MEMORANDUM
                August 28, 1963

Memorandum To: Messrs.  A. L. Williams
                        T. V. Learson
                        H. W. Miller, Jr.
                        E. R. Piore
                        O. M. Scott
                        M. B. Smith
                        A. K. Watson

Last week CDC had a press conference during which they officially
announced their 6600 system. I understand that in the laboratory
developing this system there are only 34 people, "including the
janitor." Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are programmers, and
only one person has a PhD., a relatively junior programmer. To
the outsider, the laboratory appeared to be cost concious, hard
working, and highly motivated.

Contrasting this modest effort with our own vast development
activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry
leadership by letting someone else offer the world's most
powerful computer. At Jenny Lake, I think top priority should
be given to a discussionas to what we are doing wrong and how we
should go about changing it immediately.

                                        T. J. Watson, Jr.
TJW,Jr:jmc
cc: Mr. W. B. McWhirter

Reproduced from _A_Few_Good_Men _from_ Univac_,
by David E. Lundstrom (MIT Press, 1987)