At the Universal Exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876, visiting Swiss horologists were confronted for the first time with mass production techniques.
The American Watch Company of Waltham, near Boston, Massachusetts, had pioneered the use of machine tools and interchangeable parts. The business was highly profitable and the company’s automatic pinion cutters and screw-making machines had been patented.
This was in stark contrast with Switzerland’s traditional labour-intensive methods of watchmaking.
The Swiss visitors were aware that in 1859 almost all watches imported into the US were from their country. But that figure was falling sharply and by 1883 it was down to 40 per cent.
It was to the American Watch Company that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company turned in 1866 for pocket watches, with its own name printed on the paper dial. This was the first true railroad watch.
More than 350 pocket watchmakers flourished at one time or another in the US between 1866 and 1969
The first US passenger railroad engine had rolled down the tracks of the Baltimore & Ohio Company in 1830, and, with the end of the Civil War in 1865, railways spread across the country like fire. Timetables had to cope with myriad time zones (until just five were established in 1883).
More than 350 pocket watchmakers flourished at one time or another in the US between 1866 and 1969, when the last such watch was produced.
In the 1880s, the prominent ones were Knickerbocker, Manhattan, New York Standard, and Trenton. Shorter-lived but collectable makers were Lancaster Watch Company (active 1879-1883) and Keystone Standard (1886-1892).
The leading makers of watches costing a dollar or so were: Waterbury Watch Company (founded in 1880, it became the New England Watch Company in 1890); Ingersoll (whose Yankee, which boasted it “made the dollar famous”, came in 1895); and New Haven Clock Company (1880).
Only two companies making jewelled watches were formed after 1900: South Bend (1903), which later merged with Columbus, and Manistee (1908). By this time dollar watches dominated the market. Bannatyne Watch Co was set up in 1905 to make them, but merged with E Ingraham in 1911.
Consolidation was setting in. Ingersoll bought Trenton in 1907 and New England Watch Company in 1912, and was itself bought by Waterbury Clock Company in 1922. Meanwhile, traditional clockmakers were entering the market: Westclox (formerly Western Clock Company, 1899) in 1900, and Ansonia (founded in 1850, and sold to Russia in 1930) four years later.
In 1930, 272m timepieces were produced, 68 per cent of them dollar watches. Today, no watches are made in the US using domestic parts.
At the turn of that century, “wristlet watches”, as they were called, were arriving in the stores, and most of them were Swiss-made. Retaliation soon came. Elgin (founded 1867) and Illinois (1869) introduced ladies’ wristwatches in about 1906, and Gruen (1874) followed in 1908. Waltham produced its first ladies’ wristwatches in 1912, and men’s two years later.
By 1930, the leading makers were Elgin, Waltham, Illinois Watch Company (sold to Hamilton in 1928, but whose name continued in use until 1953), Dueper-Hampden (active 1921-1931, but which then sold its entire factory to Russia, where it still operates), Seth Thomas, Hamilton, E Howard Watch Company (1858, bought by Hamilton in 1931), Columbus (with South Bend which failed in 1933), and Rockford (active 1900-1915).
In 1933, Ingersoll (by then owned by Hamilton) began mass-marketing a long line of “character” wristwatches. The first was the Mickey Mouse (produced for Disney in 1928 to promote the new cartoon film).
Today, there is no American watch industry, as such. David Yurman is a leading brand, but based on American designs only. Elgin watches are now entirely foreign-made, as are those of Fossil, now a huge brand in the US, Gruen, Harry Winston, Tiffany, Timex brands, and Wittnauer.
