order your copy from the c-span store for $18.95. company ibm has been in rochester, minnesota since the 1950's. coming up, we'll take you inside the facility to learn about the innovations that happened here that have an impact on your lives everyday. >> back in 1956, rochester was a city of about 30,000 people. it had the mayo clinic. and business leaders in town put together a group to look at how can we attract new business to rochester. at the same time, ibm was looking for a midwest location for expansion. >> i think we picked the site because it's within 300 miles of the center of our market and our people think that it's the nicest town within that 300 mile radius for the location of the ibm plant. we found unusually fine recreational facilities here, unusually fine educational facilities, and i think

unusually fine people. >> so ibm broke ground for this rochester campus in 1956. our original mission was manufacturing. we manufactured punchcard products, color later is, and collators, and tabulators. the company began to grow after five years of manufacturing. we started a development lab in 1961 and started developing ibm products in addition to manufacturing. that was a big step forward, brought in additional skills and talent and helped aid the growth. we don't have ibm products in our pocket like consumer electronics. it's not always as visible to people day in and day out. much of the world runs on ibm, ibm mainframes, ibmi, ibm power systems run much of the world's business.

so when you make a credit card transaction, that's more than likely, 90% chance or higher is running on an ibm system. and a lot of the infrastructure of the world runs on ibm. ♪ so, ibm is a 108-year-old company, which i think is an amazing feat that not only have we survived a hundred years, but we've thrived. ♪ thomas watson senior was our founder of ibm back in 1911. ibm stands for international business machines, and it's all about supporting business and making business more productive. back when ibm was founded, we were making meat scales, simple tabulating machines, clocks, so we've come a long way. ibm's expansion over time, we were a new york-based company. a lot of our business was customers along the east coast of the united states. and i think one of thomas watson

senior's early visions was, and why he called us international business machines, was that he wanted to be a global company. so that's expanding within the u.s., but also around the globe. i think that was different for a lot of companies back then. >> this, gentlemen, is system three, a computer for the businessman who never thought he could afford one. >> 1969, we introduced the system three, the first fully develop system for ibm. >> system three can give you the answers in minutes. any information that provides these answers begins right here in one place, on these new system three punchcards. >> that was done here completely in rochester, and that system was a midrange system meant for small business. it was a part of the marketplace ibm wasn't supporting at the time, and it really made computers available to smaller businesses who couldn't afford a big mainframe or ibm 360. that's been our legacy overtime

, the midrange computer systems from the system three the system -- three, to the system 32, 34, 38, and the as/400 and beyond. the announcement of the as/400 in 1988 was one of the biggest days and ibm rochester history. it was the largest simultaneous announcement of the computer industry. we had business partners that announced on the same day, with 1000 applications that can run on the as/400. that's a really important part, this integrated system that was ready to run customer applications. [applause] >> thank you all. >> so another big event and ibm rochester history was when we want the malcolm baldrige award in 1990. >> let me start with ibm at rochester, a company that proved that quality, coupled with employee training and education, is simply good business.

>> our work on the as/400 really led to us winning that award. we were really proud to represent ibm as a whole and that award win in 1990. >> ibm rochester has a strong history of supporting supercomputers. and if you remember, a supercomputer in 1997 beat gary the world chessmaster in chess. it was called deep blue. locally, in 2002, we started partnering with ibm research. and with of the department energy on a system called blue gene. we started the development of that and it made a system 10 times faster than the latest supercomputer, which was a japanese machine at that time. and in 2004 we came out with blue gene. that legacy continues today and, in fact, last year in 2018, teams here in rochester helped develop and deliver continues to

-- deliver and continue to support a summit in sierra, which is the number one and number two supercomputers in the world. they're with the department of energy. summit, as an example, does 200 quadrillion transactions a second, which is really hard to comprehend. if you compare that to our first product we were manufacturing, one of the collating machines that did four cards per second, technology has come a long way. supercomputing is a way for us to continue to advance the technology. it's really deep technical work our team loves to do. we're very proud of having the number one and number two supercomputers in the world right now. so, our legacy in ibm rochester is of hardware development and manufacturing. ibm's business has transformed and we are now a cloud company, an ai company, and a security company. and so while hardware is still

important, our company has evolved into many other areas. and our site here has evolved and reinvented itself many times over the years. and now we have a hybrid cloud team, a watson health team, assignment -- a finance center. we still do hardware development, which is important for us. we have a patent center. we're a diverse site. while were proud of manufacturing, we're strategic for ibm in the future and have evolved as a location. >> rochester, minnesota is one of many cities we toured to explore the american story. and to watch more of our visit to rochester and other cities, -- cities across the country, go to c-span.org/citiestour. you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019]

>> this sunday on american women'ss, we visit the memorial in the arlington national cemetery and learn about women who served in the military from the korean war to the war on terror. here's a preview. >> a young first lieutenant in montgomery, alabama. she was suffering financially because she was married to a and women, at that time, were not afforded the opportunity of quarters allowance or quarters. she talked about this. they told her that she should sue. she did. she lost. she was encouraged to keep going. union tookiberties the case to the supreme court.

ruth bader ginsburg was a lot -- and we are proud to know that we are part of her story as well. it affected women across the united states. court toking the declare a suspect criterium, the amicus was stated in 1837, a noted -- by a noble abolition -- noted abolitionist who spoke not elegantly but with unmistakable "i ask nohe said favor for my sex. all i ask of my brethren is that they take this off our neck.

>> watch part two of the women's at 6 p.m.our sunday eastern and 10 p.m. eastern on andrican artifacts kmco explore the nations passed on --rican history tv artifacts," and explore the past of the nation on american history tv. >> next on the civil war, and he spread college professor peter carmichael talks about confederate soldier john futch, and why he chose to desert after the battle of gettysburg. mr. carmichael is the author of "the war for the common soldier: how men thought, fought, and survived in civil war armies." the virginia museum of history and culture hosted the event. it's just over one hour. >> so, now for today's program we are privileged to have one of the nation's for most authorities on the american civil war with us today. dr. peter carmichael earned his