Watson, Thomas, Sr

Watson, Thomas, Sr. (1874–1956), business executive, head of the International Business Machines (IBM) Company.Watson was born and raised in rural upstate New York, near Corning. Educated as an accountant, he chose instead to become a traveling salesman, at first for a firm that sold pianos and eventually for the National Cash Register (NCR) Company, which he joined in 1895. He moved up quickly at NCR, and in 1907 its president, John Henry Patterson, named Watson the firm's sales manager.

When Patterson, fearful of creating a rival, fired him in 1913, Watson joined, as CEO, a New York State firm called the Computing‐Tabulating‐Recording Company (CTR), where he applied the salesmanship and management skills he had learned at NCR. Identifying the firm's tabulating machines as the key to future success, Watson promoted internal product research in that area. By 1919, CTR (which he renamed the International Business Machines Company in 1924) had emerged as the leading American firm in that field, an advantage the company consolidated over the next decade. IBM grew rapidly thanks to rising demand for business machines both from companies seeking to cut labor costs and from the federal government, which required ever more record‐keeping equipment to implement New Deal measures and, later, military expansion. The creator of an unusually generous pay‐and‐benefits system at IBM, introduced during the 1930s, Watson also distinguished himself by becoming a leader in national and world business organizations.
See also Automation and Computerization; Business; Computers; New Deal Era, The; Technology.

Bibliography

Thomas Graham Belden and and Marva Robins Belden , The Lengthening Shadow: The Life of Thomas J. Watson, 1962.
William Rodgers , Think: A Biography of the Watsons and IBM, 1969.
Thomas J. Watson Jr. and and Peter Petre , Father, Son and Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond, 1990.

David L. Stebenne