Wrist Watches History

History of the Wristwatch
continued from previous page

The Boston Watch Company

Successful production of a machine-made American watch was achieved after 1850 through the efforts of Aaron L. Dennison and Edward Howard, among others. Aaron Lufkin Dennison (1812-95), a native of Freeport, Maine, was trained as a clockmaker and jeweler by James Carey of Brunswick, Maine. In 1833, he went to Boston. He first worked for Currier & Trott, jewelers, and then set up a watch-repairing business near the corner of Washington and Milk Streets. A short time later he worked as a wrist watch repairman for Jones, Low & Ball of Boston, Jubal Howe, a former apprentice of Luther Goddard, was in charge of the watch-repair department and Dennison undoubtedly learned some of Goddard’s watch making techniques from Howe.

After a brief tenure in New York, Dennison returned to Boston and in 1839, on Washington Street, established the firm of Dennison, Adams & Company as dealers in watches, tools, and materials. In 1846, he moved to another location on Washington Street and with Nathan Foster organized the firm of A. L. Dennison & Company. Though Dennison first manufactured boxes for the jewelry trade, he became increasingly interested in the manufacture of watches. In January of 1850, he wrote:

It is now about ten years since I first began to entertain the notion that the manufacture of watches might be introduced into this country with advantage, but I had supposed that in order to compete with the cheap labors of the old countries, Yankee ingenuity would have to be taxed to a considerable extent to produce a favorable result.

For the first five or seven years of the above period, I contented myself with simply entertaining the opinion…..Once I recollected…to Mr. Willard in Congress St. that I believed that ten or twenty years would not elapse before American made watches of a medium quality could be afforded for one-half the price of English manufacture, to which, as I expected, he expressed dissent…. Of course, whether this is correct remains to be proved, but after a still further consideration of the subject I am of the opinion that the final result will be a s likely to produce the articles at one-quarter the price of importing as it is to exceed the first estimate by any degree.

Dennison became acquainted with Edward Howard, then in partnership with David Porter Davis in the manufacture of clocks and balances. He impressed Howard with his ideas on the potential of wrist watch manufacturing and was given a small room in the Howard & Davis factory at Roxbury, Massachusetts, where, in 1849, he began to experiment and develop machinery for watch production. Howard & Davis provided him with ten thousand dollars and Samuel Curtis, a successful Boston gilder, dial maker, and ornament painter, invested another twenty thousand dollars. A new two-story brick building had been built for his use by the end of 1850.

Wrist Watches History to be Continued