Failing in this, Locke abandoned further effort so far as the Hopkins' model was concerned. Hopkins, however, continued, and finally succeeded in enlisting the active support and financial resources of W. B. Fowle, a gentleman of wealth and leisure, who owned a fine estate at Auburndale, Massachusetts. This led to the formation of the Auburndale Watch Company. Within a few years, Fowle had sunk his entire fortune of more than $250,000 in the enterprise, and the Hopkins watch had proved a complete failure. In 1883 both Fowle and the Watch Company made assignments. There are many who still remember the great Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876, celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the declaration of American Independence. Those who were there may recall the interesting exhibit of a huge steam-engine—at least, it seemed huge at that time—and, in a glass case near by, a tiny engine—so tiny that it could be completely covered by a small thimble. This midget steam engine, with its boiler, governor, and pumps, was just as complete in all of its parts as was the big engine. Three drops of water would fill its boiler. It was a striking example of mechanical skill and fineness of workmanship, for it had been made under a watchmaker's microscope with jeweler's tools. The most interesting thing about this little engine was that, unknown to its designer, it heralded the dawn of Democracy in the Kingdom of Time-telling, just as it then was helping to celebrate the birth of American freedom. In the spring of 1877, Edward A. Locke, of Boston, who two years before, as we have seen, had been interested in the Hopkins' watch, visited the neighboring city of Worcester, and while strolling along the main street, in a leisurely manner, he chanced to glance in the window of a watch-repairer's shop. There he saw the tiny engine which had excited so much wonder and admiration at the Philadelphia exposition the year before. For many months, Locke and his friend George Merritt, of Brooklyn, New York, had been thinking and dreaming of the possibility of supplying the long-felt and rapidly-growing need for a low-priced watch—a pocket-timepiece that could be sold for three or four dollars. The cheapest watch in America at that time cost ten or twelve. They had searched in vain for a watchmaker who was ingenious or courageous enough, or both, to attempt the making of such a timepiece. Fascinated by the marvelous little engine, Locke stepped into the shop and spoke to the lone workman at the bench near the window. This obscure and humble watch repairer was D. A. A. Buck, the proprietor of the shop and designer of the engine, who was soon to gain renown as the inventor of the famous Waterbury watch.