Dennison returned to Boston, fired with an ambition to apply the Whitney system and methods of rifle-making to the manufacture of watches. He brooded over the scheme for years, constructing a pasteboard model of his imaginary watch factory and planning in detail its organization. Then occurred a meeting that was to make history—a meeting marking the first step in founding a great American industry and wresting from Europe and Great Britain the watch-making monopoly which they had continuously held since the days of the "Nuremburg Egg." Dennison met Howard, and the contact of the two minds was like the meeting of flint and steel. Dennison shared Howard's belief that watch-parts could be made better and more accurately by the use of machines. He had the watch-making experience and Howard the mechanical skill to design the new machinery. One may imagine how the two young men inspired each other. They had the ideas; all they now needed was the capital and this was supplied in 1848 by Mr. Samuel Curtis, who backed them to the extent of twenty thousand dollars. Dennison immediately went abroad to study methods in England and Switzerland and came back more than ever convinced of the soundness of their own ideas. "I have examined," said he, "watches made by a man whose reputation at this moment is far beyond that of any other watchmaker in Great Britain and have found in them such workmanship as I should blush to have it supposed had passed from under my hands in our own lower grade of work. Of course I do not mean to say that there is not work in these watches of the highest grade possible, but errors do creep in and are allowed to pass the hands of competent examiners. And it needs but slight acquaintance with our art to discover that the lower grade of foreign watches are hardly as mechanically correct in their construction as a common wheelbarrow." [Illustration: French Enamel Case, about 1800 Austrian Lyre-shaped Watch, 1770 French Musical Repeater Watch, Gold Case, Richly Enameled and Set with Pearls Presented by Napoleon to Murat in 1800 French, about 1800 Beetle Shaped Watch, about 1800 Guitar Shaped Watch Swiss, about 1800 French Combination of Watch, Snuff Box and Music Box, playing several tunes, about 1700 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WATCHES _Reached the extreme of elaboration and costliness, but were not always equally successful as time keepers. In the collections of the Metropolitan Museum._] On his return, in 1850, he and Howard established themselves in a small factory in Roxbury, under the name of the American Horologe Company. And that little factory was the foundation of what is now the great establishment of the Waltham Watch Company, the first and hence the oldest watch company in America, and the parent concern of most of the rest. It was perhaps at this time that an employee, one P. S. Bartlett, returned to his home town on a visit and was asked by his old neighbors what he had been doing.