15 Facts About Jack Kuehler

Jack D Kuehler was an American electrical engineer who devoted the majority of his career at IBM, where he was the firm's highest ranking technologist, serving as president and later vice chairman of the company.

Jack Kuehler studied mechanical engineering at Santa Clara University and later earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from the school.

Jack Kuehler was chosen to serve as senior vice president in May 1982, and was appointed as vice chairman of the board and a member of the executive committee in January 1988 with responsibility for corporate manufacturing and systems and programming staffs.

In May 1989, Jack Kuehler became IBM President when John Fellows Akers relinquished that title; Akers continued to serve as Chairman and CEO of IBM.

Jack Kuehler's promotion was unusual since most IBM presidents came from sales instead of engineering, and being two years older than Akers he was unlikely to succeed him as CEO, therefore the title was seen as an acknowledgement of Jack Kuehler's long service to the company as there was no reporting changes.

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Jack Kuehler played a key role in IBM's investment in Intel, aimed at helping that company survive against Japanese competitors and then later formed a partnership with Hitachi a company that had been one of IBM's fiercest competitors.

Jack Kuehler played a key role in the formation of Sematech in 1987, an industry-wide initiative sponsored by the United States government aimed at revitalizing the American semiconductor chip industry.

Jack Kuehler was instrumental in an investment that IBM made in the chip maker Intel when that company was struggling because of the rise of Japanese memory chip manufacturers.

Jack Kuehler led IBM into a partnership with Hitachi, once one of its most tenacious rivals.

Jack Kuehler played a central role in the creation of Sematech, an industry-government alliance created in 1987 to help save the American semiconductor industry.

Jack Kuehler helped create a partnership between IBM, Apple Inc, and Motorola that became known as the AIM alliance to challenge the dominating positions that Microsoft and Intel had in the personal computing business.

Jack Kuehler sought to expand the demand for its Reduced instruction set computer architecture, which was designed to achieve higher performance by running a smaller set of commands.

Jack Kuehler called Michael Spindler, president of Apple Computer, who bought into the approach for a design that could challenge the Wintel-based PC.

Jack Kuehler was a trustee of Santa Clara University and donated $1 million to the college's engineering school in 2005.

Jack Kuehler died at age 76 on December 20,2008 in Rancho Santa Fe, California of complications related to Parkinson's disease.