In 1850, with Roxbury in the Massachusetts, David Davis, Edward Howard and Aaron Lufkin Dennison founded together the company which was to become famous the American Waltham Watch Company . The concept, revolutionist at the time, were to produce the parts of the movements of watches with a precision such, which they would be all completion interchangeable.

In 1851, they named the company “American Horology Company” and the production began in a new factory. At the end of 1852, the first watches were finished. The first 17 parts, marked “The Warren Mfg Co” were distributed among official company. The following ones, numbers 18 to 100 were engraved “Warren Boston”, the 800 following “Samuel Curtis”. A whole small number, named “Fellows & Schell”, were sold to $ 40.00.

The company was famous “Boston Watch Company” in september 1853. A new factory was built with Waltham, at the edge of the river “Charles River”, upstream hydraulic energy source of a cotton factory (the Waltham factory grows until its current size, that is to say 750 windows of sharp). In October 1854 the company is established there definitively. Next the produced movements, carrying the numbers 1001-5000, were marked “Dennison, Howard, & Davis”, “P.S.Bartlett”, and “Work Card Parker”. After a bankruptcy the company was sold with the biddings with Mr. Royal E. Robbins, distributer clock making of New York, which reorganized it under the new name of “Appleton Tracy & Co” in May 1857. The next movements, henceforth famous “the model 1887” (1887 gauge), bore this name, numbered 5001 with 14  000. Thereafter mark “Work Card Parker” was also introduced on the gauge 1857:399 parts were manufactured, like 598 chronodrometers. In January 1853 the watch “P.S. Bartlett” was introduced.

In January 1859 the companies “Waltham Improvement Co. ” and “Appleton, Tracy & Co. ” fusionnièrent, creating the company “American Waltham Watch Company”. In 1860, with the election of President Lincoln, the country was torn by the civil war. The production was almost entirely stopped. However the company decided to reduce drastiquement its costs in order to survive the crisis, which succeeds to him!

Waltham became the principal supplier of Chronomètre of way-of-iron according to the regulations of the engineer Webb C. Ball with the various companies of Railroad in North America like gradually in 52 other countries of the world. In 1876, at the time of the Centennial Exposure of Philadelphia, Waltham presented the first completely automatic machine to produce screws of precision and obtained the Gold medal of the first international contest of clock making precision organized on this occasion. Not only American clock industry, but those of the whole world are indebted inventions and development carried out by the pioneers who created Waltham, such as Bacon, Church, Dennison, Fogg, H. Marsh, Webster and Woerd.

L “American Waltham Watch Company” produced approximately 40 million watches of high-quality, of pendulums, clock, speedometers, compass, detonators and other instruments of utmost precision during the centenary of its existence in the United States. Each movement having been numbered individually, you can consult an search engine to find the characteristics of your Waltham antique with: /Waltham Memorial: Serial Numbers.

The company ceased its activity in the United States in 1957, after having founded a subsidiary company in Switzerland in 1954, Waltham International SA, to continue the tradition of the Waltham mark by producing Swiss watches of high-quality.

Source: “Supplements Watch Guide, by Cooksey Shugart, Tom Engle, Richard E. Gilbert, Edition 1998, ISBN 1-57432-064-5”

External bonds

• International Waltham SA,

• NAWCC: National Association off Watch & Clocks Collectors,
• NAWCC Chapter 185