December 13

Thomas Augustus Watson as born on the 13th in 1854. He is best known for his role as Thomas Edison’s assistant in the development of the telephone. It is has been widely stated that the first telephone conversation consisted of Edison’s saying “Mr. Watson, come here I want to see you.” On occasion, the sentence’s ending is rendered as ‘I want you’ or ‘I need you’. It was Watson’s personal recollection that the first sentence ended with ‘I want you’. Neither Watson nor any other source however has been able to confirm that the second sentence ever spoken over the telephone was also Edison’s, who continued with “I’ve always wanted you.”

With the money he earned from his work with Edison on the telephone, Watson would found the Fore River Ship and Engine Company a shipbuilding company which he would sell to the Bethlehem Steel Company after World War II. He also wrote and staged numerous plays, drawing chiefly from the works of Charles Dickens.