The year 1953 saw the development of IBM's first commercially successful general-purpose computer. Inventor, Thomas Johnson Watson Junior wanted to contribute a "defense calculator" to aid in the United Nations' policing of Korea after the Korean War. However, one obstacle Watson Junior had to overcome was in convincing his father, Thomas Johnson Watson Senior (the CEO of IBM) that computers would not harm IBM's card processing business. The 701s were incompatible with IBM's punched card processing equipment, at that time a big moneymaker for IBM. Illustration of IBM 701 EDPM Control Board by Mary Bellis
In a publicity stunt, the UNIVAC computer was used to predict the results of the Eisenhower-Stevenson presidential race. The computer had correctly predicted that Eisenhower would win, but the news media decided to blackout the computer's prediction and declared that the UNIVAC had been stumped. When the truth was revealed, it was considered amazing that a computer could do what political forecasters could not, and the UNIVAC quickly became a household name. The original