Mr. Watson, come here, I need you!

For some months, Alexander Graham Bell had been trying to create a working telephone. Within the device, a liquid was used as an electical conducting medium between two electrodes. Now, plain water is a conductor, but not a good one for small amounts of current so Bell decided to add a small amount of sulfuric acid to the water to enhance conduction. While adding the acid, he spilled some on himself on the evening of March 10, 1876. In that instant, he yelled out "Watson come here, I need you!"

Mr. Watson, his assistant, heard him over the other end (receiving unit) of the phone. And with that - Thomas Augustus Watson ran to Bell's aid into and right out of history.

So what became of Mr. Watson?

After 1881, once he was satified with his work on the telephone, he moved on. Aided by royalties from the telephone, the 27-year old toured Europe and when he returned to the States in 1883, he settled down in East Braintree, Massachusetts to try his hand at farming. He soon discovered that farming was hard, manual work and he soon tired of it. He turned one of his farm buildings into a machine shop and attempted to build steamship and boat engines, an enterprise that eventually lead to the forming the Fore River Engine Company.

In his mid-30s, he and his wife Elizabeth returned to school, attending first the Lowell Institute, and later MIT, to learn about geography and paleontology. While exploring the geography of a local hill, he helped discover a new genus of gastropods (snail and slugs) that now bears his name, "Watsonella".

Even while he was studying rocks, he managed his growing boat engine company. In 1901, he moved the company to Quincy, MA and expanding into shipbuilding, and was soon building cruisers and battleships for President Theodore Roosevelt's navy. He left his company in 1904 but the company still exists today.

Watson once again remade his career and joined Frank R. Benson's company of Shakespearean actors - which actually performed in Stratford-on-Avon in England.

Apparently Watson’s was given to singing songs into the handset during telephone demonstrations with Alexander Graham Bell and had a fine singing voice. In 1912, he returned to his East Braintree, Massachusetts home and filled his time by with amateur stage productions and giving lectures on this and that until he died on December 13, 1934.

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