354 WILLIAM A. COUNTRYMAN 



and movement machines, but they never made a success of 

 their manufacture in factories. 



The systematic beginning of watchmaking by machinery 

 in the United States was in 1851, at Roxbury, Mass., and the 

 machinery then used, while advanced for the times, now 

 seems crude, so great have been the improvements. It is 

 difficult to realize the primitive conditions of fifty years ago, 

 and a half century hence the machines of to-day may likewise 

 seem crude, for at no time have changes been so numerous or 

 so radical as during the last few years. The effort has been 

 not only to make a cheaper watch, but to make it a more 

 accurate timepiece, and in effecting these results the great 

 system of interchangeable mechanism in manufacturing has 

 been promoted in a remarkable manner. Prof. W. P. Trow- 

 bridge, of the Sheffield Scientific school of Yale university, a 

 chief special agent at the census of 1880, in submitting the 

 report on the manufactures of interchangeable mechanism, 

 compiled under his direction by Mr. Charles H. Fitch, wrote 

 that ''it may not be too much to say that, in some respects, 

 this system has been one of the chief influences in the rapid 

 increase of the national wealth ; that the growth of the system 

 is due to the inventive characteristics of our people, and 

 their peculiar habit of seeking the best and most simple me- 

 chanical methods of accomplishing results by machinery, 

 untrammelled by traditions or hereditary habits and cus- 

 toms; and that the art of making complete machines or im- 

 plements, each part of which may be introduced into any 

 machine of the same kind, and especially the adaptation of 

 special tools, by which hand work in fitting the parts is often 

 entirely avoided, is, I believe, of American origin." One of the 

 manufactures briefly treated in that report was the manu- 

 facture of watches. 



To Aaron L. Dennison, born in Freeport, Me., in 1812, 

 belongs the honor of founding the systematic manufacture of 

 watches by automatic machinery in the United States. He 

 learned the watchmaker's trade, and while a journeyman in 

 Boston became impressed, by his experience with Swiss and 

 English watches, with the necessity of securing greater uni- 

 formity of parts. At the United States armory at Spring- 



