Parliament
Vulliamy and other leading clockmakers, who were invited to tender for the work, all demurred to a stipulation that the clock should be guaranteed to perform within a margin of a minute a week, which they declared to be too small. Mr. Denison would not yield, and the clock makers were equally firm. Eventually it was decided to entrust the work to Mr. Dent, who was to make a clock from designs to be furnished by Mr. Denison. Mr. Denison's temerity was justified by his success. The Westminster clock, says Britten, turned out to be the finest timekeeper of any public clock in the world. The double three-legged gravity Escapement was invented for it, besides a new maintaining power and a novel arrangement for letting off the hours to satisfy another of the conditions, which required the first blow of the hour to be given within a second of the true time. Mr. Denison was elected President of the British Horological Institute in 1868, and succeeded his father as baronet, taking the title of Sir Edmund Beckett in 1874. In 1886 he was called to the House of Lords under the title of Baron Grimthorpe. DENNISON, AARON L. The father of the American watch factories. The first person to apply the interchangeable system to the manufacture of watches. This he did in 1850. He was the son of a shoemaker of Freeport, Me., and was born in the year 1812. He was apprenticed to James Carey, a watchmaker of Brunswick, Me., in 1830. In 1839 he was engaged in a general watch and jewelry business in Boston and also carried a line of watchmakers' tools and materials. Invented the Dennison Standard Gauge in 1840. In the fall of 1849 he began to build machinery for the manufacture of watches on the interchangeable system, having associated himself with Messrs Howard, Davis and Curtis. In 1850 he completed the model for the first watch which was 18 size, with two barrels, and was made to run eight days. The watch, however, was not a success, and its place was filled by a one day. At this time the company was known as the American Horologe Company. In 1851 the name was changed to the Warren Manufacturing Company, and the first one hundred watches bore that name. The first watches were placed on the market in 1853. The next six hundred watches bore the name Samuel Curtis and the name of the company was then changed to the Boston Watch Company. In 1854 the factory was removed from Boston to Waltham, the company then making about five watches per day, and employing ninety hands. After the removal the movements were engraved Dennison, Howard and Davis. In 1857 the company assigned, and the property was purchased by Mr. Royal E. Robbins for $56,000. Mr. Dennison was then employed as superintendent and filled that position until 1862. In 1864 he, with others, organized the Tremont Watch Company. He retired from this company in 1866, the name of the company having in the meantime been changed to the Melrose Watch Company, and the factory removed from Boston to Melrose, Mass. Prior to the removal, the barrel, plates and minor parts were made in the Boston factory, while the trains, escapements and balances were made in Zurich, Switzerland, Mr. Dennison having charge of the latter factory. In 1868 this company failed and Mr. Dennison was deputized to sell the factory, which he did, to the English Watch Company, of Coventry, Eng. Mr. Dennison then went to Birmingham, Eng., and embarked in the manufacture of watch cases. In this he was quite successful, the firm being known as Dennison, Wigley & Co. He died at his home in Birmingham on Jan. 9, 1895.
DENT, E. J. Born in 1790 and died in 1853. Builder of the great Westminster Clock, London.