Elgin

The Elgin Watch Company was originally known as the National Watch Company and was founded by former employees of Waltham who felt that a watch factory in the nation’s Midwest would be beneficial in distributing products to America’s rapidly expanding west (Figure 6). The Elgin Watch Company eventually grew to be the most prolific of all watch manufacturers. The company introduced more than half the watches, both wrist and pocket, made in America from 1920-1928. An Elgin advertisement in 1928 claimed that there were more than 14,418 retail jewelers in the United States and all but 12 carried Elgin watches. By 1965 Elgin’s main plant in Illinois was closed. In 1965-66 the Elgin facility was torn down. In 1967 a remaining plant in South Carolina was also fazed out.

Hamilton

The Hamilton Watch Company was founded on December 14, 1892 by Charles D. Rood and Henry K. Cain in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The factory, which  has now been converted into condominiums, housed several watch companies before Hamilton, including the Adams & Perry, Lancaster Watch Company, and the Keystone Standard Watch Companies, all of which went bankrupt. Many but certainly not all collectors of American wristwatches regard Hamilton watches as the finest produced in America from about the mid-1920s to about the mid-1950s. You will find some who will disagree with that statement, but certainly they were the most expensive American-made watches of their time. Many collectors consider the mid-1950s as the end of Hamilton, when the company began replacing American-made movements with those that were imported from Switzerland. Several dates have been written as to when Hamilton actually ceased production, but most agree it was 1969 when production of American movements ceased altogether. Most collectors agree that Hamilton’s history ended there.

Illinois

Illinois Watch Company was organized in 1869 in Springfield, Illinois. The first pocket watch did not roll off the assembly line until December 1871. Many collectors divide the history of wristwatch production into four periods: the Transitional period from pre-WWI to the early 1920s, the Generic period from the early 1920s to the early 30s, the Art Deco period from the late 1920s to the early 30s, and the Modern period of the early 30s. You’ll notice that some of these periods overlap; there were some Art Deco watches produced during the Generic period and vice versa.

The company was sold to Hamilton Watch Company in 1927 but continued to produce wristwatches bearing the Illinois name. The production continued until November 1932 when at last Hamilton could no longer afford to keep the company open due to the Great Depression. In all it is estimated that Illinois produced 800,000 wristwatch movements, and you have to remember, of course, that many of the smaller movements ended up in ladies pendants or wristwatches so there are probably considerably fewer than that 800,000 number that were produced as men’s wristwatches. If you are interested in learning more about Illinois wristwatches I highly recommend the article written by Phil Harnage, which appeared in the April 1996 issue of the NAWCC Bulletin.

Hampden

The predecessor of the Hampden Watch Company, the Mozart Watch Company, was formed by Don J. Mozart in 1864 in Providence, Rhode Island. After many failures this company was reorganized and the name was changed to the New York Watch Company, located in Springfield, Massachusetts. In April 1870 that factory was destroyed by fire. After the factory was rebuilt and production resumed in January 1877, the name was changed to the Hampden Watch Company. In 1886 it merged with the Dueber Watch Case Company and became the Dueber Hampden Watch Company.

John Dueber’s Dueber Watch Case Company of Newport, Kentucky, had been selling cases to the Hampden Watch Company, and John, on one of his many trips to Springfield, became so impressed with the Hampden Watch Company that he purchased a controlling interest. He tried enlarging the factory in Springfield, but no solution could be found. So he decided to combine the two factories, and he chose Canton, Ohio, as the location for the new facility. Many people associate Hampden and Dueber Hampden with Canton, Ohio. By the spring of 1888 the building in Canton was complete and the watch factory in Springfield and the case factory in Newport were moved to Canton and merged into one.

In 1930 the contents of the watch factory, including all the tooling, all the machinery, all the spare parts, and the movements that were in the inventory were sold to industrialist Armen Hammer. He in turn sold the machinery, parts, and inventory to the USSR where it became known as the Amtorg Watch Company. This is quite an interesting story. When Dueber Hampden was sold, the former workers actually went to the USSR and stayed there for quite a long time to get the machinery up and running and to show the new owners how everything worked. You might think that workers would have been very reluctant to do that but if you think of the time, 1930, you know that any work back then was good work. Toward the end of Hampden’s existence in America, the company was so strapped for cash that it actually paid its employees in watches. And those workers in turn attempted to sell them door to door to try to make their salary.

Production

The appearance of wristwatches in company catalogs up until the 1920s was sporadic at best and limited almost exclusively to women’s wristwatches or women’s convertible watches, which, as the name implies, could be converted from a wristwatch to a pendant watch. Pocket watches were definitely the rule for gentlemen of the day. Wristwatches were considered too feminine, even though they had been offered to men with some success in Europe.

Then a pivotal event came along—WWI. This marked a turning point for men’s watches. The war department needed its soldiers to have easy access to time so they could synchronize troop movements, time artillery fire, and so forth. The wristwatch seemed to be the perfect solution. Some of the military personnel went out and got their own watch, using their own money. We do know that military contracts were ordered, but we don’t have much proof of actual contracts existing. And so we witnessed the birth of the military watch and the manufacture of cases designed specifically for wristwatches, rather than being converted from a pocket watch case. Still most watches continued to be cased in converted pocket watch cases with wire lugs, and about the only conciliation they made in the war effort was that they put heavier wire lugs on them to withstand the tortures out on the field.

Figure 7 is a typical example of a military watch from that period. This is basically a wristwatch like we had seen before but with a grill, or shrapnel, cover added. The name “shrapnel cover” to me is kind of a funny name. It was designed to protect the watch but if you were wearing the watch at the time, I think the watch was the least of your worries. They took a standard wristwatch case with the lugs soldered onto the ends; then they would snap this cover over the top of it; then the leather or canvas band would loop through the top and bottom and keep the grill cover secure to the watch.

As you can see with these two Illinois military wristwatches (Figure 8), some cases were manufactured with pierced bezels and they were ready to be worn from the factory. What you see on the cover of each of these is not a grill cover that lays on the top, but rather it is the actual bezel with a pattern cut out. These cases were manufactured specifically for a wrist and not for pocket watches and for the first time the watches came ready to wear from the factory rather than being fitted to cases by a second party. And so in this fashion, thousands of watches found their way onto the battlefields.

Watches for the rank and file were typically cased in base metal while watches for officers were cased in sterling silver or even gold. And while all WWI watches are fairly uncommon these days, these early officers watches are quite rare and extremely collectible. The grill covers are probably more rare than the watches themselves because they snapped off and tended to get lost over time. It’s quite a treat to find a WWI era watch that still has the grill cover.

Bruce Shawkey’s Wristwatches column is usually a regular feature in the Bulletin and will resume with the June 2002 issue. Wristwatches after WWI and audience questions and answers will comprise Part II of this article in the April issue.