10 Feb
2010
10 Feb
'10
1:54 p.m.
From: Chuck Guzis
Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 1:45 PM
On 10 Feb 2010 at 16:40, Dave McGuire wrote:
> ...or was it TJ Watson of IBM? I'm pretty
sure that was his quote.
It's often attributed to Watson, but the
attributions are all from
the 1980s. There's no solid evidence that he ever said it.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/our-daily-bleg-did-ibm-rea…
The truth, as is so often the case, is more complex than that. According to
the source cited above, what Watson reported to the 1953 stockholder's meeting
was that their expectation with regard to sales of the 701, when they visited 20
potential customers, was for 5 orders. Instead, they got 18.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.PDPplanet.org/
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/