Some personal recollections and history

In 1956, IBM hired Emmanuel (Manny) Piore to head its R&D effort. Piore had come from U.S. government service where he was credited for building the strong infrastructure of research by government labs by discovering “where the money was”, in defense. With respect to his influence on IBM’s R&D deployment, the story circulating around IBM was the following. Piore prepared a chart showing the most successful U.S. companies at the end of the 19th century, and the most successful ones around the middle of the 20th. He pointed out to his boss, Watson Jr., that the names of the companies which appeared in both lists were those of the companies that had a strong research organization. His argument was apparently convincing, because he was authorized to expand the research activities of IBM and orient a sizable portion of these activities to “basic research”. By 1960, IBM built its famed Research Labs in Yorktown Heights, NY, moving the majority of the research (as opposed to development) personnel from Poughkeepsie, and launching a vigorous recruiting campaign to staff new research activities.

As I said earlier, I joined IBM in 1961, in the Math department of IBM Research. My initial assignment was to continue some of my work on Applied Physics, such as propagation of waves in elastic media. This alone may sound a little strange for a Math department dedicated to the advancement of mathematics, but it shows the philosophy of the division at the time. I was hired because I was recommended by my mentor, and had a proven record as a good man, and good men were what IBM was recruiting at the time over a wide range of fields of expertise. However, my expertise also included involvement in the burgeoning new field of traffic theory. Within months after my arrival at Yorktown, some people from IBM’s marketing organization discovered that I knew something about traffic and came after me. They wanted to sell a computer to New York City to use for controlling the traffic, and solicited my help in convincing the Traffic Commissioner of New York, the famed Henry Barnes, inventor of the “Barnes Dance”, (turning all trafffic lights red at key intersections and letting people cross in all directions at once). I ended up having meetings with Barnes and his associates, which moved rather slowly, while IBM also pursued the development of the concept of computerized traffic control with a pilot study in San Jose, California. I ended up spending most of my time on a revived effort in traffic theory, with the blessing of my management in the Math department, which included my immediate manager, Hirsh Cohen, and the director of the department, Bernard Goldstein.

Some topics in this essay:
IBM Research, FDR’s Deal, Applied Physics, Alan Fowler, John Cocke, Watson Sr, Research Division, Watson Jr, Ralph Gomory, War II, ibm research, watson jr, math department, research division, research activities, science technology, research organization, 360 series, research labs, research ibm, research activities ibm, ibm research ibm, industrial research organization, pursue scientific investigations, math department ibm,