On Sun, 17 Sep 2017 10:06:08 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2017-09-16 20:16, nospam wrote:
In article , Eric Stevens
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.

IBM did not make Turing/Von Neumann machines at the time (nobody did)
and nobody at the business end of the stick had vision about what they
could do. It was all tabulation and automation - very specific to task
and IBM made oodles at it.

The few "computers" that existed in 1943 were hardwire programmed
(ENIAC for example) to do a specific thing (ballistics, or some such).
Re-programming (not reloading) was an arduous task taking many days.

The business of IBM was to support business. The method of it was not
important. Indeed that's IBM today. They are not a computer company.
They are a business information company. They never fell victim to the
buggy whip.

There was also Colossus http://tinyurl.com/ydap2f59
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens