I think there is a world market for maybe five computers
Not Thomas J. Watson — an unsourced legendUnknown — no documented speakerNo speaker on record · the line appears in no Watson speech, paper or contemporary article
No primary source exists. Wikiquote files the line under Misattributed ↗, noting that thorough research of Watson’s writings and statements has produced no example of him saying it, and Wikipedia records that biographer Kevin Maney — author of the 2003 Watson Sr. biography — could find no speech, document or contemporary article containing the words. The dates attached to it float between 1943 and 1958, which is itself a sign that no one is working from a record.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” is not a documented Thomas J. Watson quotation. No speech, paper, or contemporary article containing the line has ever been produced; printed attributions date it variously to 1943 and 1958 and first appear decades after the fact. — Quotle.info, "Who really said 'I think there is a world market for maybe five computers'?" Last verified 22 Jul 2026.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Thomas J. Watson. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
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In context
Evoking the themes of change, humility and knowledge. Theme: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
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Provenance
The record, such as it is
Alleged speaker
Thomas J. Watson, IBM
Alleged date
1943 — earlier printings say 1958
Primary source
None located: no speech, document or contemporary article
Nearest documented remark
Thomas J. Watson Jr., IBM stockholders meeting, April 28, 1953
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
No primary source
Printed as “about five computers” in the 1985 newspaper column and the 1986 Usenet signature that carried it, per Wikipedia. No text of Watson’s containing either wording has been produced.
Wikiquote ↗ lists the line as misattributed, states that research into Watson’s writings and statements produced no example of him saying it, and cites Ralph Keyes’s The Quote Verifier.
Wikipedia ↗ traces the printed attributions — Der Spiegel (May 22, 1965), The Experts Speak (1984), the San Diego Evening Tribune (May 15, 1985) dating it to 1958, and a 1986 Usenet signature dating it to 1943 — and reports Kevin Maney’s unsuccessful search for any source.
Wikipedia’s IBM 701 page ↗ records the 1953 remark by Thomas J. Watson Jr. that the legend is thought to distort: five orders expected, 18 received.
Geek History ↗ catalogues the sites repeating the quote and finds none that can name an original source.
No copyright status can be asserted, because no source work for this wording has ever been identified. The sentence circulates as an unsourced attribution rather than as text from a documented speech, book or article, so there is nothing whose first publication date could be assessed.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
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Fact-check
What’s wrong with the popular version
Almost everything attached to this sentence — the speaker, the year, and the wording itself — fails when you look for a source.
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The speakerThomas J. Watson Sr., IBM unsourced
Wikiquote ↗ places the line in its Misattributed section, reporting that thorough research of Watson’s writings and statements has produced no example of him saying it. Wikipedia ↗ adds that Kevin Maney, who wrote the 2003 biography of Watson Sr., could find no speech, document or contemporary article containing the words.
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The date“1943” — and, in earlier printings, “1958” inconsistent
The 1986 Usenet signature that spread the quote online dated it to 1943, while Neil Morgan’s May 15, 1985 San Diego Evening Tribune column dated it to 1958, per Wikipedia ↗. Both dates are asserted without a source.
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The wording“maybe five computers” vs “about five computers” drifting text
The 1985 newspaper version and the 1986 Usenet version both read “about five computers,” not the “maybe five computers” that circulates today, according to Wikipedia’s ↗ account of the printed attributions.
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The nearest real remarkThomas J. Watson Jr., IBM stockholders meeting, April 28, 1953 the actual record
Describing the IBM 701, Watson Jr. said “as a result of our trip, on which we expected to get orders for five machines, we came home with orders for 18,” as recorded on Wikipedia’s IBM 701 page ↗. That is a beaten sales forecast, not a prediction about the world.
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A likelier ancestorHoward H. Aiken related sentiment
Wikiquote ↗ suggests the attribution may stem from a remark by Aiken that four or five computers could meet all of the United Kingdom’s computing needs.
✓The honest answer: nobody can show that Thomas J. Watson said this. Geek History’s survey ↗ found dozens of sites repeating it and not one citing an original source.
Context
Why this one refuses to die
It is the perfect anecdote: the boss of the world’s biggest business-machine company, standing at the door of the computer age, guessing that five would do. It gets used in keynote slides, business-school lectures and think-pieces about the next technology everyone is underestimating. The only missing ingredient is a source.
What the record actually contains is a much duller and more human moment. At IBM’s annual stockholders meeting on April 28, 1953, Thomas J. Watson Jr. was describing the market for the IBM 701 and said that “as a result of our trip, on which we expected to get orders for five machines, we came home with orders for 18.” That is a sales forecast for one expensive machine, beaten by more than three times — a story about underestimating demand, told by the son, not a prophecy of a five-computer world made by the father.
The number five is real. The sentence around it is not.
How the legend was assembled
Wikipedia’s survey of the printed record shows the attribution arriving piecemeal. Der Spiegel wrote on May 22, 1965 that Watson had estimated US demand at a maximum of five machines. Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky’s The Experts Speak (1984) carried a version taken from Morgan and Langford’s Facts and Fallacies. On May 15, 1985 Neil Morgan wrote in the San Diego Evening Tribune that Watson “said in 1958: ‘I think there is a world market for about five computers.’” By 1986 a Convex Computer Corporation poster was carrying it in a Usenet signature, now dated 1943.
Two of those printed versions read “about five computers” rather than the “maybe five computers” that circulates today, and they disagree with each other about the year by fifteen years. A quotation with a real source does not drift like that.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
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.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Documented record
No primary source. Wikipedia’s survey of the record traces attributions to Der Spiegel (May 22, 1965), the San Diego Evening Tribune (May 15, 1985), and a 1986 Usenet signature; see also Ralph Keyes, The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), cited by Wikiquote.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers’?” Last verified 22 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-think-there-is-a-world-market-for-maybe-five-computers/