X-Nico

5 unusual facts about Thomas Watson


Great Harrowden

His son Thomas Wentworth (died 1750) who had become the 6th Lord Rockingham, was created Marquess of Rockingham in 1746.

Thomas Watson-Wentworth bought the estate from the Knollys family in 1695 and built the present Hall between 1716 and 1719 for use as a Dower House.

Samuel Laurence

Thomas Erskine, 1838; Thomas Carlyle, 1841; Sir Frederick Pollock, bart., 1842 and 1847; Charles Babbage, 1845; Dr. William Whewell, 1847; James Spedding, 1860; the Rev. William Hepworth Thompson, master of Trinity, and Robert Browning, 1869; Sir Thomas Watson, bart., M.D., 1870; and the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, 1871.

Thomas J. Watson Research Center

The center, headquarters of IBM's Research division, is named for both Thomas J. Watson, Sr. and Thomas Watson, Jr., who led IBM as president and CEO respectively from 1915 (when it was known as the Computing Tabulating Recording Company) to 1971.

Wentworth Castle

The estate of Wentworth Woodhouse, which he believed was his birthright, was scarcely six miles distant and was a constant bitter sting, for the Strafford fortune had passed from William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford, the childless son of the great earl, to his wife's nephew, Thomas Watson; only the barony of Raby had gone to a blood-relation.


1591 in poetry

The Countesse of Pembrokes Yvychurch, Part 1 adapted from Torquato Tasso's Aminta; Part 2 a revision of Fraunce's translation of Amyntas 1587 by Thomas Watson; volume also includes translations of the second Bucolic of Virgil (first published in Fraunce's The Lawiers Logike) and of the opening of Heliodorus's Aethiopica (see also The Third Part 1592)

Anne Morgan Spalter

In Brown University’s Department of Computer Science, Spalter worked with Thomas J. Watson, Jr. University Professor of Technology and Education and Professor of Computer Science Andries van Dam as Artist in Residence and as a Visual Computing Researcher.

Hoober Stand

It was designed by Henry Flitcroft for the Whig aristocrat Thomas Watson-Wentworth, Earl of Malton (later the 1st Marquess of Rockingham) to commemorate the quashing of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, and lies close to his country seat Wentworth Woodhouse.


see also

Bell Telephone Company

Of the Bell Company's original shareholders, Thomas Watson resigned his position in 1881 with his shares bringing him up to the status of a millionaire, thereafter living a colourful life as a Shakespearean actor and later as a shipyard owner and ship builder—always retaining his friendship with Bell.

Kirkella, Manitoba

Kirkella was the name of the farm of local pioneer Thomas Watson, which in turn derived its name from Kirk Ella a village in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.

Sir Thomas Penyston, 1st Baronet

Sir Thomas Penistone subsequently settled in Cornwell, Oxfordshire, and sometime after 1622, he married again, to Elizabeth Watson, daughter of Sir Thomas Watson and widow of Sir William Pope.