💻 IBM Japan in 15 Seconds 📚
Here’s your crash course on IBM Japan. In 1925, a tableware manufacturer installed the first IBM tabulating machine. In 1973, Leo Esaki won the Nobel Prize in Physics for electron tunneling. In 1982, the Tokyo Research Lab opened. In 1992, the ThinkPad700C was released. And now, in 2015, IBM’s teaming up with Apple in Japan to create an elderly-friendly iPad. We’re out of time, but rest assured, the goods are still being churned out. Class dismissed.

9 years ago

410 notes

“They did not hire me to give them something they like, they hired me to give them something that works”

Paul Rand,
Legendary artist, IBM logo designer

(Photo from new Paul Rand Exhibit in New York City.)

9 years ago

80 notes

How did Brooklyn’s Peretz Rosenbaum become one of the most influential graphic designers the world has even known? See for yourself at his exhibit on Manhattan’s Museum Mile. Now through July 19.

9 years ago

50 notes

The IBM Selectric III Typewriter, deconstructed:

Keys, interchangeable type element, ribbon system, tab control, left margin stop, typing element, platen variable, half-backspace lever, pitch selection lever, paper ball lever, paper edge guide, page-end indicator, paper centering guide, cardholder, paper centering scale, line space lever, paper release lever, line finder, impression control, plug, bell. Ding!

9 years ago

270 notes

“All parts should go together without forcing. Therefore, if you can’t get them back together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.” IBM maintenance manual 1975

See what else is in the attic →

9 years ago

516 notes

Model, author, poet, mother, artist. Pati Hill had several careers. But she’s best known for the work she made in the late 1970s with a new art-making tool, the photocopier. Smitten by the qualities of the IBM Copier 2, Hill negotiated the loan of a...

Model, author, poet, mother, artist. Pati Hill had several careers. But she’s best known for the work she made in the late 1970s with a new art-making tool, the photocopier. Smitten by the qualities of the IBM Copier 2, Hill negotiated the loan of a machine through friend and IBM collaborator, designer Charles Eames. IBM delivered and installed the copier at her home, inspiring a body of work that spans years. While not the first to use a photocopier in an art context, Hill was no copycat, and proved herself in hundreds of images and words to be an innovative, eloquent, and singular artist. Pati Hill died last month . We remember her here with some of her black-and-white best, including A Swan: An Opera in Nine Chapters, Photocopied Objects (balls and jacks) and Photocopied Objects (soap), courtesy of Estate of Pati Hill.

Get a sneak peek at Arcadia University’s upcoming retrospective of her work →

10 years ago

113 notes

Tik-tik-tikka-tik-tik-tik-tikka-tik-tik…fffffffffft…tik-tik-tik-tikka-tik-tik-tikka…fffffffffft…tik-tik-tik-tikka-tik—Ding!

10 years ago

255 notes

Backspace to 1961 (via Instagram) #TBT

10 years ago

43 notes

“No paper moving cartridge!”
“No type bars!”
“Prints faster than the eye can see.”

The old school way to change fonts. Turns 53 today. #TBT

10 years ago

93 notes

Selectrically speaking…

53 years ago this week, electronic “golf-balls” began bouncing their way across the letterheads of corporate America. The IBM Selectric typewriter revolutionized mid-century office memos as typists could now use different fonts and clock up to 90 words a minute–40 more than anything else before it. Good thing white correction fluid was already invented.

10 years ago

104 notes