“I have never known of the students having a better opportunity to see and hear a distinguished man.”
That’s what Dr. Percy I. Bugbee, principal of the Oneonta Normal School, told The Oneonta Daily Star on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 1932, regarding a visit the next day to the campus of Dr. Thomas A. Watson, who assisted Alexander Graham Bell in the invention of the telephone.
Back then, the Normal School was at the top of Maple Street, where today’s Old Main Apartments are located.
Several townspeople came to this morning assembly to hear about the invention of the telephone in 1876. Watson was still a spry 78-year-old in 1932. He brought a full-sized model of the first telephone and left an autographed copy of the book he wrote in 1926, “Exploring Life.”
“Sixty years ago, when I was a boy,” began Dr. Watson, “it became necessary for me to learn a trade. I tried carpentry but didn’t like it, so I went into a small shop in Boston which dealt with electrical supplies.”
At that time, if a boy wanted to learn electrical engineering, there were no colleges to learn from, so working in a shop like this was required.
Watson worked here for two years, making labor-saving devices for the many gadgets that inventors brought to the shop to be made. He became acquainted with many inventors, and it was here he met Alexander Graham Bell.
“It was one day in 1874 when I was hard at work,” Watson recalled, “That a tall slender man of marvelous personality entered the shop.”
Bell had plans for a harmonic telegraph which, through sympathetic vibration, would send six or eight messages through the same wire at the same time. Watson helped him perfect the mechanism, but it did not work as well as Bell had hoped.
That lack of success wasn’t in vain, as further work accidentally led to the invention of the telephone.
Dr. Bell had now given up his teaching profession entirely, having been a professor at Boston University, to concentrate on his invention. Bell had a rented space in Boston for his laboratory, doubling as his home.
From Watson’s book, “Exploring Life,” he recalled the evening of March 10, 1876 working with Bell on the device.
“Neither of us had the least idea that we were about to try the best transmitter that had yet been devised. We filled its cup with diluted sulphuric acid and connected it to the battery and to the wire running between the two rooms. When all was ready I went into Bell’s bedroom and stood by the bureau with my ear at the receiving telephone.
“Almost at once I was astonished to hear Bell’s voice coming from it distinctly saying, ‘Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!’ He had no receiving telephone at his end of the wire so I couldn’t answer him, but as the tone of his voice indicated he needed help, I rushed down the hall into his room and found he had upset the acid of a battery over his clothes. He forgot the accident in his joy over the success of the new transmitter when I told him how plainly I had heard his words, and his joy was increased when he went to the other end of the wire and heard how distinctly my voice came through.”
Watson resigned from the Bell Telephone Co. in 1881. With the royalties from his participation in the invention of the telephone, he made some career changes. After two years of farming, he opened a machine shop and then the Fore River Ship and Engine Building Company of Quincy/Braintree, Mass., which went on to become one of the largest shipyards in America. Bethlehem Steel later purchased it.
In a more leisurely life, Watson was a student of art, music and speech. He wrote plays in addition to books.
Neither the Star nor The Oneonta Herald reported on what Watson did before or after the lecture, which would have been interesting.
Ruth Reichard, a student at Oneonta Normal School, wrote an article about Watson’s visit in The Pen Dragon, the school’s student publication. In conclusion, she wrote, “The student body was keenly aware of its good fortune in being able to hear Dr. Watson, and his visit here will always be recalled with great pleasure.”
On Monday: A Yankees tragedy near Binghamton.
City Historian Mark Simonson’s column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com. His website is www.oneontahistorian.com
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