Happy 100th Birthday, IBM
It was a nice touch for IBM to host the Retiree Centennial Event 100 years to the day after the company's founding. About 500 IBM retirees filled the main RTP cafeteria area.
The single best moment... a video of Apollo remembrances from a programmer only 19 months with the company at the time. He recalled how they tried to anticipate problems they hoped would never happen, and he and his officemate put a new program in place prior to Apollo 13... the purpose: execute a burn to get the spacecraft back quicker in case of an emergency. Their work got Apollo 13 back a day quicker, and in all probability averted a tragedy.
That exemplified the contributions IBMers have made. It takes a lot for a company to last a hundred years... we must have been doing something right.
