I realize now what a lucky boy I was, when at 13 years of age I had to
leave school and go to work for my living, although I didn’t think so at
that time. I am not advising my young friends to leave school at this
age, for they may not have the opportunity to enter college as I did at
40. There’s a “tide in the affairs of men,” you know, and that was the
beginning of its flood in my life, for after trying several
vocations—clerking, bookkeeping, carpentering, etc.—and finding them all
unattractive, I at last found just the job that suited me in the
electrical work-shop of Charles Williams, at 109 Court Street,
Boston—one of the best men I have ever known. Better luck couldn’t
befall a boy than to be brought so early in life under the influence of
such a high-minded gentleman as Charles Williams.
I want to say a few words about my work there, not only to give you a
picture of such a shop in the early ’70s, but also because in this shop
the telephone had its birth and a good deal of its early development.
[Illustration: _Thomas A. Watson in 1874_]
I was first set to work on a hand lathe turning binding posts for $5 a
week. The mechanics of to-day with their automatic screw machines,
hardly know what it is to turn little rough castings with a hand tool.
How the hot chips used to fly into our eyes! One day I had a fine idea.
I bought a pair of 25-cent goggles, thinking the others would hail me as
a benefactor of mankind and adopt my plan. But they laughed at me for
being such a sissy boy and public opinion forced me back to the old
time-honored plan of winking when I saw a chip coming. It was not an
efficient plan, for the chip usually got there first. There was a
liberal education in it for me in manual dexterity. There was no
specializing in these shops at that time. Each workman built everything
there was in the shop to build, and an apprentice also had a great
variety of jobs, which kept him interested all the time, for his tools
were poor and simple and it required lots of thought to get a job done
right.