Think: A Biography Of The Watsons And Ibm

by William Rodgers

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

Reviews

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Publisher: Stein & Day
Pub Date: September 9th 1969

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Kirkus

THINK: A Biography of the Watsons and IBM

Seemingly, While by no means admiring, a better balanced biography than Rockefeller's Follies (1966), this full account of the greatest growth company of the 20th century and the small town boy from Painted Post, N.Y., Thomas J. Watson who made it possible.

Parochial, paternalistic, humorless, conservative, narrow-minded, but a man of great ambition and fortitude, Watson knew how to make the corn green, and THINK, the "corporation crucifix," was emblematic of its formula-ted little moralities.

But there was nothing small about the operation ever since, initiated by National Cash Register's predatory Patterson, Watson converted a holding company C-T-R into IBM; you might have bought 100 shares of Stock for $2700, it would now be worth 18 million, Indeed, "He has shown us how to play the game/And how to make the dough" which is one of the many lyrics sung in enforced unison at company clambakes.

Ultimately, Tom Junior, a very different proposition, took over and accelerated IBMs postwar international spread, while considerable attention is paid here to the evolution of the computer and the scientific minds who made it possible.

Mr. Rodgers makes the corporate history energetically interesting and you won't have to stop and THINK about its calculable interest for many men.

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1969