
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 1, 1994                   TAG: 9401010031
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Short

IBM HEIR THOMAS J. WATSON DIES

Thomas J. Watson Jr., who followed his father as head of the International Business Machines Corp. and pushed the company into the computer era, died Friday. He was 79.

Watson, who also was ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Carter administration, died at Greenwich Hospital of complications following a stroke, Roger Bolton, an IBM spokesman, said from his home in Connecticut.

Watson became IBM president in 1952, and was chief executive officer from 1956 to 1971. Under him the company, known as a maker of typewriters and adding machines, blazed a trail into the world of computing.

"Perhaps the most important legacy of his leadership can be summarized in just three words, `IBM means service,' " IBM chairman Louis Gerstner said after his first meeting with Watson, last April.

Watson led IBM through the longest and most spectacular growth in modern business history. It grew from about $700 million in annual revenue to $7.5 billion during his tenure as chief executive.

He became CEO a few months before the death of his father, who started IBM in 1914, the same year Watson was born.

"I'd heard so many stories about sons of prominent men failing in business, and I could imagine their devastation at finding themselves unable to fill their fathers' shoes. I worried I'd end up the same way," Watson wrote in his 1990 autobiography, "Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond."

by CNB