Company name	International Business Machines
Company logo	200px
Company type	Public
Founder	Thomas J. Watson
Traded as	Dow Jones Industrial Average Component
Foundation	Endicott, New York June 16, 1911
Location city	Armonk, New York, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Samuel J. Palmisano (Chairman, President and CEO)
Industry	Information technology
Products	''See products listing''
Revenue	US$ 99.870 billion (2010)}}

|operating_income = US$ 19.273 billion (2010)}} |net_income = US$ 14.833 billion (2010)}} |assets = US$ 113.452 billion (2010)}} |equity = US$ 23.172 billion (2010)}} |num_employees = 426,751 (2010) |divisions = HardwareFinancingServicesSoftware |homepage = IBM.com }}

International Business Machines (IBM) () is an American-based multinational technology and consulting firm headquartered in Armonk, New York. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.

The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of four companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Corporation, and the Bundy Manufacturing Company. CTR adopted the name International Business Machines in 1924, using a name previously designated to CTR's subsidiary in Canada and later South America. Its distinctive culture and product branding has given it the nickname ''Big Blue''.

In 2011, ''Fortune'' ranked IBM the 18th largest firm in the U.S., as well as the 7th most profitable. Globally, the company was ranked the 31st largest firm by ''Forbes'' for 2011. Other rankings for 2011 include #1 company for leaders (''Fortune''), #2 best global brand (''Interbrand''), #1 green company worldwide (''Newsweek''), #12 most admired company (''Fortune''), and #18 most innovative company (''Fast Company''). IBM employs more than 425,000 employees (sometimes referred to as "IBMers") in over 200 countries, with occupations including scientists, engineers, consultants, and sales professionals.

IBM holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company and has nine research laboratories worldwide. Its employees have garnered five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science. Famous inventions by IBM include the automated teller machine (ATM), the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database, the Universal Product Code (UPC), the financial swap, SABRE airline reservation system, DRAM, and Watson artificial intelligence.

The company has undergone several organizational changes since its inception, acquiring companies like SPSS (2009) and PwC consulting (2002), spinning off companies like Lexmark (1991), and selling off product lines like ThinkPad to Lenovo (2005).

History

1880-1929

Starting in the 1880s, various technologies came into existence that would form part of IBM's predecessor company. Julius E. Pitrap patented the computing scale in 1885, Alexander Dey invented the dial recorder in 1888, and a year later Herman Hollerith patented the Electric Tabulating Machine, and Willard Bundy invented a time clock to record a worker's arrival and departure time on a paper tape. On June 16, 1911, these technologies and their respective companies were merged by Charles Ranlett Flint to form the ''Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company'' (C-T-R). The New York City-based company had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York; Dayton, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Washington, D.C.; and Toronto, Ontario. It manufactured and sold machinery ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders to meat and cheese slicers, along with tabulators and punched cards.

Flint recruited Thomas J. Watson, Sr., from the National Cash Register Company to help lead the company in 1914. Watson implemented "generous sales incentives, a focus on customer service, an insistence on well-groomed, dark-suited salesmen and an evangelical fervor for instilling company pride and loyalty in every worker". His favorite slogan, "THINK," became a mantra for C-T-R's employees, and within 11 months of joining C-T-R, Watson became its president. The company focused on providing large-scale, custom-built tabulating solutions for businesses, leaving the market for small office products to others. During Watson's first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million and the company's operations expanded to Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia. On February 14, 1924, C-T-R was renamed the ''International Business Machines Corporation'' (IBM), citing the need to align its name with the "growth and extension of [its] activities".

1930-1979

In 1937, IBM's tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U.S. Government, during its first effort to maintain the employment records for 26 million people pursuant to the Social Security Act, and the Third Reich. Also in 1937, the company president met with Adolf Hitler, and discussed issues on the supply of equipment, and in 1941 were made ​​leasing supplies to camps to accommodate the prisoners. During the Second World War the company produced small arms (M1 Carbine, and Browning Automatic Rifle).

In 1952, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., became president of the company, ending almost 40 years of leadership by his father. In 1956, Arthur L. Samuel of IBM's Poughkeepsie, New York, laboratory programmed an IBM 704 to play checkers using a method in which the machine can "learn" from its own experience. It is believed to be the first "self-learning" program, a demonstration of the concept of artificial intelligence. In 1957, IBM developed the FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) scientific programming language. In 1961, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., was elected chairman of the board and Albert L. Williams became president of the company. IBM develops the SABRE (Semi-Automatic Business-Related Environment) reservation system for American Airlines. The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful model line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on July 31, 1961.

In 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts, and a year later, the company moved its corporate headquarters from New York City to Armonk, New York. The latter half of that decade saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, with IBM participating in the 1965 Gemini flights, the 1966 Saturn flights, and the 1969 mission to land a man on the moon.

On April 7, 1964 IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360. Sold between 1964 and 1978, it was the first family of computers designed to cover the complete range of applications, from small to large, both commercial and scientific. For the first time, companies could upgrade their computing capabilities with a new model without rewriting their applications.

In 1973, IBM engineer George J. Laurer developed the Universal Product Code.

1980-present

Financial swaps were first introduced to the public in 1981 when IBM and the World Bank entered into a swap agreement. The IBM PC was introduced in 1981, originally designated IBM 5150. The IBM PC became the industry standard. In 1991, IBM sold Lexmark, and in 2002, it acquired PwC consulting. In 2003, IBM initiated a project to rewrite its company values. Using its ''Jam'' technology, the company hosted Internet-based online discussions on key business issues with 50,000 employees over 3 days. The discussions were analyzed by sophisticated text analysis software (eClassifier) to mine online comments for themes. As a result of the 2003 Jam, the company values were updated to reflect three modern business, marketplace and employee views: "Dedication to every client's success", "Innovation that matters - for our company and for the world", "Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships". In 2004, another Jam was conducted during which 52,000 employees exchanged best practices for 72 hours. They focused on finding actionable ideas to support implementation of the values previously identified.

In 2005 the company sold its personal computer business to Lenovo, and in 2009, it acquired software company SPSS Inc. Later in 2009, IBM's Blue Gene supercomputing program was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by U.S. President Barack Obama.

In 2011, IBM gained worldwide attention for its artificial intelligence program Watson, which was exhibited on ''Jeopardy!'' where it won against game show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

Corporate affairs

IBM's headquarter complex is located in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The IBM building has three levels of custom curtainwall. The building is located on a 25 acre site. IBM has been headquartered in Armonk since 1964.

The company has nine research labs worldwide—Almaden, Austin, Brazil, China, Haifa, India, Tokyo, Watson (New York), and Zurich—with Watson (dedicated in 1961) serving as headquarters for the research division and the site of its annual meeting. Other campus installations include towers in Montreal, Paris, and Atlanta; software labs in Raleigh-Durham, Rome and Toronto; buildings in Chicago, Johannesburg, and Seattle; and facilities in Hakozaki and Yamato. The company also operates the IBM Scientific Center, the Hursley House, the Canada Head Office Building, IBM Rochester, and the Somers Office Complex. The company's contributions to architecture and design, including Chicago's 330 North Wabash building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, were recognized with the 1990 Honor Award from the National Building Museum.

IBM's Board of Directors, with 14 members, is responsible for the overall management of the company. With Cathie Black's resignation from the board in November 2010, the remaining 13 members (along with their affiliation and year of joining the board) are as follows: Alain J. P. Belda '08 (Alcoa), William R. Brody '07 (Salk Institute / Johns Hopkins University), Kenneth Chenault '98 (American Express), Michael L. Eskew '05 (UPS), Shirley Ann Jackson '05 (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Andrew N. Liveris '10 (Dow Chemical), W. James McNerney, Jr. '09 (Boeing), James W. Owens '06 (Caterpillar), Samuel J. Palmisano '00 (IBM), Joan Spero '04 (Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), Sidney Taurel '01 (Eli Lilly), and Lorenzo Zambrano '03 (Cemex).

{{infobox awards | title	| halign center | award1 | award2 }}

Corporate recognition and brand

In 2011, ''Fortune'' ranked IBM the 18th largest firm in the U.S., Other rankings for 2011 include the following:

#1 company for leaders (''Fortune'')

#2 best global brand (''Interbrand'')

#1 green company worldwide (''Newsweek'')

#12 most admired company (''Fortune'')

#18 most innovative company (''Fast Company'').

For 2010, IBM's brand was valued at $64.7 billion.

Working at IBM

In 2010, IBM employed 105,000 workers in the U.S., a drop of 30,000 since 2003, and 75,000 people in India, up from 9,000 seven years previous.

IBM's employee management practices can be traced back to its roots. In 1914, CEO Thomas J. Watson boosted company spirit by creating employee sports teams, hosting family outings, and furnishing a company band. In 1924, the Quarter Century Club, which recognizes employees with 25 years of service, was organized and the first issue of ''Business Machines'', IBM's internal publication, was published. In 1925, the first meeting of the Hundred Percent Club, composed of IBM salesmen who meet their quotas, convened in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

IBM was among the first corporations to provide group life insurance (1934), survivor benefits (1935) and paid vacations (1937). In 1932 IBM created an Education Department to oversee training for employees, which oversaw the completion of the IBM Schoolhouse at Endicott in 1933. In 1935, the employee magazine ''Think'' was created. Also that year, IBM held its first training class for women systems service professionals. In 1942, IBM launched a program to train and employ disabled people in Topeka, Kansas. The next year classes begin in New York City, and soon the company was asked to join the President's Committee for Employment of the Handicapped. In 1946, the company hired its first black salesman, 18 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1947, IBM announces a Total and Permanent Disability Income Plan for employees. A vested rights pension is added to the IBM retirement plan.

In 1952, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., published the company's first written equal opportunity policy letter, one year before the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education and 11 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1961, IBM's nondiscrimination policy was expanded to include sex, national origin, and age. The following year, IBM hosted its first Invention Award Dinner honoring 34 outstanding IBM inventors; and in 1963, the company named the first eight IBM Fellows in a new Fellowship Program that recognizes senior IBM scientists, engineers and other professionals for outstanding technical achievements. On September 21, 1953, Thomas Watson, Jr., the company's president at the time, sent out a controversial letter to all IBM employees stating that IBM needed to hire the best people, regardless of their race, ethnic origin, or gender. He also publicized the policy so that in his negotiations to build new manufacturing plants with the governors of two states in the U.S. South, he could be clear that IBM would not build "separate-but-equal" workplaces. In 1984, IBM added sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination policy. The company stated that this would give IBM a competitive advantage because IBM would then be able to hire talented people its competitors would turn down.

IBM was the only technology company ranked in ''Working Mother'' magazine's Top 10 for 2004, and one of two technology companies in 2005. On October 10, 2005, IBM became the first major company in the world to commit formally to not using genetic information in employment decisions. The announcement was made shortly after IBM began working with the National Geographic Society on its Genographic Project.

IBM provides same-sex partners of its employees with health benefits and provides an anti-discrimination clause. The Human Rights Campaign has consistently rated IBM 100% on its index of gay-friendliness since 2003 (in 2002, the year it began compiling its report on major companies, IBM scored 86%). In 2007 and again in 2010, IBM UK was ranked first in Stonewall's annual Workplace Equality Index for UK employers.

The company has traditionally resisted labor union organizing, although unions represent some IBM workers outside the United States. In 2009, the Unite union stated that several hundred employees joined following the announcement in the UK of pension cuts that left many employees facing a shortfall in projected pensions.

A dark (or gray) suit, white shirt, and a "sincere" tie was the public uniform for IBM employees for most of the 20th century. During IBM's management transformation in the 1990s, CEO Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. relaxed these codes, normalizing the dress and behavior of IBM employees to resemble their counterparts in other large technology companies. Since then IBM's dress code is business casual although employees often wear formal clothes during client meetings.

On 16 June 2011, the company announced a grants programs, called IBM100, to fund its employees participation in volunteer projects - the year long initiative is part of the company's centenary celebrations.

Research and inventions

In 1945, The Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory was founded at Columbia University in New York, New York. The renovated fraternity house on Manhattan's West Side was used as IBM's first laboratory devoted to pure science. The lab was the forerunner of IBM's Research Division, which today operates research facilities around the world.

In 1966, IBM researcher Robert H. Dennard invented Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) cells, one-transistor memory cells that store each single bit of information as an electrical charge in an electronic circuit. The technology permits major increases in memory density, and is widely adopted throughout the industry where it remains in widespread use today.

IBM has been a leading proponent of the Open Source Initiative, and began supporting Linux in 1998. The company invests billions of dollars in services and software based on Linux through the IBM Linux Technology Center, which includes over 300 Linux kernel developers. IBM has also released code under different open source licenses, such as the platform-independent software framework Eclipse (worth approximately US$40 million at the time of the donation), the three-sentence International Components for Unicode (ICU) license, and the Java-based relational database management system (RDBMS) Apache Derby. IBM's open source involvement has not been trouble-free, however (see ''SCO v. IBM''). Famous inventions by IBM include the following:

Automated teller machine (ATM)

Floppy disk

Hard disk drive

Magnetic stripe card

Relational database

Universal Product Code (UPC)

Financial swap

SABRE airline reservation system

Digital Random Access Memory (DRAM)

Watson artificial intelligence

Selected current projects

developerWorks is a website run by IBM for software developers and IT professionals. It contains how-to articles and tutorials, as well as software downloads and code samples, discussion forums, podcasts, blogs, wikis, and other resources for developers and technical professionals. Subjects range from open, industry-standard technologies like Java, Linux, SOA and web services, web development, Ajax, PHP, and XML to IBM's products (WebSphere, Rational, Lotus, Tivoli and Information Management). In 2007, developerWorks was inducted into the Jolt Hall of Fame.

alphaWorks is IBM's source for emerging software technologies. These technologies include:

Flexible Internet Evaluation Report Architecture – A highly flexible architecture for the design, display, and reporting of Internet surveys.

IBM History Flow Visualization Application – A tool for visualizing dynamic, evolving documents and the interactions of multiple collaborating authors.

IBM Linux on POWER Performance Simulator – A tool that provides users of Linux on Power a set of performance models for IBM's POWER processors.

Database File Archive And Restoration Management – An application for archiving and restoring hard disk drive files using file references stored in a database.

Policy Management for Autonomic Computing – A policy-based autonomic management infrastructure that simplifies the automation of IT and business processes.

FairUCE – A spam filter that verifies sender identity instead of filtering content.

Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) SDK – A Java SDK that supports the implementation, composition, and deployment of applications working with unstructured data.

Accessibility Browser – A web-browser specifically designed to assist people with visual impairments, to be released as open source software. Also known as the "A-Browser," the technology will aim to eliminate the need for a mouse, relying instead completely on voice-controls, buttons and predefined shortcut keys.

Virtually all console gaming systems of the latest generation use microprocessors developed by IBM. The Xbox 360 contains a PowerPC tri-core processor, which was designed and produced by IBM in less than 24 months. Sony's PlayStation 3 features the Cell BE microprocessor designed jointly by IBM, Toshiba, and Sony. IBM will provide the microprocessors that serve as the heart of Nintendo's new Wii U system, which will debut in 2012. The new Power Architecture-based microprocessor includes IBM's latest technology in an energy-saving silicon package. Nintendo's seventh-generation console, Wii, features an IBM chip codenamed Broadway. The older Nintendo GameCube utilizes the Gekko processor, also designed by IBM.

In May 2002, IBM and Butterfly.net, Inc. announced the Butterfly Grid, a commercial grid for the online video gaming market. In March 2006, IBM announced separate agreements with Hoplon Infotainment, Online Game Services Incorporated (OGSI), and RenderRocket to provide on-demand content management and blade server computing resources.

IBM announced it will launch its new software, called "Open Client Offering" which is to run on Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X. The company states that its new product allows businesses to offer employees a choice of using the same software on Windows and its alternatives. This means that "Open Client Offering" is to cut costs of managing whether to use Linux or Apple relative to Windows. There will be no necessity for companies to pay Microsoft for its licenses for operating systems since the operating systems will no longer rely on software which is Windows-based. One alternative to Microsoft's office document formats is the Open Document Format software, whose development IBM supports. It is going to be used for several tasks like: word processing, presentations, along with collaboration with Lotus Notes, instant messaging and blog tools as well as an Internet Explorer competitor – the Mozilla Firefox web browser. IBM plans to install Open Client on 5% of its desktop PCs. The Linux offering has been made available as the IBM Client for Smart Work product on the Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux platforms.

UC2 (Unified Communications and Collaboration) is an IBM and Cisco Systems joint project based on Eclipse and OSGi. It will offer the numerous Eclipse application developers a unified platform for an easier work environment. The software based on UC2 platform will provide major enterprises with easy-to-use communication solutions, such as the Lotus based Sametime. In the future the Sametime users will benefit from such additional functions as click-to-call and voice mailing.

Redbooks are publicly available online books about best practices with IBM products. They describe the products features, field experience and dos and don'ts, while leaving aside marketing buzz. Available formats are Redbooks, Redpapers and Redpieces.

Extreme Blue is one of IBM's internship programs, which tasks students with developing high-value technology. In 2003, participants in the program filed 98 patents.

In May 2007, IBM unveiled Project Big Green, a re-direction of $1 billion per year across its businesses to increase energy efficiency.

On November 2008, IBM’s CEO, Sam Palmisano, during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, outlined a new agenda for building a Smarter Planet. In addition, an official company blog exists. Smarter Planet @ IBM

On Aug 18, 2011, as part of its effort in cognitive computing, IBM has produced chips that imitate neurons and synapses. These microprocessors do not use von Neumann architecture, and they consume less memory and power.

Environmental record

IBM was recognized as one of the "Top 20 Best Workplaces for Commuters" by the United States Environmental Protection Agency‎ (EPA) in 2005. The award was to recognize Fortune 500 companies which provided employees with excellent commuter benefits to help reduce traffic and air pollution.

The birthplace of IBM, Endicott, suffered pollution for decades, however. IBM used liquid cleaning agents in circuit board assembly operation for more than two decades, and six spills and leaks were recorded, including one leak in 1979 of 4,100 gallons from an underground tank. These left behind volatile organic compounds in the town's soil and aquifer. Trace elements of volatile organic compounds have been identified in Endicott’s drinking water, but the levels are within regulatory limits. Also, from 1980, IBM has pumped out 78,000 gallons of chemicals, including trichloroethane, freon, benzene and perchloroethene to the air and allegedly caused several cancer cases among the townspeople. IBM Endicott has been identified by the Department of Environmental Conservation as the major source of pollution, though traces of contaminants from a local dry cleaner and other polluters were also found. Despite the amount of pollutant, state health officials could not verify whether air or water pollution in Endicott has actually caused any health problems. According to city officials, tests show that the water is safe to drink.

Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co., Ltd. (TOK) and IBM are collaborating to establish new, low-cost methods for bringing the next generation of solar energy products, called CIGS (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide) solar cell modules, to market. Use of thin film technology, such as CIGS, has great promise in reducing the overall cost of solar cells and further enabling their widespread adoption.

IBM is exploring four main areas of photovoltaic research: using current technologies to develop cheaper and more efficient silicon solar cells, developing new solution processed thin film photovoltaic devices, concentrator photovoltaics, and future generation photovoltaic architectures based upon nanostructures such as semiconductor quantum dots and nanowires.

Company logo and nickname

IBM's current "8-bar" logo was designed in 1972 by graphic designer Paul Rand. It was a general replacement for a 13-bar logo that first appeared in the public on the 1966 release of the TSS/360. Logos designed in the 1970s tended to be sensitive to the technical limitations of photocopiers, which were then being widely deployed. A logo with large solid areas tended to be poorly copied by copiers in the 1970s, so companies preferred logos that avoided large solid areas. The 1972 IBM logos are an example of this tendency. With the advent of digital copiers in the mid-1980s this technical restriction had largely disappeared; at roughly the same time, the 13-bar logo was abandoned for almost the opposite reason it was difficult to render accurately on the low-resolution digital printers (240 dots per inch) of the time.

''Big Blue'' is a nickname for IBM. There are several theories explaining the origin of the name. One theory, substantiated by people who worked for IBM at the time, is that IBM field representatives coined the term in the 1960s, referring to the color of the mainframes IBM installed in the 1960s and early 1970s. "True Blue" was a term used to describe a loyal IBM customer, and business writers later picked up the term. Another theory suggests that Big Blue simply refers to the Company's logo. A third theory suggests that Big Blue refers to a former company dress code that required many IBM employees to wear only white shirts and many wore blue suits. In any event, IBM keyboards, typewriters, and some other manufactured devices have played on the "Big Blue" concept, using the color for enter keys and carriage returns. IBM has also used blue logos since 1947, making blue the defining color of the company's corporate design, which might be another, more plausible reason for the term.

See also

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

List of computer system manufacturers

Top 100 US Federal Contractors

List of semiconductor fabrication plants

References

Further reading

External links

Category:Cloud computing providers Category:Companies based in Westchester County, New York Category:Companies established in 1896 Category:Computer companies of the United States Category:Computer hardware companies Category:Computer storage companies Category:Display technology companies Category:Dow Jones Industrial Average Category:Electronics companies of the United States Category:Multinational companies headquartered in the United States Category:National Medal of Technology recipients Category:Point of sale companies Category:Semiconductor companies Category:Software companies of the United States Category:UML Partners

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name	Errol Morris
birth date	February 05, 1948
birth place	Hewlett, New York, United States
occupation	Director
years active	1978–present
website	www.errolmorris.com
employer	}}

Errol Mark Morris (born February 5, 1948) is an American director. In 2003, ''The Guardian'' put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. In 2003, Morris won the Academy Award for his film ''The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara''.

Biography

Early life and education

Morris was born in Hewlett, New York on February 5, 1948. When he was two years old, his father died of a heart attack. His mother, a Juilliard graduate, supported Morris and his brother as a music teacher. Morris attended Hewlett Elementary School in a class with Brent Glass, Tony Kornheiser and former Village Voice editor David Schneiderman. In the 10th grade, Morris enrolled at the Putney School, a boarding school in Vermont. He began playing the cello, spending a summer in France studying music under the acclaimed Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Morris' future collaborator Philip Glass. Describing Morris as a teenager, Mark Singer wrote that he "read with a passion the forty-odd ''Oz'' books, watched a lot of television, and on a regular basis went with a doting but not quite right maiden aunt ("I guess you'd have to say that Aunt Roz was somewhat demented") to Saturday matinées, where he saw such films as ''This Island Earth'' and ''Creature from the Black Lagoon'' — horror movies that, viewed again 30 years later, still seem scary to him."

Morris attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating in 1969 with a B.A. in history. For a brief time Morris held small jobs, first as a cable television salesman and then as a term-paper writer. His unorthodox approach to applying for grad school included "trying to get accepted at different graduate schools just by showing up on their doorstep." Having unsuccessfully approached both the University of Oxford and Harvard University, Morris was able to talk his way into Princeton University, where he began studying the history of science, a topic in which he had "absolutely no background." His concentration was in the history of physics, and he was bored and unsuccessful in the prerequisite physics classes he had to take. This, together with his antagonistic relationship with his advisor Thomas Kuhn ("'You won't even look through my telescope.' And his response was 'Errol, it's not a telescope, it's a kaleidoscope.'") ensured that his stay at Princeton would be short. He left Princeton in 1972, enrolling at Berkeley as a Ph.D. student in philosophy. At Berkeley, Morris once again found that he was not well-suited to his subject. "Berkeley was just a world of pedants. It was truly shocking. I spent two or three years in the philosophy program. I have very bad feelings about it," he later said. He became a regular at the Pacific Film Archive, as Tom Luddy, the director of the archive at the time, later remembered: "He was a film noir nut. He claimed we weren't showing the real film noir. So I challenged him to write the program notes. Then, there was his habit of sneaking into the films and denying that he was sneaking in. I told him if he was sneaking in he should at least admit he was doing it."

Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's film ''Psycho'', Morris visited Plainfield, Wisconsin in 1975. While in Wisconsin, he conducted multiple interviews with Ed Gein, the infamous serial killer who was a resident at Mendota State Hospital in Madison. He later made plans with German film director Werner Herzog, whom Tom Luddy had introduced to Morris, to return in the summer of 1975 to secretly open the grave of Gein's mother to test their theory that Gein himself had already dug her up. Herzog arrived on schedule, but Morris had second thoughts and was not there. Herzog did not open the grave. Morris later returned to Plainfield, this time staying for almost a year, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews. Although he had plans to either write a book or make a film (which he would call ''Digging up the Past''), Morris never completed his Ed Gein project. In the fall of 1976, Herzog visited Plainfield again, this time to shoot part of his film ''Stroszek''. After the shooting finished, Herzog handed Morris an envelope full of cash. Morris walked over to the motel window and tossed the envelope out the window into a parking lot. Herzog went out to the parking lot and brought the money back, again offering it to Morris, saying, "Please don't do that again." Morris accepted the $2,000 and used it to take a trip to Vernon, Florida. Vernon was nicknamed Nub City because its residents participated in a particularly gruesome form of insurance fraud in which they deliberately amputated a limb in order to collect the insurance money. "In the hierarchy of nubbiedom, the supremely rewarding self-sacrifice was the loss of a right leg and a left arm, because, so the theory went, 'afterward, you could still write your name and still have a foot to press the gas pedal of your Cadillac.'" Morris's second documentary would be about the town and bear its name, although it makes no mention of Vernon as Nub City, but instead explores other idiosyncrasies of the town's residents. Morris made this omission because he received death threats while doing research; the town's residents were afraid that Morris would reveal their secret.

After spending two weeks in Vernon, Morris returned to Berkeley and began working on a script for a work of fiction that he called ''Nub City''. After a few unproductive months, he happened to read a headline in the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' that read, "450 DEAD PETS GOING TO NAPA VALLEY". Morris left for Napa Valley and began working on the film that would become his first feature, ''Gates of Heaven''. In 1978 when the film premiered, Werner Herzog cooked and publicly ate his shoe, an event later incorporated into a short documentary by Les Blank. Herzog had promised to eat his shoe if Morris completed the project, to challenge and encourage Morris, whom Herzog perceived as incapable of following up on the projects he conceived. At the public shoe-eating, Herzog suggested that he hoped the act would serve to encourage anyone having difficulty bringing a project to fruition.

Early career

''Gates of Heaven'' was given a limited release in the spring of 1981. Critic Roger Ebert was and remains today a champion of the film, including it on his all-time top ten best films list. Morris returned to Vernon in 1979 and again in 1980, renting a house in town and conducting interviews with the town's citizens. ''Vernon, FL'' premiered at the 1981 New York Film Festival. ''Newsweek'' called it, "a film as odd and mysterious as its subjects, and quite unforgettable." The film, like ''Gates of Heaven'', suffered from poor distribution. It was released on video in 1987, and DVD in 2005.

After finishing ''Vernon, FL'', Morris tried unsuccessfully to get funding for a variety of projects. There was ''Road'', a story about an interstate highway in Minnesota; a project about Robert Golka, the creator of laser-induced fireballs in Utah; and the story of Centralia, Pennsylvania, the coal town in which an "inextinguishable subterranean fire" ignited in 1962. He eventually got funding in 1983 to write a script about John and Jim Pardue, a pair of Missouri bank robbers who had killed their father and grandmother and robbed five banks. Morris's pitch went, "The great bank-robbery sprees always take place at a time when something is going wrong in the country. Bonnie and Clyde were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine them without the Depression as a back-drop. The Pardue brothers were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine them without Vietnam." Morris wanted Tom Waits and Mickey Rourke to play the brothers, and he wrote the script, but the project eventually failed. Morris worked on writing scripts for various other projects, including a pair of ill-fated Stephen King adaptations.

In 1984 he married Julia Sheehan, whom he had met in Wisconsin while researching Ed Gein and other serial killers. Morris would later recall an early conversation with Julia: "I was talking to a mass murderer but I was thinking of you," he said, and instantly regretted it, afraid that it might not have sounded as affectionate as he had wished. But Julia was actually flattered: "I thought, really, that was one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me. It was hard to go out with other guys after that."

In 1985, Morris became interested in Dr. James Grigson, a psychiatrist in Dallas. Under Texas law, the death penalty can only be issued if the jury is convinced that the defendant is not only guilty, but will commit further violent crimes in the future if he is not put to death. Grigson had spent 15 years testifying for such cases, and he almost invariably gave the same damning testimony, often saying that it is "one hundred per cent certain" that the defendant would kill again. This led to Grigson being nicknamed "Dr. Death". Through Grigson, Morris would meet the subject of his next film, 36 year-old Randall Dale Adams.

Adams was serving a life sentence that had been commuted from a death sentence on a legal technicality for the 1976 murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. Adams told Morris that he had been framed, and that David Harris, who was present at the time of the murder and was the principal witness for the prosecution, had in fact killed Wood. Morris began researching the case because it related to Dr. Grigson; he was at first unconvinced of Adams's innocence. After reading the transcripts of the trial and meeting David Harris at a bar, however, Morris was no longer so sure.

At the time, Morris had been making a living as a private investigator for a well-known private detective agency that specialized in Wall Street cases. Bringing together his talents as an investigator and his obsessions with murder, narration and epistemology, Morris went to work on the case in earnest. Unedited interviews in which the prosecution's witnesses systematically contradicted themselves were used as testimony in Adams's 1986 habeas corpus hearing to determine if he would receive a new trial. David Harris famously confessed, in a roundabout manner, to killing Wood. Although Adams was finally found innocent after years of being processed by the legal system, the judge in the habeas corpus hearing officially stated that, "much could be said about those videotape interviews, but nothing that would have any bearing on the matter before this court." Regardless, ''The Thin Blue Line'', as Morris's film would be called, was popularly accepted as the main force behind getting its subject, Randall Adams, out of prison. As Morris said of the film, "''The Thin Blue Line'' is two movies grafted together. On one simple level is the question, Did he do it, or didn’t he? And on another level, ''The Thin Blue Line'', properly considered, is an essay on false history. A whole group of people, literally everyone, believed a version of the world that was entirely wrong, and my accidental investigation of the story provided a different version of what happened."

According to a survey by ''The Washington Post'', ''The Thin Blue Line'' made dozens of critics' top ten lists for 1988, more than any other film that year. It won the documentary of the year award from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Despite its widespread acclaim, it was not nominated for an Oscar, which created a small scandal regarding the nomination practices of the Academy. The Academy cited the film's genre of "non-fiction", arguing that it was not actually a documentary. To this day, ''The Thin Blue Line'' is one of the most critically acclaimed documentaries ever made.

2000s

Although Morris has achieved fame as a documentary filmmaker, he is also an accomplished director of television commercials. In 2002, Morris directed a series of television ads for Apple Computer as part of a popular "Switch" campaign. The commercials featured ex-Windows users discussing their various bad experiences that motivated their own personal switches to Macintosh. One commercial in the series, starring a high-school friend of his son Hamilton Morris, named Ellen Feiss, became an Internet fad. Morris has directed hundreds of commercials for various companies and products, including Adidas, AIG, Cisco Systems, Citibank, Kimberly-Clark's Depend brand, Levi's, Miller High Life, Nike, PBS, The Quaker Oats Company, Southern Comfort, EA Sports, Toyota and Volkswagen. Many of these commercials are available on his website.

In 2002, Morris was commissioned to make a short film for the 75th Academy Awards. He was hired based on his advertising resume, not his career as a director of feature-length documentaries. Those interviewed ranged from Laura Bush to Iggy Pop to Kenneth Arrow to Morris's 15 year old son Hamilton Morris . Morris was nominated for an Emmy for this short film. He considered editing this footage into a feature length film, focusing specifically on Donald Trump discussing ''Citizen Kane'' (This segment was later released on the second issue of Wholphin). Morris went on to make a second short for the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, this time interviewing the various nominees and asking them about their Oscar experiences.

In July 2004, Morris directed another series of commercials in the style of the "Switch" ads. This campaign featured Republicans who voted for Bush in the 2000 election giving their personal reasons for voting for Kerry in 2004. Upon completing more than 50 commercials, Morris had difficulty getting them on the air. Eventually the liberal advocacy group MoveOn PAC paid to air a few of the commercials. Morris eventually wrote an editorial for ''the New York Times'' discussing the commercials and Kerry's losing campaign.

In the fall of 2004, Morris also directed a series of noteworthy commercials for Sharp Electronics. The commercials enigmatically depicted various scenes from what appeared to be a short narrative that climaxed with a car crashing into a swimming pool. Each commercial showed a slightly different perspective on the events, and each ended with a cryptic weblink. The weblink was to a fake webpage advertising a prize offered to anyone who could discover the secret location of some valuable urns. It was in fact an alternate reality game. The original commercials can be found on Morris's website.

Morris also directed a series of spots for Reebok that featured rapper 50 Cent. The spots featured a title design by The Wilderness.

In 2004, Morris won the Best Documentary Oscar at the Academy Awards, for his film The Fog of War, about the career of Robert S. MacNamara, who was famous for having been the Secretary of Defense who had led the nation into the Vietnam War under Presidents John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and who was also crucially involved in having helped President Kennedy avoid a Third World War over the issue of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. In the hauntingly re-enacted opening portion of the film concerning the background that MacNamara and his pro-nuclear-war adversary U.S. General Curtis LeMay had shared together during World War II, director Morris brought out complexities in the character of MacNamara, which the public had not previously recognized, but which largely shaped MacNamara's positions regarding both the missiles-in-Cuba issue and the Vietnam War issue, and which therefore created the historical figure that MacNamara turned out to be as the U.S. Secretary of Defense. In this documentary, Morris brought to a pinnacle the revolutionary technique that he had first introduced to the world in his 1988 The Thin Blue Line: the use of re-enactments in a documentary film -- a technique (re-enactments) which had previously been thought to be inappropriate for use in a "documentary" film. However, by now, in 2004, the use of re-enactments in a documentary had become accepted by critics, and therefore this time around, Morris finally won the Academy Award that he should earlier have won also for his The Thin Blue Line, which had actually revolutionized documentary filmmaking.

In early 2010, a new Morris documentary had been submitted to several film festivals, including Toronto International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and Telluride Film Festival. The film, titled ''Tabloid'', features interviews with Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming, who was convicted ''in absentia'' for the kidnap and indecent assault of a Mormon missionary in England during 1977.

Additionally Morris has been writing long-form journalism exploring different areas of his interest, published on the New York Times website. A collection of these essays, entitled ''Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography,'' will be published by Penguin Press on September 1, 2011.

The Interrotron

The Interrotron is a device similar to a teleprompter: Errol and his subject each sit facing a camera. The image of each person's face is then projected onto a two-way mirror positioned in front of the lens of the other's camera. Instead of looking at a blank lens, then, both Morris and his subject are looking directly at a human face. (Diagram) Morris believes that the machine helps to explore the relationship between "monologue and language, and how people present themselves to camera, and express themselves to camera."

The name "Interrotron" was coined by Morris's wife, who, according to Morris, "liked the name because it combined two important concepts — terror and interview."

Filmography

''Gates of Heaven'' (1978)

''Vernon, Florida'' (1981)

''The Thin Blue Line'' (1988)

''The Dark Wind'' (1991)

''A Brief History of Time'' (1991)

''Fast, Cheap and Out of Control'' (1997)

''Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.'' (1999)

''First Person'' (2000)

''The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara'' (2003)

''Standard Operating Procedure'' (2008)

''Tabloid'' (2010)

Writing

"Will The ''Real'' Hooded Man Please Stand Up" (2007)

"Which Came First, The Chicken or the Egg?" (2007)

"Cartesian Blogging, Part One" (2007)

"Play It Again, Sam (Re-Enactments, Part One)" (2008)

"Play It Again, Sam (Re-Enactments, Part Two)" (2008)

"The Most Curious Thing" (2008)

"Cartesian Blogging, Part Two" (2008)

"People in the Middle" (2008)

"Photography as a Weapon" (2008)

"Cartesian Blogging, Part Three" (2008)

"Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" (2009)

"Whose Father Was He?" (2009)

"Bamboozling Ourselves" (2009)

"Seven Lies About Lying" (2009)

"The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock" (2009)

"The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong but You'll Never Know What It Is" (2010)

"The Ashtray" (2011)

Awards and honors

Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007)

Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival for ''Standard Operating Procedure''

Academy Award for Documentary Feature ''The Fog of War'' (2004)

Best Documentary of the Year awards for ''The Fog of War'' (2003): the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics, and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics.

2002 International Documentary Association list of the 20 all-time best documentaries: ''The Thin Blue Line'' (#2), ''Fast, Cheap & Out of Control'' (#14)

Emmy for Best Commercial for PBS commercial "Photobooth" (2001)

In December 2001, the United States' National Film Preservation Foundation announced that Morris's ''The Thin Blue Line'' would be one of the 25 films selected that year for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, bringing the total at the time to 325.

MacArthur Fellowship (1989)

Washington Post Best Film of the Year for ''The Thin Blue Line'' (1988)

New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics Best Documentary for ''The Thin Blue Line'' (1988)

Golden Horse for Best Foreign Film at the Taiwan International Film Festival for ''The Thin Blue Line'' (1988)

Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture, from the Mystery Writers of America, for ''The Thin Blue Line'' (1989)

''Gates of Heaven'' (1978) has long been on Roger Ebert's list of the ten greatest films ever made.

References

External links

Errol Morris's website

Errol Morris at Rotten Tomatoes)

Errol Morris (Jonathan Crow, Allmovie)

Errol Morris (Nina Rehfeld, GreenCine)

''Voices on Antisemitism'' Interview with Errol Morris from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Werner Herzog in coversation with Errol Morris (''The Believer'')

Category:1948 births Category:American documentary filmmakers Category:American film directors Category:Living people Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Edgar Award winners Category:San Francisco Art Institute alumni Category:Documentary film directors Category:People from Hempstead (town), New York Category:Apple Inc. advertising Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni

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