Oliver Marsh pocket watch, about 1852
The first firm to mass-produce watches by machine was the American Waltham Watch Company. Marsh, one of the firm's founders, designed and made this watch as a prototype. The watches the company produced in volume were much simpler. In 1974 the owner, believing that so important a watch belonged in the nation's museum, donated it to the Smithsonian.

The Marsh watches are truly great watches. However, this story of their creation is a bit garbled.

The American Horologe Co. and/or the Boston Watch Co. produced two variants of the 8 day watch. The first variant was designed by Aaron Dennison, but it could not be brought to time. It ran fast when wound up and slow when wound down.

Nelson P. Stratton was hired to solve the problem of Dennison's 8 day watch and designed a 30 hour watch of conventional form that used most of the material from Dennison's watch. That watch became the Warren/Curtis/Dennison Howard & Davis sequence of watches and eventually gave rise to the 1857 model.

Dennison still thought the 8 day watch idea was very important and hired the Marsh brothers to design a practical 8 day watch. As part of the deal, they were given the use of Waltham tools and material and could keep the first two watches produced. This watch is one of those two watches. They produced an additional 17 watches marked Howard, Davis & Dennison. Below is a picture of #3 from this series. Like the Marsh watches it is an 8 day, but without the calendar works. It was on display at the Seminar in Boxboro MA in 2002 and is also in the exhibit CD that comes with the Seminar publication.


Click on the pictures for larger images.

Tom,

With regard to the 8 day watch project, was their goal at that time to make an affordable 8 day watch or was it intended to be sold at premium prices?

Thanks for the pictures,

Greg

That's great to know , I also thought that the description/history was cut very short ,as is usually the case. They keep it simple for general consumption

Regarding Greg's question, there is probably not enough information to state Dennison's motives with absolute certainty, but they probably align with what he ended up doing anyway. That would be to make a moderate quality consumer watch of sufficiently wide appeal to support industrial investment. Since the new watch would be unknown, he looked for a marketing hook. The convenient 8-day clock had completely replaced older 1-day shelf clocks, so an 8-day watch sounded appealing. However, maintaining reasonable timekeeping over 8 day's period is not so easy, especially in moderate quality.

Mike

Greg,

If by the 8-day project, you mean the Marsh brothers work, I think that it was largely an ego trip at that time.

There is no evidence that I know of to indicate that the actual 8 day watches produced predate the first Warren watch #18. So, in my opinion, the game was up by then. You can also use as evidence the Marsh watches and the existing 8-day watches, which are premium examples, not production pieces.

You can see Warren #18 and a write-up of the owner's notes on it at this link.