Brian, The memo is definitely authentic (see copy of it--attached, courtesy of IBM Archives). As to Seymour's 'reply,' I fear it is from the book "A Few Good Men From Univac, David Lundstrom, viz. p. 135 on which Lundstrom says: "One of the funniest documents in my collection of computer memorabilia is an internal IBM memo, which surfaced during the discovery phase of the various IBM lawsuits (figure 12). T. J. Watson, Jr., questions with acerbity just why such a small low-budget operation as the Chippewa Lab developed the fastest computer in the world, while IBM's vast research establishment cannot. I believe that Seymour would say that Mr. Watson answered his own question." (Thanks to my colleague curator Alex Bochannek for locating this reference) Mea culpa! I have attributed this quote to Seymour myself (http://drdobbs.com/184404102). I stand corrected! Thanks Brian, Best Dag On May 19, 2011, at 9:00 AM, members-request@sigcis.org wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. New CBI Newsletter (Spring 2011, Vol. 33:1) (Charles Babbage Institute) 2. Tom Watson and Seymour Cray quotes (Brian Randell)

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Message: 1 Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 14:47:11 -0500 From: Charles Babbage Institute <cbi@umn.edu> To: katie <cbi@umn.edu> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] New CBI Newsletter (Spring 2011, Vol. 33:1) Message-ID: <4DC9963F.4020204@umn.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

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Message: 2 Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 11:06:54 +0100 From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk> To: sigcis <members@sigcis.org> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Tom Watson and Seymour Cray quotes Message-ID: <DC4F042D-3DA8-4AEE-B79D-D0C2188E7519@ncl.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Hi:

I've been trying to trace the origins of the oft-repeated pair of quotations:

"Last week, Control Data ... announced the 6600 system. I understand that in the laboratory developing the system there are only 34 people including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are programmers... Contrasting this modest effort with our vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world's most powerful computer." - Thomas J Watson Jr

"It seems like Mr. Watson has answered his own question." -- Seymour Cray's response to Thomas Watson.

which I'd assumed were both apocryphal. In fact I find that Watson gives the first quotation himself in his book "Father, Son and Co: My Life at IBM and Beyond", saying that it was in a memo that he wrote to his "top men" on August 28, 1963.

However, I've not been able to authenticate alleged Seymour Cray's alleged response - which I fear is too good to be true.

Can anyone in fact validate it?

Cheers

Brian Randell

-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell

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