The Auburndale Watch Company

The Auburndale Watch Company, with the further title First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch, is by Edwin A. Battison. The contents list names sections called The Invention, Developing the Invention, The New Sponsor, Success and Failure, and The Lesson, among others. The opening says painstaking search has uncovered enough of the record to review the errors of design and manufacture that brought failure to the first attempt to produce a really cheap pocket watch.

The text describes position error, which can and often does cause a most erratic and unpredictable rate, and says Abraham-Louis Breguet of Paris is credited with the invention, in 1801, of his tourbillon, a clever way to circumvent this error. A passage on escapements says the lever escapement is the only one known to have been used, but two varieties of this are found. The text says an examination of a number of these watches, with serial numbers ranging from 46 to 507, reveals no correlation between the serial number and the style of escapement.