Aaron Lufkin Dennison

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Aaron Lufkin Dennison (March 6, 1812 – January 9, 1895) was an American watchmaker born in Freeport, Maine.

Life

Upon a three year apprenticeship with James Cary, he went to work as a journeyman watchmaker in Boston in 1833. There he followed the advice of Tubal Hone, a fellow American watchmaker, and discovered inaccuracies in the workmanship and construction, of even the best of hand-made watches. He often visited the Springfield armory, predicting that the manufacture of watches would soon be reduced to as much system and perfection as the manufacture firearms. Around 1840 he invented the Dennison Standard Gauge and then began to develop the "Interchangeable System" (the American System of Watch Manufacturing).

Meanwhile, in 1844, Dennison, who was then also engaged in the jewelry business in Boston, decided that he could make paper boxes better than the imported products. He bought supplies of box board and cover paper and took them the family home in Brunswick, Maine, where his father, Col. Andrew Dennison, cut out the first boxes, and his sisters covered them. He developed the box business successfully, but five years later turned it over to his younger brother Eliphalet Whorf Dennison (The Dennison Manufacturing Company, in Framingham, Massachusetts, became the Avery Dennison Corporation with headquarters in Pasadena, California, upon a merger in 1990), to pursue watch manufacturing.

In 1849, Dennison partnered with the clockmaker Edward Howard to manufacture interchangeable movement parts, to enhance quality and lower the price of watches. With capital from mirror manufacturer Samuel Curtis, they started in 1850. In 1854 a new factory was built on the banks of the Charles River, in Waltham, Massachusetts, The company eventually became the Waltham Watch Company, the first company to manufacture interchangeable movement parts, as well as assemble and sell at affordable prices reliable watches, Railroad chronometers, 8-Day Clocks and other timers in the U.S.A.

Dennison moved to Europe in the final years of his life. After adventures in Switzerland he moved to England where he founded a very successful watch case company. He died in 1895, in Birmingham.

Sources

Reprint of The American Jeweler, February 1888, by Greg R. Frauenhoff, January 2003
"Seventy-Five Years" Company edited booklet, Dennison Manufacturing Co, Framingham, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
"Watch Case Makers of England; NAWCC Supplement 20", Philip T. Priestly, NAWCC, Spring 1994

External links

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