine into a platform. IBM documented how its firmware behaved; Compaq legally reimplemented it; the clone market ignited. Prices dropped, innovation surged, and the Wintel era took shape. IBM lost tight control but the world gained a common PC standard that carried software across brands and borders. From punch card schemas to UEFI, from batch jobs to cloud migrations, the same lesson repeats: design for compatibility, bet on continuity, and accept that openness can multiply impact.

If the story made you think differently about the architecture beneath your apps and devices, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find Technology Tap. What bold standard—or act of openness—should today’s tech leaders champion next?

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Juan Rodriguez can be reached at
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