IBM is marking the 100-year anniversary of its founding on 16 June 1911 with a year-long global initiative.
Through its observance, the company -- whose numerous innovations and inventions began with commercial scales and cheese slicers and have continued through ground-breaking technology for supercomputing systems and artificial intelligence -- will re-examine the history of technology innovation and predict where the world will be in the next 100 years.
IBM has a long association with SPIE. The IBM Almaden Research facility is an SPIE Corporate Member, and nearly 2,000 articles in the SPIE Digital Library -- the most-cited reference in United States optical engineering and photonics patent literature -- have been authored by IBM employees.
The IBM centennial website features 100 IBM innovations as Icons of Progress that helped shape the last century. Among them is excimer laser surgery, which became the foundation for LASIK and PRK eye surgery. (James Wynne, a member of the discovery team, told the story in an SPIE Newsroom video interview earlier this year.)
.
