Thomas J. Watson


Thomas J. Watson (February 17, 1874 in Campbell, New York - 1956) became
General Manager in 1914 and President in 1915 of the CTR Company, which
later changed its name to IBM, and rescued it from near extinction. Because
of this, he is considered to be the founder of IBM.

Prior to that, he worked for NCR in charge of its sales force, until 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 1 years 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, but efforts to have them pardoned
by President Wilson were unsucessful. However, the Court of Appeals
overturned the conviction on appeal in 1915, on the grounds that the
important defence evidence should have been allowed to be admitted.

He was famous for making his salespeople at both NCR and IBM attend
sing-a-longs (see The IBM Songbook below).

He is well known for his 1943 statement: "I think there is a world market
for maybe five computers".