American Watch Company Prototype
date: label: date made
content: 1849-1851
label: Date made
content: ca 1852
name: label: manufacturer
content: Waltham Watch Company
label: maker
content: American Waltham Watch Co.
label: maker
content: Oliver B. Marsh
label: maker
content: Oliver B. Marsh, for American Watch Co.
notes: label: Description
content: The first firm to mass-produce watches by machine was the American Watch Company of Massachusetts. Oliver B. Marsh, one of the firm's earliest watchmakers, designed and made this watch as a prototype.
label: Description
content: The appetite for watches in the United States in the early part of the 19th century was huge; about $46 million worth were imported between 1825 and 1858, especially from England Switzerland. To tap into this market, a few Americans attempted to develop watches domestically, but probably no more than two thousand watches were made in the United States before the 1850s.
label: Description
content: In that decade, watchmakers at what would become the American Watch Company of Waltham, Massachusetts, developed the world's first machine-made watches. They completely redesigned the watch so that its movement could be assembled from interchangeable parts made on specialized machines they invented just for that purpose. They also developed a highly organized factory-based work system to speed production and cut costs.
label: Description
content: The firm was launched in 1849 in a corner of the Howard & Davis clock factory in Roxbury, near Boston, where Edward Howard and Aaron Dennison experimented with completely new designs for watches and the machines to make them. With expert help from a cadre of experienced mechanicians and funding from Howard's father-in-law, the Boston mirror maker Samuel Curtis, the enterprise got under way.
label: Description
content: Dennison had absorbed techniques for the mass production of firearms with interchangeable parts during a visit at the Springfield Armory. The primary measures the new firm adopted from arms making were a tight organization, a critically important machine shop, and a manufacturing system that relied on models. Waltham designers made a model watch and a master set of gauges to fit it, and every watch part made thereafter was measured against the corresponding model part.
label: Description
content: In its first decade, the firm's work was largely experimental, but by late in 1852, Howard and Dennison finally had products-seventeen watches, made mostly by hand by brothers Oliver and David Marsh. One of these prototypes, a watch made by Oliver Marsh, survives in the collections of the museum.
label: Description
content: O. B. Marsh's watch was large compared to other pocket watches of the time. The white- enamel dial indicated minutes around the rim and featured four smaller dials indicating hours (at 6:00) seconds (at 12:00), days of the week (at 9:00) and date (at 3:00).
label: Description
content: The design of these first watches, eight-day movements with two mainsprings, gave way to a simpler one, a watch that ran on one mainspring for a little more than a day. Although superficially similar to English watches of the time, the new American watch featured a mainspring in a "going barrel." This meant a watch without the traditional fusee and chain to equalize the force of the unwinding spring. This was a watch with fewer parts to make.
label: Description
content: The next hundred Waltham watches, built on the new model, took until the fall of 1853. The third batch of nine hundred sold for just $40 each, cased. An imported movement of the same quality cost twice as much.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: Place Made
content: United States: Massachusetts, Boston, Roxbury
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanisms
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content: Clothing & Accessories
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content: Measuring & Mapping
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph W. E. Bourgeois
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: ME.334625
label: accession number
content: 310796
label: catalog number
content: 334625
objectType: label: Object Name
content: pocket watch
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: gold, 18 k (case material)
label: Physical Description
content: enamel, white (dial material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 3 1/8 in x 2 5/16 in x 5/8 in; 7.9375 cm x 5.87375 cm x 1.5875 cm