The story of the Watsons, IBM, and System/360
In 2011, IBM gained an enormous coup when their Watson system beat world champions on the game show Jeopardy. Whether it was bad timing, bad execution, or bad luck, IBM hasn’t been able to turn this PR triumph into commercial success. Watson wasn’t the only breakthrough that IBM failed to turn into gold. Deep Blue mastered chess in 1997. The IBM PC had the potential to dominate the market long-term after its introduction in 1981. In all these examples, IBM didn’t cash in on their technical leaps. However, if we go back a few more decades, IBM delivered a breakthrough that set them on the path to explosive growth and market dominance: the System/360 series of mainframe computers. In this article I’ll review what I believe is the definitive history of this breakthrough, the story of the birth of System/360, The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived by Ralph Watson McElvenny and Marc Wortman, published by PublicAffairs.
What is this book about?
In addition to telling the System/360 story, this book has two interwoven narratives: the Shakespearean tale of the Watson family and the history of IBM. Let’s look at each of these three threads.
