Word: learson
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...Vincent Learson, chairman and chief executive of the corporation for only 15 months, chose his 60th birthday to announce that he will retire next Jan. 1. He will be replaced by Frank T. Gary, 51, now IBM's president. Learson's departure, in fact, is little more than a routine management turnover. Back in 1966, when he became president, he expressed his intention of stepping down at 60. Learson will leave the corporation in brimming health; IBM's first-half net income rose 22%, to a record $618 million, on record revenues of $4.7 billion...
Beginning the day after Learson steps down, IBM will require its 37 other top officers to retire at 60. The new age limit will apply to Learson's predecessor, Thomas J. Watson Jr., who will turn 60 on Jan. 8, 1974. Chief executive of IBM for 15 years, Watson gave up that title last year after a heart attack but remained a member of the company's board and its top decision-making body, the Corporate Office. IBM's present retirement age of 65 will continue to cover the remainder of its 265,493 employees, but some...
...Learson, a 37-year veteran of IBM, was responsible for developing many products, particularly the highly successful System/360. Introduced in 1964, the 360 has done more than any other recent innovation to maintain IBM's technological and financial lead over the rest of the computer industry...
...Chairman T. Vincent Learson will not talk about the company's copier program, but IBM's chief problem in getting a computer-copier system on the market seems to be neither financial nor technical but legal. Xerox has built a fence of patents and copyrights around its duplicating technology, and already is suing IBM for alleged patent infringement. Conceivably it can tie IBM in legal knots until its own technicians perfect a computer-copier system-though no one can be too sure who remembers the long line of corporate giants that have lost competitive battles with...
Aggressive Ideal. Learson, whose present yacht is named Nepenthe (says he: "She's the Greek goddess who induces a pleasurable sensation of forgetful-ness"), went to work as a salesman for IBM immediately after graduating from Harvard in 1935. Offered a higher-paying job by competitor Remington Rand, Learson nonetheless chose IBM because its machines were electrical rather than mechanical. He rose to general sales manager at a crucial time. Learson still admits that parts of computer technology are "over my head," but in the early 1950s he and Tom Jr. strenuously argued, against the elder Watson...