together because of the rotating
feature which they shared in common. Beyond this point they have treated
the watches as though they had nothing in common. Actually several basic
features of the Hopkins watch existed in both: the long narrow spring in
a barrel approximately filling one side of the watch case, a train
rotating in the center of the watch and driven by a planetary pinion in
mesh with a gear fixed to the stationary part of the watch, a slow beat
escapement, and probably the hourly rotation of the train and escapement.
When these details appeared in the first watches manufactured for Messrs.
Locke and Merritt by the Benedict and Burnham Manufacturing Co. and later
the Waterbury Watch Co., they were vastly changed in detail and much
better adapted to mass production, although still basically the same.

[Illustration: Figure 9.--AUBURNDALE ROTARY WATCH MOVEMENT.
(In the author's collection.)]

The story of Hopkins' rotary watch now enters an entirely new setting
with new financial backing which, however, had no apparent experience or
background in mechanical work, much less watch manufacturing. Those with
watchmaking experience who were brought into this new organization
unquestionably did their best, based on past experience confined to
conventional watches of much higher grade. Judging from the products
turned out, however, they had great difficulty in making a clean break
with their past and in producing a satisfactory low-priced watch of new
and radical concept. The market for watches, which had been depressed,
was at this time reviving a little. The _Newton Journal_,[17] referring
to the American Watch Co. at Waltham reported: "The hands employed in the
caseroom and the machinists have been called in. All the works are to be
started the first of September."

[Illustration: Figure 10.--WILLIAM B. FOWLE, sponsor of the Auburndale
Watch Co., after an engraving in S. F. Smith, _History of Newton,
Massachusetts_ (Boston, 1880).]

-----
[8] Chas. S. Crossman, "A complete history of watch and
clock making in America," _Jewelers Circular and
Horological Review_, January 1888, pp. 400, 401. This
history ran as a continuing series of short articles
appearing over a period of years. In his sketch of the
Waterbury Watch Co., Crossman gives the name as William
D. Coates, a name not found in Boyd's _Directory of the
District of Columbia_ for 1875. The director