USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Waltham > History of the American Waltham Watch Company of Waltham, Mass., 1904 > Part 5
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About the year 1859, the Nashua Watch Company was started and Mr. Moseley cast his lot with it, acting as master mechanic. He designed and built the machinery with which that movement was manufactured; and it is worthy of re- mark that it was certainly a splendid watch.
In the fall of 1864 Mr. Moseley identified himself with the Elgin National Watch Company, then just starting, and was made general superintendent, in which capacity he remained with the company until 1877.
Mr. Moseley has assisted, when they were in need of en- gineering help, a number of other factories. As a mechani- cal engineer and a designer of watchmaking machinery es-
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Charles S. Moseley.
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THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
pecially, he has had but few equals. Many well-known in- ventions are due to his genius. Among those that have ac- quired a world-wide reputation we may mention first the split chuck which he invented in 1857 or 1858 while in the employ of the Waltham Watch Company, an accessory now become universal and indispensable to every watch- maker in the land. Following this came his invention of the hollow live spindle lathe, with a taper mouth and draw-in spindle, practically as used by all watchmakers and machinists to-day. In 1859, he designed for use in the fac- tory of the American Watch Company, a small lathe, which he conceived would be a useful tool to the watch repairer and is the type of all the American-made watchmakers' lathes.
The original chucks made by Mr. Moseley were intended for use with the old two-bearing watch factory lathe. It was found, however, that the chucks would not go back into the same place every time if some pieces were larger than others and he therefore modified his lathe so that the chuck was held in a fixed position and the lathe spindle advanced upon and receded from the jaws of the chuck to open and / close it. This device is one of the most important features of all automatic machinery to-day and has spread from watch factories to all metal working lines and is the only known means of practically holding a piece of work true and gripping and releasing it instantly.
Mr. Moseley invented the interchangeable stem wind mechanism of the Elgin National Watch Company, patented in 1876. The dust band, or dust excluder, used by the same company, a patent regulator and many other improvements were invented by him. Mr. Moseley is still actively engaged in business with his brother in Elgin.
Charles W. Fogg was another clever mechanic who spent a large portion of his life in watch factory work. He was born in Meredith, N. H., on January 25, 1817, and was twenty-five years of age when he located in Waltham. At
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THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
first he carried on business as a watchmaker and jeweler, but when the Nashua Watch Company was purchased and removed to Waltham he became the superintendent of that department of the factory. He was one of the directors of the American Waltham Watch Company and was widely known in the trade as the inventor of the safety pinion which bears his name. During the last ten or twelve years of his life, Mr. Fogg was not in active business, although he retained a place in the directory of the company. He died on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 1893, at his residence in Waltham. He had been a director in the Waltham National Bank and the Waltham Savings Bank and was prominent in the Ma- sonic fraternity.
Waltham 1842-189380 safely pinion
1
Observatory, auto, pinton cutter Crescent It. mot. auto screed mach.
CHAPTER XIV.
Chas. Vander Woerd was another example of the skillful mechanic and inventor who was associated with the Wal- tham factory in the building of its first semi-automatic machinery. He was born in Leyden, Holland, and early in life came to America; was at one time employed at the Seth Adams Sugar Refinery in South Boston; later he worked for Alvin Clark of Cambridge, on telescopes; from there he was induced by Mr. Moseley to enter the employ of the then "Boston Watch Company" at Waltham. He possessed a power of ready perception, as well as a good knowledge of mathematics, and was able to acquire a fair knowledge of astronomy, which in after years he utilized in the establishment of an observatory for the securing of exact time rate for the accurate timing of the watch move- ments made by the Waltham company. The transit in- strument was made by Clark & Sons in conjunction with the machine shop of the watch company, and while not a large one, is of high grade and fine accuracy, and has been in constant use for about twenty-five years, and is believed to be the only instrument of the kind in the world forming a part of the equipment of a watch factory.
Observatory
In 1864 Mr. Woerd invented an automatic pinion cutter, which, having been modified and improved, is still in use. In 1869 he modeled the Waltham company's first "Crescent Street" movement. In 1874 he invented an automatic screw machine, which attracted much attention at the Cen- tennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and the Inventions Ex- hibition in London in 1885. In 1873 he designed and pat-
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Chas. Vander Woerd.
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THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
ented a modified form of "slide spindle lathe," which was nominally a two-bearing lathe, but it was never a satis- factory form of construction and was abandoned. He be- came superintendent of the Waltham factory in 1876, which position he retained until his resignation in 1883.
After severing his connection with the American Wal- tham Watch Company he engaged in the manufacture of watch tools, and later the business was changed to the manufacture of watch movements, and developed into what is now the United States Watch Company, whose history forms another chapter in our series.
This new company had a severe struggle for existence, partly from lack of capital, and after a few years of vain effort for success, Mr. Vander Woerd withdrew from the company, and in 1888 became interested in a California mining enterprise, and while traveling in December of that year, he died suddenly in a railroad train.
Edgar L. Hull was born in Sudbury, Mass., in 1848. He began work for the American Watch Company as a boy, in June, 1862, and remained with them for about four years, when he went to Marion, N. J., and spent a year in the em- ploy of the United States Watch Company of that place. From there he went to the Howard Watch Company and remained about nine years. He then returned to the Wal- tham company, where he has been employed continuously up to this time. He was appointed foreman of the dial painting department in 1883. He was probably the first person to learn the art of dial painting in America, all other dial painters in the employ of the Waltham company previous to him being English workmen. Mr. Hull's de- partment is a very important one and he has developed many new methods and ideas in order to turn out large quantities of plain and ornamental dials in a speedy and economical manner.
John Logan was born in Lowell, Mass., in 1844, and worked for the American Watch Company many years ago
Edgar L. Hull.
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in the springing department, afterwards going to the How- ard Watch Company in Roxbury. There he began to manu- facture hair springs and invented a new method of temper- ing springs. He was offered a position with the United States Watch Company, Marion, N. J., and left the How- ard company to take charge of the spring department there. He left Marion to return to Waltham, and soon after arriv- ing he began to manufacture hairsprings for the trade, hav- ing a small shop located between Adams and Crescent street, between Chestnut and Walnut streets. Later he moved to Vernon street, where he manufactured hair and main springs and small bench tools on an extensive scale. The good quality of his springs became famous, and for years he supplied several watch factories with them. Several years ago the American Waltham Watch Company secured his services to make their springs. He moved his Vernon street factory over to the watch factory and there he began to manufacture main and hair springs on an extensive scale, he being foreman of both departments, with Mr. E. R. Lyle as his assistant foreman in the hair spring department and M. Stevens as his assistant of the main spring depart- ment. During his connection with the Waltham company he invented many labor saving machines for the making of springs and also turned his attention to other inventions relating to watch manufacture. He committed suicide on Jan. 1, 1893, during a temporary aberration caused by ill- ness, having been greatly troubled with nervous prostration.
H. E. Duncan was born in Worcester, Mass., in 1850, and after the usual common school education had two years of academy life, in which he was especially instructed in natural philosophy and chemistry. During these two years he had not only to earn his own living but pay for his tui- tion. Coming from a family of mechanics, he decided that he would like to learn the watchmaking trade, and in 1866 he was apprenticed to that trade. He met and worked with a number of fine workmen of American and foreign birth
Logan - Hair & Main springs
H. E. Duncan.
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THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
and was a bench mate of D. A. A. Buck, the inventor of the Waterbury watch. At the end of his apprenticeship he went to Manchester, N. H., and later worked for L. S. Stowe in Springfield, Mass. He later went with D. A. A. Buck, then superintendent of the Cheshire Watch Company, from there to the Hampden Watch Company, and in 1885 entered the employ of the American Waltham Watch Company, his headquarters being with Robbins, Appleton & Company, Boston. For ten years he traveled on the road as mission- ary for the company, but in 1895 was called to the factory and has been there ever since. At the present time he has charge of the adjustment of the highest grade of watch movements. He is the astronomical observer and has charge of the determination and distribution of time signals throughout the factory. He has been given carte blanche in the designing and erection of a clock room for the time service, and it is believed that he has equipped one of the finest time stations in this country. In addition to his fac- tory duties he has the direct charge of the missionary force, and as he personally traveled so many years he is well known to the watch trade. He is an amateur photographer, and has produced a large number of excellent pictures. He is well known to watchmakers through his finely illustrated lectures on watchmaking, which he has given in various parts of the United States and Canada.
CHAPTER XVI. ·
The factory of the American Waltham Watch Company is divided into twenty departments, of which the following are foremen : Machine, Francis H. Eaton; punch, Nathan P. Mulloy ; plate, Eugene L. Folsom ; train making, Charles R. Hill; flat steel, George T. Carter; pinion polishing, George C. Moor; escapement, Charles C. Byam; balance, Gleason Wood; hair spring, W. H. P. Smith; jeweling, Robert Speir; jewel making, J. W. Rushton; gilding and nickel finishing. A. P. Williams; dial Dept. "B," Frank Wetherbee ; dial Dept. "A," Edgar L. Hull; main spring making, Milton R. Stevens; finishing, Charles L. Tuthill ; adjusting. A, Charles A. Berry ; adjusting, B, and packing, George Adams; engineering, Henry C. Eaton ; carpenter, C. W. H. Boulton.
In addition to the above department heads, there is a gen- eral or executive staff, as follows: General superintendent, E. A. Marsh ; assistant superintendent, J. W. Burckes ; me- chanical superintendent, D. H. Church ; assistant mechanical superintendent, C. A. Whitney; forwarding superintendent. C. F. Smith; astronomical observer and time superintend- ent, H. E. Duncan ; paymaster, Murray D. Clement ; caslı- ? ier, Fred H. Graves; purchasing agent, Chas. J. Olney, Jr.
The officers of the company are: President, Ezra C. Fitch, assisted by his son, Conover Fitch; vice-president, Francis R. Appleton ; treasurer, Royal Robbins.
The directors are: Ezra C. Fitch, Royal Robbins, Francis R. Appleton, Benj. F. Brown, A. Lawrence Ed- mands, Augustus K. Sloan, H. P. Robbins, R. C. Robbins, J. W. Appleton.
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THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
The selling agents of the company are: Robbins & Ap- pleton (whose principal office is in New York City, with a branch office in Chicago in charge of R. A. Kettle, and one in London, Eng., in charge of A. R. Harmon), and Robbins, Appleton & Co. (whose office is in Boston, with a branch in Montreal, Canada, in charge of J. C. Barlow).
The output of the Waltham factory has been a gradually increasing one for many years, save for an occasional in- terval, when the general business of the country was suffer- ing extreme depression, as in 1893, and the factory capacity is now practicallly 3,500_movements per day.
The increasing adoption of automatic machinery, special- ly designed and adapted for the production of individual parts of the various movements, has not only lessened the manufacturing cost, but also made possible a degree of ac- curacy and uniformity not previously attained; and the great productiveness, together with the extreme costliness of such high-class machinery, give this company with its large capital and business standing of many years, a great ad- vantage over younger and smaller companies, while the ex- cellence of its product, resulting from its half century of ex- perience, and its command of the highest grade of inven- tive talent and mechanical skill has given it a high reputation with exacting watch wearers, the excellent time keeping qualities of even its cheaper grade of movements have made the name Waltham familiar to the people of the whole civil- ized world.
1
What is it now?
CHAPTER XVII.
On page 87 brief mention was made of the establish- ment of an astronomical observatory. It may be appro- priate in closing this historical sketch to copy entire at: article from the Scientific American of April 15, 1905, in which this observatory and its connected clocks and instru- ments are described and illustrated :
Among the many fields of industry in which hand labor has been superseded by automatic machinery, there is none in which the change has been so strikingly complete. and successful as in that of the manufacture of watches. That the machine-made American watch of the higher grades can attain as high marks for time-keeping as the finest products of the skilled watchmakers of some of the older countries of Europe has been proved by tests at the National Laboratory, London. This fact is the more re- markable when we remember that the Waltham works, from which the test watches referred to were selected, is turning out watches at the rate of nearly three thousand per day.
It is not our intention to describe just now, the wonder- fully complex and ingenious machinery by which the American watch is made; that is a long and deeply in- teresting story in itself. The present article will show how one great, modern watch works maintains its ownl private standard of time, for the guidance of the work- men in the various rooms of its vast establishment, in regulating the watches that are turned out at the rate of so many thousand a day.
The possession of some standard of time must be
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THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
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Interior of the Observatory showing the Transit.
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A
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Sectional View through the Clockroom.
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reckoned as one of the absolute necessities of the highly- developed life of to-day. Every man's watch is his own particular standard. In case of doubt as to its accuracy he refers to some other higher standard, such, for instance, as a public clock or the chronometer in some watchmaker's window. In case these higher standards should disagree, it is necessary to go to some ultimate standard, superior to all of them. The ultimate standard in the United States is the time determined at the Naval Observatory, Wash- ington; and this is referred to the transit of fixed stars across the meridian, which is a time which never varies, and therefore is the absolute standard.
Many years ago the Waltham Watch Company realized that it would be to their interest to get as closely in touch as possible with the prime source of time, which, for them, would be the transit of any celestial body, preferably a fixed star, across their meridian; and acting under the advice of the late Prof. Rogers (at that time connected with Harvard Observatory, Cambridge), they built in the works an observatory, and put in a transit of the size and form that is standard in the Geodetic and Hydrographic Surveys. In connection with the observatory they also constructed a clockroom, in which they placed two master clocks, which were designed specially for the purpose by the superintendent of the works. As far back as the forties the longitude of Harvard Observatory from Green- wich had been established by taking the mean time of forty box chronometers. At a later date this longitude was veri- fied by means of cable connections between a chronograph at Greenwich and a chronograph at Harvard University, connected by the transatlantic cable. In 1880 the longi- tude of the Waltham Observatory from Harvard was sim- ilarly established, by means of two electrically-connected chronographs.
As the plant of the company increased in size, the vibra- tion of the heavier moving machinery, that was transmit-
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View in outer passage of Clockroom showing barometer and level tester.
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ted through the earth to the clockroom, caused percep- tible variations in the time of the two master clocks. It was decided, therefore, to build the new clockroom, of which we present several illustrations, install within it the two master clocks, and add a sidereal clock. The room was completed early in 1904 and is now running, as we shall show later in this article, with exceptional results as to accuracy.
The clockroom, which is located in the basement of one of the buildings, is built with a double shell of hollow tile brick. The outer shell rests upon the floor of the basement, and its ceiling is within two or three inches of the basement ceiling. The inner shell is I0 feet square and 8 feet in height, measured from the level of the cellar floor. There is an 18-inch space between the walls of the inner and outer shell and a 9-inch space between the two ceilings. On the front of the building the walls are 3 feet apart to accommodate the various scientific instru- ments, such as the chronograph, barometer, thermostat, level-tester, etc. The inner house is carried down 4 feet below the floor of the basement, and rests upon a founda- tion of gravel. The walls of the inner house below the floor level consist of two thicknesses of brick with an air space between, and the whole of the excavated portion is lined, sides and bottom, with sheet lead, carefully soldered to render it watertight. At the bottom of the excavation is a layer of 12 inches of sand, and upon this are built up three solid brick piers, measuring 3 feet 6 inches square in plan by 3 feet in height, which form the foundation for the three pyramidal piers that carry the three clocks. The interior walls and ceilings and the piers for the clocks are finished in white glazed tiling. The object of the lead lining, of course, is to thoroughly exclude moisture, while the bed of sand serves to absorb all waves of vibration that are communicated through the ground from the various moving machinery throughout the works. At the level of
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THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
the basement floor a light grating provides a platform for the use of the clock attendants.
Although the placing of the clockroom in the cellar and the provision of a complete air space around the inner room would, in itself, afford excellent insulation against external changes of temperature, the inner room is further safe- guarded by placing in the outer 18-inch space between the two walls a lamp which is electrically connected to, and controlled by, the thermostat, of which we give an illus- tration. The thermostat consists of a composite strip of rubber and metal, which is held by a clamp at its upper end and curves to right or left under temperature changes, opening or closing, by contact points at the lower end of the thermostat, the electrical circuit which regulates the flame of the lamp. The thermostat is set so as to maintain the space between the two shells at a temperature which shall insure a constant temperature of 71 deg. in the inner clock house. This it does with such success that there is less than half a degree of daily variation.
The two clocks that stand side by side in the clock- room serve to keep civil time, that is to say, the local time at the works. The clock to the right carries a twelve-hou .: dial and is known as the mean-time clock. By means of electrical connections it sends time signals throughout the whole works, so that each operative at his bench may time his watch to seconds. The other clock, known as the astronomical clock, carries a twenty-four-hour dial, and may be connected to the works, if desired. These two clocks serve as a check one upon the other. They were made at the works and they have run in periods of over two months with a variation of less than 0.3 of a second, or I-259,000 part of a day. The third clock, which stands to the rear of the other two, is the sidereal clock. It is used in connection with the observatory work, and serves to keep sidereal or star time.
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THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
SECONDS
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$3 LONIW
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Portion of Chronograph Record with passage of star indicated on line marked 45 minutes.
Enlarged view of Chronograph with pen lifted off paper. When the Chronograph is running, the pen rests on the paper on the cvlin- der and is moved by the lead screw in the carriage to trace the lines shown above.
THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
Sidereal time is determined by the transit of the fixed stars across the meridian. The stars are at such enormous distances from the earth that their transit is not appre- ciably affected by the revolution of the earth in its orbit. It is the change of position of the earth with regard to the sun that accounts for the daily difference between sidereal and solar time of 3 minutes 56.55 seconds, the sidereal day being shorter than the solar day by this amount. The passage of a particular star across the meridian at Wal- tham is noted in the works' observatory on two nights of every week, and an exact record of this time is obtained by means of a chronograph. The chronograph, which is car- ried on a shelf in the space between the inner and outer shells of the clockroom, consists of a horizontal metal drum, rotated at such a rate of speed by means of a weight as to give exactly one revolution per minute. Upon the drum is fastened a sheet of paper. In front of the drum is a small carriage, which is moved laterally, by means of a revolving feed screw. This carriage carries a pen that normally traces a continuous straight line on the sheet. The pen is electrically-connected to the sidereal clock, and at every full oscillation of the pendulum, or at every alternate second, the electrical circuit is broken and the pen makes a slight jog in the line. The speed of the cylin- der is so arranged that the distance between the jogs corre- sponds to a certain scale, say of one inch to the second. The pen carriage of the chronograph is also electrically- connected to the observatory, where a button is placed conveniently to the hand of the observer. When an ob- servation of a transit is to be made, the chronograph is started and the observer, with his eye at the telescope, presses the button at the instant that the star passes each vertical hair line ( there are five in all) in the eye-piece of the transit. Each time the button is pressed, an extra jog is made on the paper ; and by using a scale graduated, say, to 0.01 inch, it is possible to determine to one-hun-
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THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
View in outer passage of Clockroom showing chronograph and switch board.
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THE WATCH EACTORIES OF AMERICA.
dredths of a second the time of the transit of the star across each hair lire. By taking the mean of these five observations, it will be seen that the time of the transit of the star is obtained with remarkable accuracy. The next step is to compare the time of transit as recorded by the sidereal clock at Waltham with the time of transit of the same star as given in the tables of the "Ephemeris." The "Ephemeris" is an official publication, issued annual- ly, which gives the exact position of the heavenly bodies for every day of the year; and from this the exact time of the transit of the particular star observed may be known. Whatever the sidereal clock differs from this time is the error of the clock. The amount of this error is then compared with the amount of error observed at the last observation, and the difference between the two observa- tions, divided by the number of days, gives the daily rate of variation. This rate, as observed at the Waltham works, rarely exceeds one-tenth of a second per day. That is to say, the sidereal clock will vary only one second in ten days, or three seconds in a month. The variation, as found, is corrected by adding or subtracting weights to or from the pendulum, the weights used being small disks, generally of aluminium.
Summing up, then, we find that the great accuracy ob- tained in this clockroom is due to the careful elimination of the various elements that would exercise a disturbing influ- ence. Changes of temperature are reduced to a minimum by insulation of the clockhouse within an air space, in which the temperature is automatically maintained at an even rate. Changes of humidity are controlled by the spe- cially designed walls, by the lead sheathing of the founda- tion pit, by the preservation of an even temperature, and by placing boxes of hydroscopic material within the inner chamber. Errors due to vibration are eliminated by plac- ing the clocks on massive masonry piers which stand upon a bed of sand as a shock-absorbing medium.
THE WATCH FACTORIES OF AMERICA.
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Astronomical Clock in Inner Building.
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The astronomical clock is inclosed in a barometric case, fitted with an air pump, by which the air may be exhausted and the pendulum and other moving parts relieved from barometric disturbances. For it must be understood that variation in barometric pressure means a variation in the density of the air, and that the speed of the pendulum must necessarily be affected by such changes of density.
This equipment is the only one in the world forming part of the equipment of a watch factory, and is believed to be the equal of anything of the kind yet installed.
In conclusion, it may be mentioned that of late years it has been the custom of the company to submit a percentage of its watches to the National Physical Laboratory at the Kew Observatory, London, an institution which accepts instruments of precision from applicants all over the world, tests them, and makes a report. Eighty-six per cent of the watches submitted by the Waltham Watch Com- pany have been accepted and passed in Class A. A mark for accuracy of as high as 80 to 85 per cent is a common figure. This result is extremely interesting as showing that American automatic machinery has been brought to such a pitch of perfection that the machine-made watch is able to hold its own at this laboratory with the finest products of European hand labor.
WALTHAM WATCHES
have received the highest awards wherever exhibited.
YUNIVERSE
THERICAN
WATCH
.1878
PARIS
PARIS, 1878. First Prize Gold Medal.
AMERICAN INSTITUTE, 1857. First Prize Gold Medal.
LIVERPOOL, 1886. First Prize Gold Medal.
N COMMEM
FOUR HUNDREDTHANTERSARY
CHICAGO, 1893. Seven Medals and Diploma.
ILYNYELNIXSYDNE
ORTA RECENS
MONAXIXY
Y
SYDNEY, 1879. First Prize Gold Medal.
CINCINN
T
NO
USTRIAL
EXPOSITION
CINCINNATY, 1880. First Prize Gold Medal.
AGRICUL
STATES
A
GALINA
SOCIETY
MDCCCI
Mass. Charitable Mechan. Assn. BOSTON. First Prize Gold Medal.
PHILADELPHIA, 1876. Four First Prize Medals.
INTERNATIONAL JOYENTIONS
LONDON, 1885. First Prize Gold Medal.
BIGIEn'
שריםמני
MELBOURNE, 1880. First Prize Gold Medal.
1881
ATLANTA, 1881. First Prize Gold Medal.
NEW ORLEANS, 1885. Five First Prize Medals.
Do NOT
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