The Auburndale Watch Company : $b first American attempt toward the dollar watchBattison, Edwin A.
History
The Auburndale Watch Company : $b first American attempt toward the dollar watch
Battison, Edwin A.
Auburndale Watch Company (Auburndale, Mass.); Clock and watch making -- United States
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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