Thomas J. Watson Totally Explained

Everything about Thomas J Watson totally explained

Thomas John Watson, Sr. (February 17, 1874 – June 19, 1956) was the American president of International Business Machines (IBM), who oversaw that company's growth into an international force from the 1920s to the 1950s. Watson developed IBM's effective management style and turned it into one of the most effective selling organizations yet seen, based largely around punched card tabulating machines. A leading self-made industrialist, he was one of the richest men of his time and was called the world's greatest salesman when he died in 1956.

Early life and career

Born on February 17, 1874, he was very much the country boy. His father owned a modest lumber business located in Painted Post, 20 miles west of Elmira in northwestern New York State. He himself as a child was something of a loner. An asthmatic, he was remembered as being shy at social gatherings.
   Having given up his first job — teaching — after just one day, he took a year's course in accounting and business at the local Miller School of Commerce; finishing in May 1892. His second job as a $6 a week bookkeeper was almost as brief as his first, giving way to a career as a peddler. He joined a traveling salesman, George Cornwell, peddling organs and pianos around the farms, for the local hardware store (William Bronsons). When Cornwell left, he continued alone, earning the sum of $10 per week. It was only after two years of this life that he realized he'd be earning $70 per week if he were on a commission. The impact of his indignation on making this discovery was such that he upped stakes and moved from his familiar surroundings to the relative metropolis of Buffalo.
   Watson then spent a very brief period selling sewing machines for Wheeler and Wilcox. According to Tom Watson Jr., in his autobiography, "One day my dad went into a roadside saloon to celebrate a sale and had too much to drink. When the bar closed, he found that his entire rig — horse, buggy, and samples — had been stolen. Wheeler and Wilcox fired him and dunned him for the lost property. Word got around, of course, and it took Dad more than a year to find another steady job." As Tom Jr. went on to say "This anecdote never made it into IBM lore, which is too bad, because it would have helped explain Father to the tens of thousands of people who had to follow his rules."
   In the meantime, Watson once more set out on the road selling. In this case, his partner was C B Barron, a showman renowned for his disreputable conduct; which Watson, as a lifelong Methodist, deplored. Jointly they peddled shares of the Buffalo Building and Loan. They were soon very successful, and with his proceeds Watson set up a butchers shop as an investment. Unfortunately, true to form, Barron absconded with the commission and the loan funds, leaving Watson with no money, no investment (he lost the shop as a result), and no job. Thus for the second, but not the last time, he was fired. That phrase became the slogan of both the ICC and IBM. 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.
   Watson personally approved and spearheaded IBM's strategic technological relationship with the Third Reich. In this relationship, IBM helped make Nazi Germany more efficient; as it did its enemies England, Soviet Russia, and the United States of America, where IBM did substantial business as well. In 1937, Watson received the Eagle with Star medal from Germany for the help that IBM subsidiary Dehomag (Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft mbH) and its punchcard machines provided the Nazi regime for tabulating census data.
   After the outbreak of The Second World War, Watson returned the medal, and the German government tried to take ownership of the Dehomag operation, but it in fact, the Third Reich was unable to make the punch cards in Germany and so unable to execute the Holocaust without the support of the NY office of IBM.
   In the same time, IBM became more deeply involved in the war effort for the United States of America, focusing on producing large quantities of data processing equipment for the military and experimenting with analog computers. His son Tom Watson Jr. joined the Air Force where he'd ferry General Follet Bradley, who was in charge of all Lend-Lease equipment supplied to the Soviet Union from the United States. Watson also developed the 1% doctrine for war profits which mandated that IBM receive no more than 1% profit from the sales of military equipment to U.S. Government. Watson has been one of the few CEO's to develop such a policy.
   Watson worked with other local leaders to create a college in the Binghamton area, where IBM had major plants. In 1946, IBM provided land and funding for Triple Cities College, an extension of Syracuse University. Later it became known as Harpur College, and eventually became part of Binghamton University. Its School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named the Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, although the IBM plant in the neighboring city of Endicott has long since closed its doors.
   After World War II, Watson began work to further the extent of IBM's influence abroad and in 1949, the year he stepped down, created the IBM World Trade Corporation in order to control IBM's foreign business.
   Watson was named chairman emeritus of IBM in 1956. A month before his death, Watson handed over the reins of the company to his oldest son, Thomas J. Watson, Jr.

Personal

Watson married Jeanette Kittredge, from a prominent Dayton, Ohio railroad family, on April 17, 1913. They had two sons and two daughters.

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 businessman John N. Irwin, later Ambassador to France
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.

As a Democrat (after his criminal indictment by the Taft Administration) Watson was an ardent supporter of Roosevelt. He was considered Roosevelt's strongest supporter in the business community.
   The US Supreme Court, in 1936, upheld the lower court decision that IBM, together with Remington, should cease its practice of requiring its customers to buy their cards from it alone. In the event it made little difference because IBM was the only effective supplier to the market; and profits continued undiminished. As a powerful trustee of Columbia University (June 6, 1933 – death), Watson played the central role in convincing Dwight D. Eisenhower to become president of the school.
   In the 1940s, Watson was on the national executive board of the Boy Scouts of America and served for a time as International Scout Commissioner. E. Urner Goodman recounts that the elderly Watson attended an International Scout Commissioners' meeting in Switzerland, where the IBM founder asked not to be put on a pedestal. Before the conference was over, Goodman relates, Watson "… sat by that campfire, in Scout uniform, 'chewing the fat' like the rest of the boys". He received the Silver Buffalo Award in 1944. Watson's son Thomas Jr. later served as National president of the Boy Scouts of America from 1964–1968.
   Watson was chairman of the Elmira College Centennial Committee in 1955 and gave Watson Hall, primarily a music and mathematics academic building.
   Interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Famous misquote

Although Watson is well known for his alleged 1943 statement: "I think there's a world market for maybe five computers," there's 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's a world market for about five computers" — Remark attributed to Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board of International Business Machines), 1943. Another early article source (May 15, 1985) is a column by Neil Morgan, a San Diego Evening Tribune writer who wrote: 'Forrest Shumway, chairman of The Signal Cos., doesn't make predictions. His role model is Tom Watson, then IBM chairman, who said in 1958: "I think there's a world market for about five computers."'. However one of the very first quotes can be found in a book "The Experts Speak" written by Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky in 1984. But Cerf and Navasky just quote from a book written by Morgan and Langford, "Facts and Fallacies". However all these early quotes are questioned by Eric Weiss, an Editor of the Annals of the History of Computing in ACS letters in 1985.
   However, in 1985 the story was discussed on Usenet (in net.misc), without Watson's name being attached. The original discussion hasn't 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.
   Interestingly, since the quote is typically used to demonstrate the fallacy of predictions, if Watson did make such as prediction in 1943, then, as Gordon Bell pointed out in his ACM 50 years celebration keynote, it would have held true for some ten years.

Famous quote

"THINK". Watson summarized the IBM philosophy with a motto consisting of one word. A biographical article in 1940 noted that "This word is on the most conspicuous wall of every room in every IBM building. Each employee carries a THINK notebook in which to record inspirations. The company stationery, matches, scratch pads all bear the inscription, THINK. A monthly magazine called Think is distributed to the employees." One might suppose this would be the inspiration behind naming IBM's very successful line of notebook computers, ThinkPads.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Thomas J Watson'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://thomas_j__watson.totallyexplained.com">Thomas J. Watson Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.