biography
| name: |
Watson, Thomas John
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1874–1956)
|
| biography:
| Business executive, born in Cambell, New York, USA. He worked at National Cash Register in Dayton, OH (1896–1911), becoming general sales manager, and during that period he learned the punch-card industry. Sales became the driving force in all he did, particularly after he formed International Business Machines (IBM) by merging several other companies (1924). By 1929, IBM controlled 20 per cent of the punch device market. In the 1930s, Wallace Eckert, Howard Aiken, and others convinced IBM to back computer research, but Watson was slow to embrace the new technology in the 1940s because of the competition it represented to his mechanical devices. It was not until the early 1950s that he was convinced to enter the computer market, and by then he had turned IBM's operations over to his son. |
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