 Flanders had no formal education beyond the high schools that he attended in Pawtucket and Central Falls , Rhode Island . But even so , he achieved a solid grounding in mathematics , literature , Latin and Classical Greek there . Unable to afford college tuition , his father bought a two @-@ year apprenticeship for him in 1896 at the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company , a leading machine tool builder . There and through the International Correspondence School he learned machinist and drafting skills . Following his apprenticeship , he worked for various machine tool companies in New England . Despite his lack of a formal university education , he was a self @-@ taught scholar , who read extensively in the literatures of science , engineering and the liberal arts . 
