Thomas Augustus Watson

Thomas Augustus Watson (born January 18, 1854, Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.—died December 13, 1934, Passagrille Key, Florida) was an American telephone pioneer and shipbuilder, one of the original organizers of the Bell Telephone Company, who later turned to shipbuilding and constructed a number of vessels for the United States government.

After leaving school at the age of 14, Watson began work in an electrical shop in Boston, where he met Alexander Graham Bell. He worked with Bell on his telephone experiments, and on March 10, 1876, through a receiver connected by wire to a transmitting instrument located in another room, Watson heard Bell’s famous first telephone call, which Watson later recalled as “Mr. Watson—come here—I want you.” Over the next year Watson joined Bell in demonstrating the powers of the new invention in several spectacular and widely reported exhibitions. In 1877, when the Bell Telephone Company was formed, Watson received a share in the business and became its head of research and technical development.

After leaving Bell in 1881, Watson, made independently wealthy by his share of the royalties on the telephone, traveled through Europe, married, started a family, and made an unsuccessful attempt at farming along the Weymouth Fore River in East Braintree, Massachusetts, southeast of Boston. In 1885, having opened a machine shop in a building on his farm property, he started a new business, the Fore River Engine Company, in partnership with his assistant, Frank O. Wellington. The two partners at first constructed marine engines, and then in 1896 they received their first government contract, for two destroyers. During the following eight years, Watson moved the shipyard to nearby Quincy, Massachusetts, changed the growing company’s name to the Fore River Ship & Engine Company, and took on contracts to build lightships, cruisers, battleships, schooners, and other vessels.

Following his retirement from shipbuilding in 1904, Watson led a restless and peripatetic existence. He and his wife studied geology; he acted in a Shakespearean company; and in 1926 he published an autobiography, Exploring Life. On January 25, 1915, he rejoined Bell in making the first transcontinental telephone call, between New York City and San Francisco. Watson died at his winter home in Florida.