Aaron Lufkin Dennison

Aaron Lufkin Dennison (born March 6, 1812, Freeport, District of Maine, Mass., U.S.—died Jan. 9, 1895, Birmingham, Warwickshire, Eng.) was a watch manufacturer who was among the first to adapt the concept of interchangeable parts to the production of pocket watches. He is generally credited with being the father of American mass-production watchmaking.

Apprenticed at age 18 to a jeweler and watchmaker in Brunswick, Maine, Dennison learned the prevailing manual methods of watchmaking. In 1833 he moved to Boston, and in 1839 he set up his own business, inspired by a study of the mass-production techniques being employed in making firearms at the Springfield armoury (see Springfield rifle). Dennison’s introduction of machinery into the manufacture of paper boxes and other paper products resulted in the founding of the Dennison Manufacturing Company in 1844, which was then run by Dennison’s brother Eliphalet. With Edward Howard, Aaron Dennison then formed a company in 1849 to make watches. They soon surmounted the technical difficulties of machine production of small watch parts and began marketing the first inexpensive factory-made watches. Their shop was forced into bankruptcy in the financial panic of 1857; the company was reorganized by new backers in 1859, ultimately becoming the Waltham Watch Company, which was the leading American maker of railroad chronometers as well as one of the most popular pocket watches before the company phased out American production in the 1950s. Dennison severed his connection with the company in 1862 and eventually moved to Birmingham, Eng., where he founded the highly successful and internationally renowned Dennison Watch Case Company.