  The life of a pioneer has always been arduous. The story we have just reviewed illustrates this. Hopkins was a successful workman with clever and novel ideas. Fowle had been very successful in an entirely unrelated field. Wales had been very successful in importing and selling watches but the watch factory which he had owned in part had failed, the fault more probably that of the times than of the man. The various superintendents and foremen were first-class men with ample background in making conventional watches. At the time no one could have had experience in manufacturing exactly the grade and type of watch being attempted, for this was the pioneer effort. Figure 23 (right).—Auburndale Counter. Pressure on the projecting stem indexes the inner dial, showing through the window, at the same time ringing a bell. This dial is numbered from zero through six. The outside hand is held in place by friction and is manually set as desired. There is no connection with the inner mechanism. The country was in the grip of a long, lingering depression following the Civil War. Money was tight. The Auburndale Rotary was conceived as a very low priced watch which would at the same time include the desirable and unusual feature of close timekeeping. Could these ideals have been adhered to, there is little reason to question that it would have found a market, even in hard times. We have seen that every effort to improve the original watch added to its cost, and here lies the real reason why it failed to win acceptance. By the time it reached the market it was no longer priced below conventional watches and at least some specimens were not reliable in performance. To make matters even worse, the best features of Hopkins’ rotary watch had been incorporated by Locke and Merritt into a competing rotary watch much better engineered for cheap mass production. At this point the only hope for the factory seemed to be the manufacture of some other watch or similar small mechanism. The Auburndale timer, with the exception perhaps of the split-second model, was a triumph mechanically and it returned a profit, but not enough to meet the financial needs of its sponsors. Much the same may be said of all the later Auburndale products. The rotary had been of doubtful value when Flowe bought it, and the new organization was not able to contribute the necessary manufacturing engineering to make it a successful product. By the time this necessity was recognized, debts had mounted to the point where later products, which might have been successful on their own, were not able to carry the burden. The whole affair can be viewed as a very expensive educational adventure from which the students were not able to salvage enough to put their education to any use. Surely they received a clear illustration of how dangerous it can be to engage in an enterprise without sufficient background or a long and careful study of design, manufacturing processes, costs, and market and sales analysis. For although numerous fortunes have been made in watch manufacturing, many more have been lost, and often those who put every effort at their command into such ventures came away with only sad experience as their reward. Thus ended the story of the Auburndale Watch Company. Those who have seen the Waterbury watch, which developed from this design, may be drawn to the conclusion that this explains why it took so long to wind the Waterbury. Such is not really the case; in the Waterbury the winding wheel (which is on the outer rim of the barrel) was nearly as large as the inside diameter of the case while the pinion engaging with it was of only nominal diameter. This meant that one turn of the winding crown wound the barrel a much smaller fraction of a revolution than in a watch of conventional design. Hopkins is not in the Washington and Georgetown directory of 1860 or 1862, and 1861 was not available to check. Starting with 1863 he is listed each year through 1871. Starting with 1872 Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia lists Hopkins as a resident each year (including 1902, the year of his death at 84 years) except 1877, when he was out of the city in connection with the exploitation of his rotary watch patents. Carl W. Drepperd, American clocks and clockmakers (Garden City, N.Y., 1947), in referring to Hopkins, says, “Lincoln, Me. 1840’s-1850’s: Bangor, Me., to 1862. Inventor of the Auburndale Watch. Also manufactured pianos and clock cases.” U.S. Patent Office digest of assignments, vol. H9V, p.13, stored at Franconia, Virginia, Accession no. 57A393. August 26, 1876, p.2., under the heading of Waltham Items, “Signs of a revival of business at the Watch Works in Waltham.” Records of Veterans Administration, pension application 666 675, National Archives, Washington, D. C. U.S. patent 65208, issued May 28, 1867, all rights assigned to Giles, Wales and Co., March 4, 1867 and recorded March 8, 1867, at U.S. Patent Office, liber G9, p.100. U.S. patents 161513, applied for November 13, 1873, issued March 30, 1875; 165830, applied for July 14, 1875, issued July 20, 1875; 165831, applied for June 9, 1875, issued July 20, 1875; 179019, applied for May 25, 1876, issued June 20, 1876; and 186838, applied for January 12, 1876, issued January 30, 1877. A French patent was issued to Hopkins on September 12, 1876, and a Belgian patent on September 30, 1876. For lack of records neither has been positively identified but presumably they are for the same device covered in U.S. patent 179019. No. 46 courtesy of the late C. A. Ilbert (this watch is now in the Science Museum, South Kensington, London); 124, 176, 224, 241 in the author’s collection; 161 Abbot, op cit. (footnote29); 250 Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan; 361 F. Earl Hackett; 387 Dr. Alfred G. Cossidente; 403 Dr. W. B. Stephens; 423 Crossman, op cit. (footnote8); and an unnumbered movement illustrated in American Jeweler, December 1898, vol. 17, no. 12, p.371. U.S. patent 204400. The text of this patent speaks of dividing the second into “halves, quarters, eighths, etc.” and in the summation of claims of “an escape wheel, A, provided with one or more pairs of pins...” showing that measuring tenths of a second with a five-pin escape wheel was not conceived at this time. It is interesting to note that in referring to the drawings shown in figure12 the text states “In the present instance two pairs of pins are used to denote quarter seconds.” Only one pair of pins is shown, which is correct. This seems, however, to reflect carelessness on the part of patent attorneys and examiners, as the error exists in the original manuscript patent application preserved in the National Archives, Washington, D. C. U.S. patent 216917, issued to William A. Wales and assigned to William B. Fowle, was applied for on November 1, 1878, after the device was already in use on earlier specimens of these watches. The mechanism was also covered by British patent 3893, issued September 27, 1879, to Philip Syng Justice on behalf of William B. Fowle. Records of Veterans Administration, pension application WE 666 675 of Mary E. Fowle (widow of William B. Fowle). Each model of watch made at Auburndale was numbered in its own series, starting at number 1, contrary to the usual watch factory practice where blocks of serial numbers are assigned to different models. Other Auburndale products seem not to have borne serial numbers. Ibid. |
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