Figure 8.—Remaining Drawings from U. S. Patent 186838, showing the dial gearing used in the Auburndale rotary.
Here, where the story of the Hopkins watch diverges from the interests who later brought out the rival Waterbury watch, it seems appropriate to call the reader’s attention to the basic points of novelty and merit in the Hopkins watch which carried over to what became the Waterbury, somewhat as an hereditary characteristic passes from generation to generation. Previous writers have realized that one of these watches led to the other and have grouped them together because of the rotating feature which they shared in common. Beyond this point they have treated the watches as though they had nothing in common. Actually several basic features of the Hopkins watch existed in both: the long narrow spring in a barrel approximately filling one side of the watch case, a train rotating in the center of the watch and driven by a planetary pinion in mesh with a gear fixed to the stationary part of the watch, a slow beat escapement, and probably the hourly rotation of the train and escapement. When these details appeared in the first watches manufactured for Messrs. Locke and Merritt by the Benedict and Burnham Manufacturing Co. and later the Waterbury Watch Co., they were vastly changed in detail and much better adapted to mass production, although still basically the same.
Figure 9.—Auburndale Rotary Watch Movement.
(In the author’s collection.)
The story of Hopkins’ rotary watch now enters an entirely new setting with new financial backing which, however, had no apparent experience or background 57 in mechanical work, much less watch manufacturing. Those with watchmaking experience who were brought into this new organization unquestionably did their best, based on past experience confined to conventional watches of much higher grade. Judging from the products turned out, however, they had great difficulty in making a clean break with their past and in producing a satisfactory low-priced watch of new and radical concept. The market for watches, which had been depressed, was at this time reviving a little. The Newton Journal,[17] referring to the American Watch Co. at Waltham reported: “The hands employed in the caseroom and the machinists have been called in. All the works are to be started the first of September.”
