[Illustration: Figure 6.--DRAWING FROM U. S. PATENT 179019 showing Hopkins' device to prevent the tripping of a chronometer escapement.] These two patents, which actually started out as one, appear to represent the watch as it was when Hopkins went to Waterbury, Connecticut, where he again met Edward A. Locke. They submitted this improved watch model to the Benedict and Burnham Manufacturing Co., which advised not manufacturing it until it was further developed. Hopkins went with his watch from there to Boston, where he conferred with George Merritt who, like Locke, was interested in getting into the manufacture of a low-priced watch. Merritt may have been the senior member of the Locke-Merritt team or may simply have had more faith than his associates in Hopkins and his watch. At any rate, he advanced expense money while further efforts at improvement were made.[12] Hopkins' absence from the _Washington city directory_ of 1877 is perhaps explained by this work he was doing on his patent. While this was completed to Hopkins' satisfaction, it still fell short of Merritt's idea of practicality, and the latter abandoned the idea of manufacturing the watch;[13] what had started out as a very simple watch of few parts grew, with every effort to make it workable, more and more complicated by involved and expensive detail. It appears that Hopkins did not possess the rare gift of improvement by simplification. This is a rare gift, and one seldom possessed by an individual very closely and intensely involved in the minute details of a given problem. [Illustration: Figure 7.--PART OF THE DRAWINGS FROM U. S. PATENT 186838, showing the winding and setting mechanism very nearly as it was applied in the Auburndale rotary.]