Stratton, the Warren Manufacturing Company improved and streamlined production. With the help of skilled machinist Charles Moseley and designer N.P. They couldn’t compete with foreign imports on price. The “finished” watches (number three above) were stunning – but they had to be repaired and significantly reworked at the end of the process. In 1806, Whitney finally delivered the guns to the Jefferson administration.įorty-six years later, Aaron Dennison’s mass production efforts were a disaster. government contract to mass produce 10k muskets with interchangeable parts. The cotton gin inventor turned gunmaker secured a U.S. Somehow the concept made its way to Eli Whitney. Thomas Jefferson visited LeBlanc’s workshop in 1789. Mass production using interchangeable parts finally arrived in the 18th century, when French gunsmith Honoré LeBlanc figured it out. But it requires new tools to make identical parts and a willingness to abandon traditional ways of working. (Neolithic entrepreneurs mass produced flint axes and daggers.) Mass production using interchangeable parts has obvious advantages: it reduces material and replacement costs and uses less skilled (i.e. Mass production dates back at least 12,000 years. With financing from Howard’s father-in-law – small arms maker Samuel Curtis – Dennison, Howard & Davis built a pocket watch factory in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

He presented his idea and a prototype pocket watch to Edward Howard of Howard & Davis, a thriving manufacturer of wall clocks, sewing machines and fire engines. The one business that succeeded – making jewelry boxes with his brother – failed to capture his imagination.Īt the age of 37, Dennison devised a plan to mass produce watches using interchangeable parts. He drifted in and out of jobs and started several businesses: watch repair, a jewelry store, creating and selling the Dennison Combined Gauge. He spent his early career in Boston and New York City, working for some of America’s best clock and watchmakers.ĭennison was a devout Swedenborgian Christian and a restless soul. Dennison left The Pine Tree State for the big city. At 21, he turned down a partnership with Cary. If a piece broke, you sent abroad for a replacement, repaired it or made another.ĭennison proved himself a talented watchmaker and dependable employee. They were handmade, expensive, unreliable, delicate and expensive. At the time, clocks and watches were imported from England and France. Īt 18, Dennison began an apprenticeship with Brunswick clock and watchmaker, gunsmith, and gold and silversmith James Cary. But the idea of mass production stayed with him. As a teenager, Dennison suggested making shoes in identical batches, rather than one-by-one. Raised in the prosperous seaport of Brunswick, Maine, the cobbler’s son soon learned his father’s trade. The Waltham pocket watch story begins in 1812 with the birth of Aaron Lufkin Dennison.

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