We can see the bad now...

[legion]

But it might take years to see the good...

Flood Spawned IBM, So Maybe Katrina Will Plant Similar Seed
WASHINGTON (USA Today)--Hard to imagine that a flood like the one in New Orleans could possibly result in anything good.
Yet in one of those odd twists of history, a 1913 flood that devastated Dayton, Ohio, had a huge impact on the technology industry. If not for that flood -- still among the worst in the USA - - there would have been no IBM.

Which would have meant no System/360 in the 1960s, no "THINK," no legendary salesmen in white shirts, no IBM PC. And if there had been no IBM PC, then Microsoft might today be a quaint little specialized software company and Intel a struggling maker of memory chips. Michael Dell might be a salesman for Unisys.

All because the Dayton flood kept Thomas Watson Sr., who built IBM, from going to jail.

The story starts with National Cash Register, which had its headquarters on high ground in Dayton. NCR was run by short, wily, ornery John Patterson, whose monopolistic practices might make Bill Gates cringe. Patterson trained salesmen to break a competitor's cash register when a shopkeeper wasn't looking, then explain that NCR's machines were more reliable.

Watson started as an NCR salesman in the 1890s, working his way up to become chief marketing officer and Patterson's protege. (This is all from research I did for my book about Watson, The Maverick and His Machine.)

At the turn of the century, NCR controlled the market for cash registers, which were the hottest business management technology of the day.

But by 1912, the Taft administration was on an antitrust tear. It had gone after Standard Oil. Then the administration took aim at NCR, indicting Patterson, Watson and 28 other NCR executives under a rarely used statute for criminal antitrust.

NCR got creamed in court. A guilty verdict was reached on Feb. 13, 1913, and each NCR official faced up to three years in jail, pending appeal.

About a month later, all-day rain soaked Ohio. On March25, the rivers that converge at Dayton started swelling. At 6:45 a.m., Patterson gathered a group of executives -- minus Watson -- on NCR's roof, where they could see that a flood looked inevitable. Patterson told the executives to start collecting food, water, blankets and medicine and ordered the woodworking department to drop everything and make flat-bottomed boats.

Believing NCR would stay dry on its hill, Patterson decided to turn his campus into the equivalent of the Superdome. He opened it to anyone who needed shelter.

At 8:30 a.m., one of the city's levees broke. Waves of water raced through town, sucking in horses and wagons and furniture. Like in New Orleans, the water reached rooftops. Unlike in New Orleans, there was no sewer system, so the flood carried away every outhouse and its contents.

Residents scampered to safety at NCR, where a couple thousand took refuge. In the boats they made, NCR employees plucked others from trees and roofs.

Watson was in New York on business. In NCR's archives are a series of telegrams between Watson and Patterson as Watson swung into action to send help to Dayton. "Am arranging for relief train. Wire what you need most," Watson wrote in one. In two days, Watson pulled together donations and sent two trains packed with food, water, tents -- and newspaper reporters.

The reporters were key. While NCR's acts were sincere, Patterson also sensed an opportunity. The Dayton flood made worldwide headlines. So, too, did NCR's heroics. The Chicago Evening Post wrote: "Patterson was revered by Dayton people before the catastrophe but is now an idol for whom thousands would lay down their lives."

It was one of the great public relations turnarounds of all time - - from convicted business demon to media darling. And you thought only Martha Stewart could do that.

Then, in the fall of 1913, Patterson bizarrely pushed almost every convicted executive out of NCR, including Watson. Imagine how Watson must have felt: He was 40, was driven away by his mentor, had a jail term hanging over his head -- and his wife was pregnant with their first child, who would become IBM's other famous CEO, Thomas Watson Jr.

But this worked out pretty well for Watson Sr. In May 1914, he took a job running a wheezing little agglomeration of assets called Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co., or C-T-R. Almost a year later, an appeals court set aside NCR's antitrust verdict and granted a new trial. Unwilling to retry the flood heroes, Woodrow Wilson's administration dropped the case.

Over the next decade, Watson focused C-T-R on information processing and in 1924 renamed it the ambitious-sounding International Business Machines. During the boom of the late 1920s, IBM was essentially like Cisco Systems during the dot-com bubble -- a young company with a sizzling stock and important new technology that hardly anyone understood.

IBM -- entirely built in Watson's image -- grew like crazy through the Depression. Watson became as famous as Gates or Steve Jobs today. And IBM just kept growing.

The Dayton flood made that possible, though of course no one could've seen that at the time.

So it's fascinating to wonder if some seed is being planted amid Katrina's mess. It's not much consolation for the lives and homes lost, but maybe a career is being shaped or an idea formed that wouldn't have been possible had the disaster not happened. And maybe that person or concept will later emerge to create something great. It's a small flicker of solace.

[RallyJon]

So it's fascinating to wonder if some seed is being planted amid Katrina's mess.

Yes, yes there is. Here is a photo of the founder and CEO of Lootersoft, Inc. during his formative years.