Decades before computers were ubiquitous, Joseph James Hackett made them his career.
In the 1950s, he was a salesman for IBM. Then, after a federal consent decree forced competition on the computer giant, Mr. Hackett formed his own computer punch-card company.
He later became a consultant to other companies, including a computer products firm owned by his wife, Merilyn.
Mr. Hackett, 82, of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, died Wednesday, Feb. 25, of complications from diabetes in St. Joseph Hospital.
A third generation Chicagoan born on the South Side, Mr. Hackett graduated from St. Ignatius College Prep and the University of Chicago, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1942. The following year, he joined the Army and became an officer in the Signal Intelligence Unit during World War II.
After the war, he returned to the University of Chicago, where in 1948 he earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He then studied at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, where he earned a “certificate de mathematique,” before being a statistical analyst for the U.S. military in Heidelberg, Germany.
In 1949 he wrote to Merilyn McGurk, to whom he was introduced by his sisters after the war, asking her to come to Europe and marry him. She did.
The couple returned to the states in 1952, and they moved to the South Side. Mr. Hackett joined IBM, where he worked until 1958, when he and two other IBM employees established Office Electronics Inc. A year later, Mr. Hackett started his own company, J.J. Hackett & Co., which made tabulating cards, commonly called punch cards, that were once essential to mainframe computers.
In 1962 J.J. Hackett & Co. filed a federal antitrust suit against IBM, alleging it had violated the federal consent decree by withholding technology useful to Mr. Hackett’s company. He lost the suit but never regretted filing it.
“Joe was a lifelong Democrat, but he admired Teddy Roosevelt very deeply for his antitrust efforts,” his wife said. “Big was not good, as far as Joe was concerned. … That’s why he sued.”
In 1977 Mr. Hackett sold his company, then called Hackett Corp., which at one time employed about 250 people in seven cities. He later formed the consulting firm Computer Algebra. He worked as a consultant until the early 1990s.
“Joe was a true businessman,” said Audrey Gallery, who arrived at IBM about two years after Mr. Hackett and considered him a mentor and friend. “He was honest. He was visionary. He was smart. And he was a hard worker.”
Mr. Hackett had a host of interests, including poetry, symphonies and travel.
“Art, music and poetry were a part of our lives,” said Joan Hackett, one of three daughters. “He never received the Nobel Prize, but he was really quite brilliant.”
“He was forceful, but kind of on the reserved side. But a presence nonetheless,” his daughter Susan said.
Mr. Hackett also is survived by another daughter, Patricia Hackett Gilbert; two sisters, Genevieve Jones and Elaine Hackett; and four grandchildren.
Visitation will begin at 10 a.m. Friday in Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, 1431 N. North Park Ave., Chicago. Mass will be said at 11 a.m. Friday in the church.
