This watch movement is one of only two American rotary movements built on American soil. The other was madeby Auburndale.The history of American carriage clocks dates back to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. There, Daniel Azro A. Buck, a "mechanical genius" to many of his contemporaries, displayed a miniature but perfectly working, steam engine, complete with boiler, pistons, governor and pump, and small enough to be covered by a thimble. The engine soon came to the attention of Edward A. Locle of Boston, who was so impressed by it that he offered Buck one hundred dollars to design a reliable watch with a mnimal number of parts. After one failed attempt, Buck finally succeeded, and in 1880 Locle incorporated his new business - named Waterbury after the city in which it was founded. Locle's company met with great success, due in large measure to the ingenuity of Buck, who employed one of the most important European horological inventions - the tourbillon - and engineered the design to be manufactured by machinery. Two of the most prominent authorities on carriage clocks, Charles Allix and Peter Bonert, describe Buck's design in their book, Carriage Clocks, Woodbridge, England, 1974, as a "masterpiece of mass production and interchangeability". Although a number of watches were built using Buck's designs, they remain quite rare today, with the carriage clocks being the rarest.