The life of a pioneer has always been arduous. The story we have just
reviewed illustrates this. Hopkins was a successful workman with clever
and novel ideas. Fowle had been very successful in an entirely unrelated
field. Wales had been very successful in importing and selling watches
but the watch factory which he had owned in part had failed, the fault
more probably that of the times than of the man. The various
superintendents and foremen were first-class men with ample background in
making conventional watches. At the time no one could have had experience
in manufacturing exactly the grade and type of watch being attempted, for
this was the pioneer effort.
[Illustration: Figure 23 (_right_).--AUBURNDALE COUNTER. Pressure on the
projecting stem indexes the inner dial, showing through the window, at
the same time ringing a bell. This dial is numbered from zero through
six. The outside hand is held in place by friction and is manually set as
desired. There is no connection with the inner mechanism.]
The country was in the grip of a long, lingering depression following the
Civil War. Money was tight. The Auburndale Rotary was conceived as a very
low priced watch which would at the same time include the desirable and
unusual feature of close timekeeping. Could these ideals have been
adhered to, there is little reason to question that it would have found a
market, even in hard times.
We have seen that every effort to improve the original watch added to its
cost, and here lies the real reason why it failed to win acceptance. By
the time it reached the market it was no longer priced below conventional
watches and at least some specimens were not reliable in performance. To
make matters even worse, the best features of Hopkins' rotary watch had
been incorporated by Locke and Merritt into a competing rotary watch much
better engineered for cheap mass production.
At this point the only hope for the factory seemed to be the manufacture
of some other watch or similar small mechanism. The Auburndale timer,
with the exception perhaps of the split-second model, was a triumph
mechanically and it returned a profit, but not enough to meet the
financial needs of its sponsors. Much the same may be said of all the
later Auburndale products.
The rotary had been of doubtful value when Flowe bought it, and the new
organization was not able to contribute the necessary manufacturing
engineering to make it a successful product. By the time this necessity
was recognized, debts had mounted to the point where later products,
which might have been successful on their own, were not able to carry the
burden. The whole affair can be viewed as a very expensive educational
adventure from which the students were not able to salvage enough to put
their education to any use.
Surely they received a clear illustration of how dangerous it can be to
engage in an enterprise without sufficient background or a long and
careful study of design, manufacturing processes, costs, and market and
sales analysis. For although numerous fortunes have been made in watch
manufacturing, many more have been lost, and often those who put every
effort at their command into such ventures came away with only sad
experience as their reward. Thus ended the story of the Auburndale Watch
Company.