Thomas J. Watson

Thomas John Watson, Sr. (February 17, 1874 – June 19, 1956) is considered to be the founder of International Business Machines (IBM), and co-founder of Binghamton University, called Triple Cities College in 1946. He was one of the richest men of his time and called the world's greatest salesman when he died.

Early life and career

Watson was born in Campbell, New York. His formal education consisted of only a course in the Elmira School of Commerce. His first job was at age 18 as a bookkeeper in Clarence Risley's Market in Painted Post, New York. Later he sold sewing machines and musical instruments before joining the National Cash Register Company (NCR) as a salesman in Buffalo. He eventually worked his way up to general sales manager. Bent on inspiring the dispirited NCR sales force, Watson introduced the motto, "THINK," which later became a widely known symbol of IBM.

While at NCR, he was convicted for illegal anti-competitive sales practices (e.g. he used to have people sell deliberately faulty cash registers, either second-hand NCR or from competitors; soon after the second-hand NCR or competitors cash register failed, an NCR salesperson would arrive to sell them a brand new NCR cash register). He was sentenced, along with John H. Patterson (the owner of NCR), to one year of imprisonment. Their conviction was unpopular with the public, due to the efforts of Patterson and Watson to help those affected by the 1913 Dayton, Ohio floods. The Court of Appeals overturned the conviction on appeal in 1915, on the grounds that important defense evidence should have been admitted. Watson blamed the Republicans and became a lifelong Democrat.

Watson married Jeanette M. Kittredge on April 17, 1913. The couple had two sons and two daughters.

Head of IBM

Watson became the president of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company on May 1, 1914. CTR had been founded in 1911 by Herman Hollerith, the inventor of the punch-card system for tabulating data. When Watson took over, the company had fewer than 400 employees. In 1924 he renamed the company International Business Machines. Watson built IBM into such a powerful force that the federal government filed a civil antitrust suit against them in 1952. IBM owned and leased more than 90 percent of all tabulating machines in the United States at the time.

He considered an important part of his job to motivate the sales force. As part of this, he was famous for making his salespeople at both NCR and IBM attend sing-a-longs (see The IBM Songbook below).

Throughout his life, Watson maintained a deep interest in international relations. He adopted for IBM the slogan, "World Peace Through World Trade," worked closely with the International Chamber of Commerce and in 1937 was elected its president. He was one of the most prominent businessmen in the Democratic party. Watson served as a trustee of Columbia University, where he engineered the selection of Dwight D. Eisenhower as president. In 1937, Watson received the Eagle with Star medal from German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, for the help that IBM subsidiary Dehomag and its punchcard machines provided the Nazi regime for tabulating census data. After the outbreak of World War II, Watson returned the medal, and the German government took control of the Dehomag operation. IBM then became deeply involved in the war effort for the United States.

Beginning in the early 1940's, Watson worked with other local leaders throughout the Greater Binghamton (home of IBM) area, to orchestrate the fruition of an institute for higher education. In 1946, he and 7 other individuals began Triple Cities College, an extension of Syracuse University. The original campus was a portion of the IBM's Endicott, New York site, a generous donation of land, buildings, and financing from Watson. Four years later, the school broke away from Syracuse, and joined the SUNY sytem. Renamed Harpur College, the campus left the IBM site, for a much large plot of land in neighboring town, Vestal. Today, the college is Binghamton University, ranked the number one public university in the Northeast United States. The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has been named the Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, in honor of Watson.

Watson was named chairman emeritus of IBM in September 1949. A month before his death, Watson handed over the reins of the company to his older son, Thomas J. Watson, Jr.

Personal

Watson married Jeanette Kittredge, from a prominent Dayton, Ohio railroad family, and had four children.

Thomas J. Watson, Jr., succeeded his father as IBM chairman and later served as Ambassador to the Soviet Union under Jimmy Carter.
Jeanette Watson Irwin married Nixon Administration official and later Ambassador to France John N. Irwin.
Helen Watson Buckner became an important philanthropist in New York City.
Arthur K. Watson served as president of IBM World Trade Corporation and later as Ambassador to France.

Famous misquote

Although Watson is well known for his alleged 1943 statement: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers," there is no evidence he ever made it. The author Kevin Maney tried to find the origin of the quote, but has been unable to locate any speeches or documents of Watson's that contain this, nor are the words present in any contemporary articles about IBM. The earliest known citation is from 1986 on Usenet in the signature of a poster from Convex Computer Corporation as "I think there is a world market for about five computers" — Remark attributed to Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board of International Business Machines), 1943.

However, in 1985 the story was discussed on Usenet (in net.misc), without Watson's name being attached. The original discussion has not survived, but an explanation has; it attributes a very similar quote to the Cambridge mathematician Professor Douglas Hartree, around 1951:

I went to see Professor Douglas Hartree, who had built the first differential analyzers in England and had more experience in using these very specialized computers than anyone else. He told me that, in his opinion, all the calculations that would ever be needed in this country could be done on the three digital computers which were then being built — one in Cambridge, one in Teddington, and one in Manchester. No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them.

(quotation from an article by Lord Bowden; American Scientist vol 58 (1970) pp 43–53); cited on Usenet

The misquote is itself often misquoted, with fifty computers instead of five.

References

Maney, Kevin (2003). The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson, Sr. and the Making of IBM. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0471414638.
William H. Rodgers. ''Think; A Biography of the Watsons and IBM (1969).
Robert Sobel Thomas Watson, Sr.: IBM and the Computer Revolution (1981).
Richard S. Tedlow. The Watson Dynasty: The Fiery Reign and Troubled Legacy of IBM's Founding Father and Son. (2003)
Thomas J. Watson. Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond. (2000)

External links