The Father of IBM, Thomas J Watson Senior, was born on February 17, 1874.  Born into a very different age, his influence continued into the dawn of the computer age.

Thomas J Watson 

(February 17, 1984 - June 19, 1956) 

Many people think of IBM as a huge monolith of a company that has always been there, probably never deserved to be there and is certainly no good thing. The same sort of attitude extends to its founder - Thomas J Watson. He is often stereotyped as the super salesman, interested in nothing but sales and totally uninterested in products. If you follow this view you can be led to believe that IBM was drawn into computing by accident, that Watson even resisted the move, and only made a success of it all by being good at selling. In this picture IBM might as well as have been a frozen food company as a designer and seller of computers. This isn't so...

For more see the article in our History section:

Thomas J Watson Sr, Father of IBM