Computing
Scottish Americans have also been leaders in computing and information technology. The Galashiels-born James Graham Johnston and Thomas J. Watson, of Scotch-Irish descent, developed an early tabulating machine in 1916 and founded IBM in 1917.
Scottish Americans Howard Aiken and Grace Murray Hopper created the first automatic sequence computer in 1939. Hopper was also the co-inventor of the computer language COBOL.
Ross Perot, another Scottish American entrepreneur, made his fortune from Electronic Data Systems, an outsourcing company he established in 1962.
Software giant Microsoft was co-founded in 1975 by Bill Gates, who owed his start in part to his mother, the Scottish American businesswoman Mary Maxwell Gates, who helped her son to get his first software contract with IBM. Glasgow-born Microsoft employee Richard Tait helped to develop the Encarta encyclopedia and co-created the popular board game Cranium.
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