Quotes from James Essinger

The aristocracy and the ordinary people were like different species. A commoner might rarely be elevated to nobility by acquiring great wealth or political influence, but the easiest way into the aristocracy – then as now – was through marriage. Most aristocrats married other ones, but occasionally a commoner might get lucky, just as sometimes happens today. Many

Hollerith learned a lesson that all vendors of data processing devices and computers have learned at some point: that the biggest market for information processing systems is usually not the government sector, still less scientific or mathematical laboratories, but the offices of commercial organizations.

Crucial decisions in business are taken as much for emotional reasons as for logical ones, perhaps even more so. The tabulators inspired a level of emotion in Flint and in other powerful American businessmen that did indeed make these people feel certain they were witnessing a momentous breakthrough in humankind's mastery of information.

One of Watson's many passionately held beliefs was that too many people failed to fulfil their potential because they didn't make enough effort to use their brains. He insisted that the word 'THINK' be posted on placards around C-T-R's offices and also on people's desks.

Hollerith was at heart an academic inventor whose commercial success, though not his technological achievement, had in a sense been something of an accident. Watson believed that in business, as in life, things did not happen by accident but because you willed them to happen and took the practical steps to turn your wishes into reality. For Watson, making customers happy was the most serious thing in the world. Hollerith, though, was much more interested in technical issues.

Their reliability was such that they were used by the French Army as late as 1940

Hollerith regarded engineers as backroom boys who worked best when they were left alone. Watson, on the other hand, was quick to chase engineers out of the laboratory and into customers' offices to find out precisely what functions and features customers needed from their machines.

The clash of Watson's and Hollerith's personalities was a classical example of a brash, energetic, visionary newcomer confronting a staid traditionalist.

IBM had its origins in Jacquard's endeavours in Revolutionary France. And indeed IBM is, indeed, a direct descendant of the work that went on in Jacquard's workshop during the last years of the eighteenth century and the first years of the nineteenth.

Peel finally decided to interrupt the endless stream of complaints and grievances and call Babbage to order with a hard fact: 'Mr Babbage, by your own admission you have rendered the Difference Engine useless by inventing a better machine.' Babbage took the bait and glared at Peel. 'But if I finish the Difference Engine it will do even more than I promised. It is true that it has been superseded by better machinery, but it is very far from being "useless.

Lady Byron noted with obvious approval that her daughter was more impressed with meeting scientists on Wednesday, June 5, 1833, rather than royalty. In particular Ada greatly enjoyed meeting the forty-four-year-old Charles Babbage: Ada

Computer engineers of today are likely to find that if they have a two-week holiday they may miss a crucial new development in computing. Similarly, those wishing to keep abreast of mechanical engineering in the late nineteenth century had little choice but to keep working at the coalface where knowledge was being sledge-hammered out of the rock of ignorance.