That was quite natural. Mechanical, electro-mechanical, mostly electronic.

Turing_Machine · on May 11, 2015

Sure. The interesting question is why, out of all the office machine companies that tried it, only IBM managed to pull it off.

kens · on May 11, 2015

I think that gives the wrong impression, that office machine companies tried making computers and failed. Remington Rand, for instance, was IBM's principal rival in the 1950's, selling the UNIVAC. Olivetti had transistorized mainframes before IBM. I think the interesting question is why IBM survived while the rest didn't. My highly oversimplified answer would be the IBM 360 crushed them.