Re: Microsoft Hatred FAQ

From: Jean-David Beyer (jdbeyer_at_exit109.com)
Date: 10/15/05 

Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 13:47:18 -0400

Rhino wrote:

> I'd be VERY surprised if IBM predicted that there would be only 5
> COMPUTERS in *2000* - perhaps you mean 5 *manufacturers* of computers? -
> unless the prediction was made a VERY long time ago. I think you are
> giving a badly-mangled version of something I saw when I worked at IBM.

It was a long time ago (1940s?), or perhaps about the time when the IBM 701
was being designed. Tom Watson (the original one) thought there might be a
use for 7 of these things in the entire world. A famous underestimate, not
unlike the one the management of Western Union made when Al. G. Bell offered
them the telephone patent for $1 million (IIRC), and they turned it down as
a useless invention because it did not give the recipient a paper copy of
the message.
>
> About 10 years ago, when I was working at IBM, there was an employee
> newsletter circulated commemorating the death of Thomas J. Watson Jr., a
> former CEO of IBM. They cited an old interview with him in which he had
> predicted that the world wide market for computers would be 3 in the next
> year; in other words, he expected IBM to sell three of their computers
> in that year. However, he was not making this prediction in or for the
> year 2000; the interview had taken place just after World War II - 1946
> perhaps - and was for the next year. I wasn't born then but, from what I
> recall about computer history, selling 3 Eniacs (or whatever model they
> were making that year) isn't too far out of line with what actually
> happened.

Only one ENIAC was built, at Moore School of Engineering in Philadelphia. It
was not really a computer in the modern sense of the term, since the
programs were hard wired into the machine with co-ax cables, and not stored
in the memory. In fact, it had no memory as the term is now used.
>
> Of course, we are talking about a time when computers were absolutely
> immense, ran on vacuum tubes (the transistor hadn't been invented yet)
> and filled very large rooms - and yet probably had less computing power
> than the average microwave oven you can buy today. Only very large
> companies or national governments would want or need a computer in those
> days. Everyone else was still using typewriters - which was IBM's bread
> and butter in those days - for their business needs.
>
Not quite. IBM made an impressive line of electrical and electronic (vacuum
tube) calculators, sorters, calculating card punches, etc. The calculators
were programmed by plugging wires into plugboards. Not much fun, but
challenging. 

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