Thomas J. Watson, Jr. (14 January, 1914 – 31 December, 1993), eldest son of Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM, dealt in his youth with the incredible pressure of being raised under the popularity and dominance of his father. Nevertheless, he himself became a successful IBM leader.
Watson Jr. is known to have struggled throughout his life with depression. Far from excelling in scholarly pursuits he earned a business degree from Brown University in 1937, and worked a few years as an IBM salesman. The critical turning point in his life was when he served as a pilot in the US Army Air Force during WWII. His combat experiences made him the person who was later able to take over the reigns of IBM. In May of 1956 Watson Jr. was named CEO of the company. Only six weeks later his father died. Yet this would not stop him from changing the world of computers.
Thomas Jr. took the single biggest risk in IBM's history when he decided to make all of its previous computer software (and hardware, for that matter) obsolete, by developing a uniform range of new IBM mainframe computers. The new machines were compatible within the range—i.e., they could run the same software and use the same peripherals—but incompatible with the former mainframes. The new series, called the System/360, almost completely bankrupted the entire company; its highly successful launch in 1964 was called by Fortune magazine "IBM's $5 Billion Gamble".
That same year, because of this success, Dwight D. Eisenhower at the New York World's Fair awarded Thomas J. Watson Jr. the Medal of Freedom, the highest award a U.S. President can bestow on a civilian.
Watson was CEO of IBM from 1956 to 1971. He was later commissioned as US ambassador to the Soviet Union, serving from 29 October 1979 to 15 January 1981.
References
- Watson, Thomas J. Jr., with Petre, Peter (1990). Father, Son, and Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond. Bantam Books. ISBN 0553070118.