 That employment number grew to around 1,300 in the next year as a Systems Development Engineering Laboratory was added to the division's operations.The Golden Decade of the 1960s was a hard act to follow, and the 1970s got off to a troubling start when CEO Thomas J. Watson Jr. suffered a heart attack and retired in 1971.For the first time since 1914 – nearly six decades – IBM would not have a Watson at the helm.