Half a century ago, a team of young Japanese IBM engineers built a computerized real-time results service for the Tokyo Olympics, a breakthrough that led to modern-day networks such as ATMs and travel reservation systems.
The order came in early 1962, when an executive at the Japanese unit of the U.S. computer giant told Toru Takeshita, an IBM Japan Ltd. systems engineer, to write some challenging software.
It had to be able to provide sports results to the press on behalf of the organizing committee of the 1964 Summer Olympics.