6 ms·
I don't think any tech companies will ever survive that long.
by Michael_Sieb 6y ago
I don't think any tech companies will ever survive that long.
- Axsuul 6y agoIsn't history being written everyday?
- lapetitejort 6y agoCould Nintendo be the oldest company currently involved with tech?
- geogra4 6y ago'tech' is kind of a broad brush. But Nintendo is even older than old behemoths like GE and IBM.
- seattletech 6y agoYep, IBM was founded in 1911
- Turing_Machine 6y agoIts constituent companies were older, though. Hollerith's original Tabulating Machine patent was filed in 1884, and his machines and punch cards were used for the 1890 census.
- tpmx 6y agoDefine "tech"? Nintendo was founded in 1889. As just one counter-example; I'm sure there are plenty more/earlier: Siemens was founded in 1847 (edit: by building telegraph equipment and infrastructure). Edit: I'm sure there must have been earlier companies involved in "tech" that are still relevant? Maybe let's think about "tech" as "information technology" companies?
- shrubble 6y agoKiewit is the precursor company to MFS and Level 3 Communications. Level3 merged with CenturyLink and is now known as Lumen. Kiewit formed in 1884.
- moron4hire 6y agoIt's probably Isabellenhütte, established in 1482 in Germany (https://www.isabellenhuette.de/en/company/innovation-by-tradition/history https://www.isabellenhuette.de/en/company/innovation-by-trad...)
- robin_reala 6y agoWho currently produce components that go into Teslas.
- moron4hire 6y agoI was originally looking for "old companies that currently work in tech", but even their original industry of copper smelting was pretty high tech for the 15th century.
- tpmx 6y agoMaybe let's do it in two classes: oldest information-managing tech company and oldest mechanical tech company?
- moron4hire 6y agoI mean, I don't know what other definition you want.
- Turing_Machine 6y agoIf you consider banking to be information-managing tech (which it seems to me that it is), then the oldest may be either Berenberg Bank (1590) or Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (1472). It depends on the definition of "bank". The later is certainly a bank now, but was more like a pawnbroker in its early years.
- TorKlingberg 6y agoEricsson was founded in 1876 and had a big part in developing 5G. Nokia started in 1865. There must be many 19:th century tech companies around.
- jbjbjbjb 6y agoBritish Telecom’s origins date back to the founding in 1846 of the Electric Telegraph Company. ETC was the first public telegraph company.
- Turing_Machine 6y agoThat's got Western Union beat by a few years. WU was founded in 1851. On the other hand, Western Union is still trading under its original name.
- hansjorg 6y agoLet's hope not. A small, geographically bound family business like this is one thing, but we should pay more attention to what kind of creatures we're creating in the long run. An LLC is a very useful legal fiction, but more and more we're seeing the effects of allowing virtually unbounded, private for profit organizations.
- petercooper 6y agoIf any were to, I'd hope it'd be YouTube. For better or worse, it's an amazing repository of what it is to be human in the early 21st century in terms of the billions of hours of evidence that people record and upload. Imagine being an archaeologist in 1000 years having access to this.