The Auburndale Watch Company

by Edwin A. Battison

Figure 17.—A Timer Dial that is probably either experimental or very early. Note that the fractions of a second (quarters) are shown on the outside dial instead of on a separate dial. This dial was converted at the factory for use as the base of a hairspring vibrating stand. A dial different from this but having the same arrangement of circles is known. (In author’s collection.)

Figure 16 illustrates a dial for this ¹/₁₀-second model which the author found in a lot of unused parts left over when the factory closed. The watch had an 18-size ³/₄-plate movement with grained nickel finish. The escapement is special, as we have seen, but the fork, roller, and balance action are conventional. There are five jewels, four to support the balance staff and an impulse jewel. The barrel arbor comes through the top plate with a square, as in a keywind watch, but is fitted with a winding handle, so that a key is unnecessary. This handle appears to be an afterthought, because on the earlier models (those with serial numbers below 1,000), the barrel arbor is short, barely long enough to attach the winding handle; later this arbor was made longer. Patent 204274 issued to Benjamin Wormelle of Brighton, Massachusetts, on May 28, 1878, the same date as Wales’ escapement patent, may have suggested this winding handle. On watches with higher serial numbers, there are two arrows on the handle to show the direction to wind.

The earliest of these timers had a slide on the side of the case to stop the movement by means of a piece of thin spring steel applied roughly tangentially to the smooth rim of the three-arm, solid steel balance wheel. When this action is reversed to start the movement, the spring, in retracting from the wheel rim, starts the wheel swinging. Soon this slide on the case was dispensed with by fitting a curved sheet-metal rack into a groove turned in the edge of the balance cock. Engaging this rack was a pinion with a square hole through which the square stem could slide to set the hands back to zero as it had from the beginning, while turning the stem now would actuate the pinion and rack to start and stop the movement, as the slide in the case had originally done.

Various minor changes, dictated by experience and the need for economy in manufacture, were made in these movements. After about the first thousand the diameter of the balance was reduced from approximately .700 to about .530 inch. This smaller wheel was, of course, much more suitable to vibrate at the faster speeds required on the models beating eighths and tenths of a second. At some time between the manufacture of watches bearing serial numbers 3135 and 3622, the formerly separate winding pawl and spring were combined into one piece that could be entirely made in a punch press. Another economy move was to stamp the name and patents in place of hand engraving. For a long time hand engraving was used, although stamping had been used from the beginning on the earlier rotary watch.

The case was very similar to that used on the rotary. The dial, of white enamel with snap rim fastened by a screw,[39] carried three graduated circles, an outer circle graduated in seconds up to sixty surrounding two smaller subsidiary dials. The top one of these smaller dials recorded minutes elasped up to ten and the lower one recorded fractions of a second. The 64 same dial was used on movements indicating quarters and eighths of seconds, all being graduated in eighths. A dial without provision for indicating the fractions of a second on a separate small dial may be seen in figure [17]. This last has been made into a stand for hair spring work and is shown with balance and spring just as it came from the Auburndale factory with balance spring and wheel for a timer still in place.

Figure 18.—Tag Displaying Directions for Use of the Auburndale Timer.
(In author’s collection.)

The sweep second hand and the minute register hand are attached to heart-shaped cams friction driven from their respective staffs. They are reset by a bar pivoted beneath the dial and actuated by the stem through pressure on the crown. An original instruction tag as sent from the factory with these timers is seen in figure [18].