American Waltham Watch Company Pocket Watch

As a teenager, Dennison suggested making shoes in identical batches, rather than one-by-one. Raised in the prosperous seaport of Brunswick, Maine, the cobblerвЂ™s son soon learned his fatherвЂ™s trade. The Waltham pocket watch story begins in 1812 with the birth of Aaron Lufkin Dennison.

Dennison left The Pine Tree State for the big city. At 21, he turned down a partnership with Cary. If a piece broke, you sent abroad for a replacement, repaired it or made another.Dennison proved himself a talented watchmaker and dependable employee. They were handmade, expensive, unreliable, delicate and expensive. At the time, clocks and watches were imported from England and France. At 18, Dennison began an apprenticeship with Brunswick clock and watchmaker, gunsmith, and gold and silversmith James Cary.

But it requires new tools to make identical parts and a willingness to abandon traditional ways of working.Mass production using interchangeable parts finally arrived in the 18th century, when French gunsmith HonorГ© LeBlanc figured it out. (Neolithic entrepreneurs mass produced flint axes and daggers.) Mass production using interchangeable parts has obvious advantages: it reduces material and replacement costs and uses less skilled (i.e. Mass production dates back at least 12,000 years. He presented his idea and a prototype pocket watch to Edward Howard of Howard & Davis, a thriving manufacturer of wall clocks, sewing machines and fire engines.With financing from HowardвЂ™s father-in-law вЂ“ small arms maker Samuel Curtis вЂ“ Dennison, Howard & Davis built a pocket watch factory in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The one business that succeeded вЂ“ making jewelry boxes with his brother вЂ“ failed to capture his imagination.At the age of 37, Dennison devised a plan to mass produce watches using interchangeable parts. He drifted in and out of jobs and started several businesses: watch repair, a jewelry store, creating and selling the Dennison Combined Gauge.

They couldnвЂ™t compete with foreign imports on price.With the help of skilled machinist Charles Moseley and designer N.P. The вЂњfinishedвЂќ watches (number three above) were stunning вЂ“ but they had to be repaired and significantly reworked at the end of the process.The watches had accuracy issues. In 1806, Whitney finally delivered the guns to the Jefferson administration.Forty-six years later, Aaron DennisonвЂ™s mass production efforts were a disaster. Government contract to mass produce 10k muskets with interchangeable parts. Somehow the concept made its way to Eli Whitney.The cotton gin inventor turned gunmaker secured a U.S.

DennisonвЂ™s brainchild went bankrupt.Enter New York businessman Royal E. The depression swept the country and killed demand. The company manufactured and sold hundreds of relatively robust pocket watches.In 1854, two years after formation, the renamed Boston Watch Company moved to Waltham, Massachusetts to escape the dust interfering with watch movements and expand production.With the Charles River providing a flow of clean air, with Dennison as factory supervisor, the watchmaker picked up the pace.Three years later, after producing approximately 5000 pocket watch movements and 4000 cases, with 1300 movements in production, the Boston Watch Company fell victim to The Panic of 1857.

All have to be produced to tight tolerances. ThereвЂ™s precious little margin of error for pocket watch production.Many pocket watch parts are minuscule. Firearms can be produced with fairly loose tolerances and still function. It was an immediate hit.In January 1859, Robbins celebrated his companyвЂ™s success by renaming the enterprise yet again вЂ“ changing from the American Watch Company to the Waltham Watch Company.In 1861, Robbins fired Dennison, who went on to form three more watch-related companies, the last of which вЂ“ the Dennison Watch Case Company вЂ“ was a significant success.ItвЂ™s hard to overstate the enormity of the Waltham Watch CompanyвЂ™s achievement.

The rise in the watchmakerвЂ™s economic fortunes are not dissimilar, helped in no small part by a government contract during the Civil War (where a William Ellery model played a pivotal role in defeating the Confederacy).If thereвЂ™s one lesson to be learned from the birth of the American pocket watch, itвЂ™s that WalthamвЂ™s inventors, investors and developers were men who suffered serious setbacks and disappointments вЂ“ and didnвЂ™t give up.American-made pocket watches are both the embodiment and a symbol of our nationвЂ™s belief in hard work, faith and perseverance. Visitors to вЂњWatch CityвЂќ- such as a young Henry Ford вЂ“ replicated the watchmakerвЂ™s success on an epic scale.You could say the Waltham Watch Company was the Silicon Valley of its day. Waltham was the first company in history to use an assembly line with standardized parts to create a finished product from raw materials.As WalthamвЂ™s highly trained and experienced employees left to start their own assembly lines, the American system spread throughout the country, into every area of manufacturing. In short, the mass production of the Waltham pocket watch was a Herculean effort.ItвЂ™s also hard to overstate the importance of the Waltham pocket watch. If one part was out of specification and/or improperly assembled, it could defeat the entire assembly line. The machines had to be run by highly skilled labor.Assembly required equal care and precision вЂ“ and constant supervision.

American Waltham Watch Company Pocket Watch