On 2017-09-17 10:10, nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:


"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

what's amazing is how someone so stupid could be president of ibm.


That's not stupidity, it's perception. What a "computer" was in 1943
was a handwired to task monster. Change programs? Start re-wiring for
a few days and de-bugging for many more.

sure, but anyone with even half a clue would have realized technology
would advance beyond that.

Thousands of well clued people of the day never predicted it. Why
should Watson?

To think some executive of IBM in wartime would see the future of
computers in a commercial context, at a time when Turing and Von Neumann
were still working out the concept and details is too much of a stretch.