The World of Computers

"The world will only need five computers," Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM, is reported to have said. The year was 1953, and it was the elder Watson's opinion that this was an enterprise in which IBM had no business. Yet three years later, with his son Tom, Jr., at the helm, IBM was competing furiously in the nascent computer field.

How could Watson, Sr., a man of great vision, have been so wrong about computers? Indeed, he can probably be forgiven, for at the time the few such machines in existence filled entire rooms. Computers were thought of as people thought of electrical generating plants or waterworks: one was surely enough for an entire community. Far more popular in business was the electronic calculator, a "computing machine about the size of a radiator that could be rolled from desk to desk, room to room. At that time, it was probably hard to conceive of computers that fit on a desktop — much less computers in autos, cash registers, watches, stereos, and telephones.

Big computers haven't gone away, but today we have computers of all sizes and descriptions — there is a computer for every need, every lifestyle, and almost every pocketbook. If the computer industry had but one motto, it would be "Better, faster, cheaper." There has been a constant drive to produce more reliable computers, computers that perform their tasks ever more speedily and at a lower cost. Computerworld, the leading weekly newspaper of the computer industry, once used the advertisement to point out how the computer industry's technological advances have outpaced those of the auto industry. The analogy is not far-fetched.