The beginnings of the American industry

My contribution in this section is not to rewrite history, but to provide a basis for those who are unfamiliar with American watchmaking.

To present a sampling of brands and movements of different sizes, periods and qualities.

The presentation of the different brands are classified in order according to the table below.

I have decided to present the movements in ascending order of their year of manufacture.

The texts are not from me, but are reproduced on sites, see the links below.

Consulted sites :

- https://pocketwatchdatabase.com

- http://hamilton.rrstd.com/Hamilton/Hamilton_Home.h...

- http://elgintime.blogspot.com

- http://www.hamiltonchronicles.com

- http://elginwatches.org

- https://elginhistory.org

-http://www.ballwatch.com

- https://clockhistory.com

- http://unjourunemontre.com

- http://www.pocketwatchrepair.com

- http://www.elginnumbers.com

- http://www.watcheshistory.com

- http://railswest.com/time/index.html

- http://yourrailwaypictures.com

- https://www.youtube.com

Works consulted :

- Revue Chronométrophilia N° 15, la montre chemin de fer américaine, J.P. Mattey-Claudet

- Philadelphia 1876, Le défi américain en horlogerie, 2011, Editions Institution l'Homme et le Temps

- David S. Landes, the time that it is, Gallimard 1987

- Illustrated manual of american watch movements, The E. & J. Swigart, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1952

- Watch and Clock Material, 1958 edition, Waltham Since 1850

- American Railroad Watches, George Townsend, Michigan 48801, year 1977

- American Watchmaking, A Technical History of the American Watch Industry 1850-1930, Michael C. Harrold, year 1981

- On Time, How America Has Learned to Live by the Clock, Carlene E. Stephens, NMAH, year 2002

- Swiss Chronometry Society, Bulletin N° 81, May 2016, article on Elgin by Lucien F. Trueb

American factories were particularly prosperous from the second half of the 19th century until the 1930s. After the Great Depression of 1929, the wristwatch and the economic crises called into question the established equilibrium. The competition from Swiss manufacturers preserved by their development in Europe, a market little prospected by the American firms in general, and a little later the Second World War will make many American watch manufacturers disappear.

The second half of the 19th century saw the birth in the United States and Switzerland of several manufacturers who took advantage of the impetus of the industrial era to make a place for themselves in the watch industry. The creation of industries in all fields of skills and activities brought together in the same workplace people who previously worked in isolation. The interdependence of activities within companies has made it necessary for all staff to work to a common timetable, and this new organisation of work is generating a huge demand for precise and reliable timepieces.

The anchor watch, which is mass-produced at the same time, more precise and reliable, is generating a craze that makes it desirable in all the best socio-professional circles. Concretely, it will be the finishing of the watches, the movement stacking, the decoration and the bevels as well as the type of base or precious metal embedding that will make a difference. But from 7 to 26 jewels, the precision of the watches allows everyone to have access to individual timekeeping and for the first time to share a precise and universal time... It is the social conquest of time.

Their production was immense, amounting to tens of millions of pieces and a diversification into various measuring instruments, notably for aviation and armament. Unlike the Swiss manufactures, almost all American firms specialising in watchmaking had created their own internal observatories and were widely displaying their chronometric performances thanks to highly innovative and often highly decorated and heavily jewelled calibres.

These factories have a sometimes chaotic history for reasons of too rapid or poorly understood expansion, and we note that the American States have favoured their establishment on immense and sometimes disproportionate surfaces. Watchmaking firms have created many jobs and generated a lot of profits for investors who saw them as a source of margins and dividends where the primary characteristic should undoubtedly have been the anticipation of needs and fashions.
Very prosperous in the phase of the individual conquest of time by all social strata (from 1875 to 1930), the major American watchmaking houses undoubtedly failed to anticipate the effects of fashions linked to the wristwatch, an area in which Swiss industrialists were quicker to develop. Thus, apart from a few houses that resisted with difficulty until the advent of quartz, there is almost nothing left today of these great manufactures apart from a few walls, machines and catalogues.

When looking at the total production of American watch manufacturers, a natural distinction can be made between companies producing high quality ruby pocket watches and those producing lower quality "dollar" style watches. Ingersoll, Ingraham, New Haven and Ansonia produced over 500 million low-cost watches, which represent a high percentage of total US production.

The passage of time and incomplete factory records mean that it is probably impossible to create a completely accurate accounting of US watch production, but production figures are known to most major manufacturers and can be estimated from known serial numbers.
Estimated total production of gold pocket watches in the United States

The table below represents an estimate of the total production of jewellery-style pocket watches manufactured by American watch manufacturers.

Railroad watches " Railroad "

We must immediately talk about two generations of these watches in the United States, separated by a date... 1893. Why that date?
In 1891, a head-on collision between two trains near Cleveland, not far from Lake Michigan, brought into question the accuracy of watches worn by railway workers. A difference of five minutes was responsible for the disaster. A watch manufacturer in that city, Mr. Webb C... Ball was called upon to inspect timekeeping equipment at the railroads in northern Ohio. He found 17 significant differences between certain cities. He also found that train personnel used all kinds of watches, even those offered by shoe stores. Some freight train locomotive engineers depended on waking up in the kitchen in the morning with the snack bag. Mr. Ball realized the need for regulations to control the accuracy of railway timekeepers, who were responsible for the safety of traffic.
These regulations were established in 1893.
Fifty-four railroads in the United States, Canada and Mexico complied, requiring their employees' watches to meet the following criteria:
Possess a movement of 18 or 16 sizes in diameter... (44.86 or 43.18 mm), with at least 17 jewels, an anchor escapement, single-plate, and a precision not exceeding a deviation of more than 30 seconds per week.
Inscriptions such as the trade mark, reference and number, number of rubies, number of control positions, sometimes the name of the Company.
The distinction is now clear between any watch and the real railway watch, the one that conforms to the regulations. It will be called Railroad Watch as opposed to the fancy locomotive watch which will be called Train Watch. These genuine pre-1893 railway watches were very numerous and varied in their types of movements and trademarks.
A three-digit number is the Grade, a quality reference determined by the manufacturer himself.
After the elaboration of these regulations for the control of existing watches it was decided to create a standard railway watch with equal requirements for all manufacturers.

The second generation of American railway watches, post-1893, "are timepieces to which the true qualifier can be squared and which would well deserve the title of chronometer. They had to meet the above-mentioned criteria, to which Mr. Ball added:
Engraved "5 positions", have a double plate, a clearly visible dial, Arabic numerals and fairly wide hands, a pendant winder at 12 o'clock, be set at temperatures of 30° to 95° F (-1° to 35° C), be fitted with a fine-adjustment racket.
As soon as this regulation was established, 37 American houses were approved to manufacture these standard watches, a number that was later greatly reduced. Around 1915 the following brands were still listed: Waltham - Elgin - Illinois Hampden - Hamilton - Howard - Rockford - South Bend.
Mr. Ball had watches made by the first six of these companies under his own specifications and registered trademarks, including Ball Official Standard and, more often than not, Official RR Standard. The Grade will be 999.
Around 1920, the 18-size watch, about 45 mm, lost favour with railway workers and most railway companies gave up, turning more and more to the Swiss market. In 1969. Hamilton sold its last pocket watch.

A lire : Lien intéressant sur le sujet : www.ballwatch.com

Some excerpts from David S. Landes' book, "It's That Time."

Cutting of wheels and pinions around 1800
For the size of the wheels, the metal blanks were stamped in large quantities on relatively small presses: with a 20-ton press, a single man could cut 10,000 wheels per day. These were then finished on milling cutters that turned the blank stack automatically as soon as one tooth was finished. The pinions, once stretched like wire by repeated passes through profiled holes, were likewise cut and milled, so that they could be taken out of harder steel.

Pendulums, Spirals, Rubies and Pivots

They made pendulums and spirals as close to the norm as possible in large numbers and then carefully sorted them by weight and force. All that remained then was to match them by choosing the pieces in the appropriate crates or pots. The selection of rubies and pivots followed the same technique: instead of piercing the rubies and then fitting the pivots, they produced batches of each of these pieces, measured their diameters, and then sorted the pieces to match them when the time came.

The Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876

The Swiss sent a representative, Edouard Favre-Perret, to investigate the origin of their difficulties. His discoveries plunged his compatriots into a moment of consternation: the Americans, he assured them, were making watches that were just as reliable and accurate as the best Swiss instruments.

Presented on 14 November 1876 in the form of a speech to his fellow watchmakers in the amphitheatre of a school in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Favre-Perret's report was described as the most famous speech in watchmaking history. He then concluded his plea with an account of a personal experience.Messieurs, voici ce que j'ai vu. J'ai demandé au directeur de la Waltham une montre de la 5e qualité. On a ouvert devant moi un grand coffre; j'ai pris, au hasard, une montre, et l'ai mise à ma chaîne. Le directeur m'ayant prié de lui laisser cette montre, deux ou trois jours, pour qu'on pût vérifier sa marche : « Au contraire, lui dis-je, je tiens à la conserver telle qu'elle est, pour avoir une idée exacte de votre fabrication. »

In Paris, I set my watch to the time on a regulator on the boulevard, and on the sixth day, I noticed that it had varied by 32 seconds. (Deep sensation.) And this watch is the 5th American quality; it is worth 75 fr. (movement without case).
When I arrived in Le Locle, I showed this watch to one of our first adjusters who asked me for permission to take it apart. I wanted to observe it first, and here are the results I saw:
Hanging: diurnal variation: 1 1/2 seconds. Variation in the different positions: from 4 to 8 seconds. In the oven, the variation was very small.

After observing it this way, I handed the watch to the adjuster, who took it apart. After a few days, he came back, and told me verbatim: "I'm stunned! The result is incredible" You wouldn't find a watch like this in 50'000 of our factory. »
This watch, gentlemen, I repeat, I took it myself, at random, from the heap, as they say. It's understandable, by this example, that one might prefer the American watch to the Swiss watch.

Unlimited choice

The American production system makes it possible to produce types of watches as varied as buyers' wallets. In 1876, the price of a Waltham watch can vary from a few dollars to several hundred dollars depending on its degree of decoration and finish.
Each of these American watches carries a serial number corresponding to both its model and its production order.
Non-nested movements sometimes remain in drawers several years after being produced, and are taken out according to orders. At the time of purchase, they may undergo some modifications according to the wishes of the buyer. By virtue of the interchangeability of dials, hands or cases in relation to movements, the consumer can compose the watch of his choice at will, draw from the bottom of the range as well as from the top of the range, and request that one or other of the external components be changed in the blink of an eye.

In this article, the author draws attention to a sometimes overlooked part of the history of the American watch industry: the industrial production of their cases. According to him, the success of the American watch industry at the end of the 19th century and the fact that it managed to compete with European production is partly linked to the fact that cases are sold independently of watch movements in American watchmaking and that the customer can order a custom-made watch that meets his or her desires.

This is possible due to the fact that the sizes of the American movements and cases are standardized. Thanks to the interchangeability of the product, the customer chooses, according to his priorities, performance or aesthetics, the timepiece that suits him from a catalogue and has it assembled at the local jeweller. The case is one of his options. The customer chooses it robust and pleasant to wear in case he puts the priority on the functionality of his watch, but more often still, decorated and made of noble material to dress a low or middle range movement. At the turn of the twentieth century, no fewer than twenty-five companies, including the Waltham Watch Co., the Elgin Watch Co. and the Hamilton Watch Co. produced by the thousands the watch cases that would satisfy customers' choices.

For the collector, the fact that the case was produced independently of the movement can be recognized simply by the fact that, contrary to Swiss practice, the serial number of the movement is almost never transferred to the case within the framework of American watchmaking. Howard & Co., for example, which manufactured its movements according to its own standards and subcontracted the production of cases, and the first Appleton &Tracy from Waltham.

The champion of low prices: the dollar watch

The dollar watch combines savings on materials, movement construction and production methods. This watch with a fully stamped movement is mass-produced at such a low cost that it can be sold for $1. Its minimal cost is due to some to be distributed free of charge as promotional gifts to encourage the sale of other products.