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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.
Thomas J. Watson was born in Campbell, New York, the fifth child and only son of Thomas and Jane Fulton White Watson. Thomas worked on the family farm in East Campbell, New York and attended the District School Number Five in the late 1870s.
As Watson entered his teen years he attended Addison Academy In Addison, New York.
In 1937, as President of the International Chamber of Commerce, Watson met Adolf Hitler.
Germany declared war on the United States in December 1941, and the German shareholders took custody of the Dehomag operation. However, during World War II, IBM subsidiaries in occupied Europe never stopped delivery of punch cards to Dehomag, and documents uncovered show that senior executives at IBM world headquarters in New York took great pains to maintain legal authority over Dehomag's operations and assets through the personal intervention of IBM managers in neutral Switzerland, directed via personal communications and private letters.
During this same period, 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 developed the "1% doctrine" for war profits which mandated that IBM receive no more than 1% profit from the sales of military equipment to U.S. Government.
After World War II, Watson began work to further the extent of IBM's influence abroad and in 1949, he created the IBM World Trade Corporation in order to oversee IBM's foreign business.
Watson married Jeanette Kittredge, from a prominent Dayton, Ohio railroad family, on April 17, 1913. They had two sons and two daughters.
He died on June 19, 1956, in Manhattan, New York City and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
