American Waltham Pocket Watch Company

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This is a story written in 1881 about the operation of the Waltham factory. I've split it into two parts: Part 1 and Part 2

The history of the American Waltham Watch Co can be traced to the original formation of a company by three men, Howard, Davis & Dennison in 1850. They had the then revolutionary idea of producing large quantities of Waltham pocket watches by using machinery set up to mass produce parts in order to make watches more easily affordable than they were at the time.

Their watches were indeed a revolution within the watch making industry. However, their first attempts at creating the "affordable" pocket watch were beset by unforeseen problems.

Financially they were struggling too, because of huge capital expenditures on new and largely untried machinery to mass-produce parts for the new watches. One major problem was that although they were producing large quantities of movements, each one proved to be as individual as any other on the market. Each watch with its own peculiarities had to be individually worked on in order to correct faults present. This was an unexpected and time consuming activity, one that ultimately was never recovered from. The first pocket watch was not sold until 1853. It was called the "Warren" marked "Warren Boston" or some were marked "Samuel Curtis".

The company's name changed in 1853 soon after the first sales were made, to the Boston Watch Company. The company produced the next 400 watch movements between 1853 and 1857. These were marked "Dennison, Howard & Davis", "C.T.Parker" and "P.S.Bartlett".

In 1857 the company hit hard times again and was sold and renamed as the Appleton, Tracy & Co. A further 10,000 watch movements were produced by this company, serial numbers 4001 to 14,000. The final conversion to the American Watch Company came in 1859, when the Appleton, Tracy & Co joined forces with the Waltham Improvement Co and renamed.

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Today's U.K. Auctions of Waltham Pocket Watches on eBay.

* all articles on auction courtesy of eBay
** links open a new window at eBay with product details.