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After I Got Out Of The Navy

After I got out of the navy, I didn’t do anything for about two weeks except fix up stuff at my in-laws house. My wife and I were living with them until I could get a job. I didn’t want to go back to my old Machinist job at Spalding Knitting Mills. The only benefit they had was one week paid vacation when they closed down the whole mill and everyone went on vacation. I wanted to use some of the electronics training I had received in the navy. I put in job applications with every company I could think of but there were not many electronic jobs at that time except in radio and television. One of the places I applied for a job was Southern Bell Telephone Company. They offered me a job paying $45.00 a week but only if I would move to Marietta, Ga. Next I went to Atlanta to apply at Burroughs. They offered me $55.00 a week while I would be going to school in Atlanta but they were not yet building any electronic equipment. When I left Burroughs I turned around at Pershing Point and saw the IBM office at 1439 Peachtree. At the time I didn’t really know much about IBM. The only reason I was familiar with the name was we had an IBM Tabulator and Summary Punch in the plotting room on the USS Mississippi used to record the missile launcher train and elevation orders. It was the only two IBM machines on a ship in the navy. The two Machine Accountants assigned to the machines were the only two in the navy with sea duty. They were both married and very bitter about the situation.

I decided to stop and see if they had any job openings I might be interested in. When I got close to the building I saw a lot of machines in the front windows of the building in a section they called The Service Bureau. One of them caught my eye. It was full of vacuum tubes. I found out later it was a 604 Calculator. I told the receptionist I was looking for a job. She talked to someone on the phone and led me back to Mr. Johnny Jones office. Johnny Jones was the Customer Engineering Manager of The Atlanta Office and had always been. He was one of the first seven Customer Engineers hired by Thomas J. Watson Sr. Mister Jones’ original territory had been everything east of the Mississippi River and south of New Jersey.

I told him I had just been discharged from the navy and the training I had received from them. He was really interested when I told him I had been a Machinist before going into the navy. He asked me to take a battery of test, which I did. There was a section on basic electronics and basic mechanics. I had not finished the test when the time was up and a man named Curtis Mobley came to pick up the test. He took it to Mr. Jones and they talked a while then Mr. Jones came to me and wanted me to finish the test. I did this in about 15 more minutes and then he told me the reason he wanted me to finish the test. He said that I had made the same grade on the Electronics part and the Mechanical part and he had never had anyone to do that before. He said he had EE graduates make higher on the electronics but fail the mechanical. He had also had ME graduates make higher on the mechanical part but fail the electronics. I told him I thought it was because of my background. I had worked in both fields.

He told me he had a small machine shop and began to ask me how I would make a certain part and I would tell him. We spent at least an hour talking about his shop. I have always though that if anyone else had been there that day I would not have gotten a job with IBM. He did not offer me a job that day but said they would be in touch with me later. I was surprised how much later it turned out to be. I was really impressed with IBM that day. Everyone had called me "Mr. Gardner". Nobody had ever called me Mister before.

I went by Ga. Tech to see about going to school to get an EE degree but was told I would have to take remedial English classes first. I had high marks in math, chemistry, physics, but barely passed English.