On 2017-09-17 10:45, 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?

they weren't very clued.

it doesn't take much of a clue to realize that things would not
remain stagnant.

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.

not at all.

Hindsight and all that... laughable premise.