On a June day in 1917, Hollerith tabulating machines made by the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, later to become known as IBM, arrived at a port in Rio de Janeiro. A Brazilian businessman named Valentim Fernandes Bouças had personally arranged the sale of the machines, the first of their kind in the country, after traveling to New York to urge Thomas J. Watson Sr. to expand his business to Brazil. The enterprising Bouças would go on to run IBM’s first Brazil branch office and then its Brazil subsidiary. After a revolution in 1930 threatened the company’s presence in the country, he would even manage to persuade the new regime to continue using IBM products. His offer: IBM would provide the machines free of charge until they proved their value. The pitch worked.
IBM’s early years in Brazil are emblematic of the company’s long-standing approach to doing business around the world: Be ambitious. Arrive early. Employ locals as managers. And don’t give up when conditions get tough.
Even during his earliest days at C-T-R — first as general manager, then as president — Watson espoused global aspirations. He pushed the business to grow beyond operations in the US, Canada, Germany and Britain to several countries across Europe and South America. He also changed the name of the company to International Business Machines to reflect his global vision. By the late 1930s, the company owned and operated factories in 10 cities and six countries. By the late 1940s, IBM’s reach extended to 78 countries and territories.
