The Lengthening Shadow: The Life of Thomas J. Watson

22 cm, 332 pages. Illustrations. Index, DJ worn, soiled, and small tears. The Lengthening Shadow, since its publication in 1962, is the major source of historical information for almost all works that following it on Thomas J. Watson Sr. or the early IBM Corporation. In September 1956 the future publisher, Little, Brown & Company approached the husband and wife team of Thomas and Marva Belden with a proposal from IBM. IBM desired a biography written about Mr. Watson--the company founder. The Beldens at first replied that they did not care to write a eulogy; for Watson Sr. had just passed away a few months earlier. The publisher told them that IBM wanted a "disinterested" work. Tom Watson Jr., Watson's son and IBM's chairman of the board, told the Beldens that he wanted a "hard look." The Beldens agreed to provide IBM with the manuscript for a set fee, without royalty rights. The contract stipulated that it would be a "disinterested" work, and if IBM accepted it without demanding "substantial changes" it would be published with the names of the authors. But if IBM was unhappy with the manuscript, it could not be published under their names. As it turns out, IBM accepted the manuscript as it was written. The authors believe the treatment to be factual and that they neither skipped nor glossed over any major events in the life of IBM's founder. The title was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's line, "An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man." Mr. Watson used to quote It quite often. The book starts with Watson's early years, covers his career and troubles at NCR, IBM's antitrust problems, and its growth. Thomas John Watson Sr. (February 17, 1874 - June 19, 1956) was an American businessman. He served as the chairman and CEO of International Business Machines (IBM) He oversaw the company's growth into an international force from 1914 to 1956. Watson developed IBM's management style and corporate culture from John Henry Patterson's training at NCR. He turned the company into a highly-effective selling organization, based largely on punched card tabulating machines. A leading self-made industrialist, he was one of the richest men of his time and was called the world's greatest salesman when he died in 1956. Charles Ranlett Flint who had engineered the forming of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) found it difficult to manage the five companies. He hired Watson as general manager on May 1, 1914 when the five companies had about 1,300 employees. Eleven months later he was made president. In 1924, he renamed CTR to International Business Machines. Watson built IBM into such a dominant company that the federal government filed a civil antitrust suit against it in 1952. IBM owned and leased to its customers more than 90 percent of all tabulating machines in the United States at the time. Throughout his life, Watson maintained a deep interest in international relations, from both a diplomatic and a business perspective. He was known as President Roosevelt's unofficial ambassador in New York and often entertained foreign statesmen. In 1937, he was elected president of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and at that year's biennial congress in Berlin stated the conference keynote to be "World Peace Through World Trade". That phrase became the slogan of both the ICC and IBM. Within a year of the Berlin congress though, where Watson's hopes had run high, he found himself strongly protesting the German policy toward the Jews. Because of his strong feelings about the issue, Watson wanted to return his German citation shortly after receiving it. When Secretary of State Hull advised him against that course of action, he gave up the idea until the spring of 1940. Then Watson sent the medal back in June 1940. IBM became more deeply involved in the war effort for the U.S., focusing on producing large quantities of data processing equipment for the military and experimenting with analog computers. Watson, Sr. also develo.…