The founders of the Elgin National Watch Company recognized that there was a need for good quality, reliable watches that could be sold and repaired relatively inexpensively using factory made replacement parts that didn’t require hand adjusting. If one part of a watch broke, someone with the right tools and skill-set to make a replacement would need to fix it, a potentially time-consuming and expensive process. By today’s standards that seems like a completely rational, if not obvious approach, however it should be noted up until around 1850, watches were made mostly by hand. The underlying idea was to mass produce high-quality pocket watches using machine-made, interchangeable parts. Back then, the business traded under the name “National Watch Company,” but this would later be changed to the “Elgin National Watch Company,” as most of the watch trade and public referred to its products as “watches from Elgin.”Īs one of the few true American watch manufacturers, the Elgin National Watch Company produced around 60 million watches over the course of its 100-year history, making it the largest American watch manufacturer in terms of total production volume.

By way of context, pork chops were selling for three cents a pound at the time.

Elgin Watches: The Rise of an American Watchmakerįounded in 1864 in Elgin, Illinois, just as the American Civil War was coming to an end, the company released its first watch to the market in 1867, an 18 sized BW Raymond railroad grade pocket watch, which took six months to complete and sold for a whopping $117 (several years ago, it was purchased at auction by the City of Elgin for $15,000). If you’ve always wanted to own a piece of functional American history, without breaking the bank, then a wrist or pocket watch from the Elgin National Watch Company may just be exactly what you’ve been looking for. Elgin watches, some of the most in-demand antique watches in the market today, are a perennial favorite among watch collectors.

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