First of all, he is Irish, pure Irish.

His father had left Ireland as a boy in 1825.

During the Civil War his father made guns in the city of Cambridge, where young John Joseph was born; and afterwards he made bells for church steeples.
He was instinctively a mechanic and proud of his calling.

He could tell the weight of a bell from the sound of it.

Moses G.Farmer, the electrical inventor, and Howe, the creator of the sewing-machine, were his friends.
At five years of age, little John J.Carty was taken by his father to the shop where the bells were made, and he was profoundly impressed by the magical strength of a big magnet, that picked up heavy weights as though they were feathers.