First time in human history that athletes and computer geeks were united! In 1958 the computer department at IBM tried to convince their President, Thomas J Watson, to make the Squaw Valley Olympics the first major sporting event to be “computerized”. They speculated that it would decrease the time for results from hours to mere minutes making the games much better for televising and much more exciting for the spectators. Of course it was successful and really changed sports. Fortunately, our Museum has just acquired the 40 page IBM folder that contains the typed letter to the president and all the data to convince him it would work. An incredible find for both the sports world and for those of us geeks who also enjoy the history of computing…. Read more
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