Binghamton University was established in 1946 in Endicott, New York, as Triple Cities College[12][13] to serve the needs of local veterans returning from World War II. Thomas J. Watson, a founding member of IBM in Broome County, viewed the Triple Cities region as an area of great potential. In the early 1940s he collaborated with local leaders to begin establishing the two-year school as a satellite of private Syracuse University, donating land that would become the school's early home.