December 13

Thomas Augustus Watson was born on the 13th in 1854. As an adult, Watson would found a very successful shipbuilding company and both write and stage numerous plays, drawing chiefly from the works of Charles Dickens. However, he is perhaps best known for his role as Thomas Edison’s assistant in the development of the telephone. It is widely known that the first words spoken into a telephone and received by a person on the other end are the words spoken by Edison to Watson at Edison’s Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory: “Mr. Watson, come here I want you.” Fewer people are aware that the first conversation continued with “I’ve always wanted you.”