Thomas J. Watson

1874–1956 · Head of CTR and then IBM · the man the quote is pinned on

Thomas J. Watson Sr. took over the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in 1914 and renamed it International Business Machines in 1924, running it until shortly before his death in 1956. He is the standard punchline of technology forecasting — the executive who supposedly could not imagine more than five computers — on the strength of a sentence no one has ever traced to him. His actual record is the opposite of the caricature: the company he built spent his final decade pouring money into electronic computing.

Traced to source

1 quote we’ve traced

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”

Disputed

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