Thomas J. Watson Jr.: Junior Achievement

Sometimes it takes a couple of tries before you can be brilliant. That was certainly true of Thomas J. Watson Jr. and computers. In March, 1946, the son of IBM (IBM ) founder Thomas J. Watson Sr. had his first swipe at destiny. IBM was the world's leading tabulating machine company when the younger Watson paid a visit to one of the first electronic computers, ENIAC, which was causing a hubbub in academic circles. Watson left unimpressed.

A few weeks later the tremendous potential of computing sank in. Watson and his father, then CEO, were nosing around headquarters when they found an engineer who had hooked an IBM tabulator up to an electronic gizmo the size of a footlocker. He was making payroll calculations in one-tenth the time it usually took. In his autobiography, Father, Son & Co., Watson recalled telling his father: "We should put this thing on the market! Even if we only sell eight or 10, we'll be able to advertise the fact that we have the world's first commercial electronic calculator."