Elgin Watches

The City of Elgin was founded in 1835 along the banks of the Fox River and is one of the oldest cities in northern Illinois. By the late 1850’s Elgin had become a large manufacturing and retail center for the surrounding area. Elgin, the watchmaker, was founded in 1864 and the tail end of the Civil War. The Elgin founders lured away seven key employees from the Waltham Watch Company. The bait used was a $5,000 a year salary for 5 years, a $5,000 bonus and one acre of land on the company's newly acquired 35-acre site! Ironically, Elgin lost several of these same employees to the Illinois Watch Co. a few years later.

The first movement was delivered from the factory in1867 and was named in honor of their President, Benjamin W. Raymond. It was an 18-size, key wind, full plate, with quick train and straight-line escapement arranged to set on the face and was adjusted to temperature. At that time watches took six months to complete and the B. W. Raymond model sold for $117, a handsome sun at the time. Several years ago this watch was bought at auction by the City of Elgin for $15,000.

Elgin was originally called the "National Watch Company". This name never stuck and in 1874 was changed to the "Elgin National Watch Company" since most of the watch trade and public were calling them "watches from Elgin". They kept that name until the late 1960s when they stopped producing watches and changed their name to the "Elgin National Industries".

Elgin and most other watch companies sold their movements to wholesalers who sold them on to jewelers. A customer would pick out the case of his choice, add the dial and then the jeweler would put them together. Only about 10% of the cases sold were solid gold. Over its 100-year history, Elgin went on to produce over 50 million watches. Elgin produced its first wristwatch around 1910, leading most other American watch companies by many years.

Elgin was founded on the idea of mass-producing high quality pocket watches using machine made, interchangeable parts. Up until around 1850, watches were made mostly by hand, which meant that to fix a broken part, you had to find someone with the tools and skill to make a new part. Elgin realized that there was a large market for good watches that could be sold and repaired relatively inexpensively by using factory made replacement parts that didn't require hand adjusting.

During the First World War the United States Army had the Elgin factory train more than 350 men to make the precision repairs required in the battlefields. During the Second World War, all civilian work was stopped and Elgin made military watches, chronometers for the U.S. Navy, fuses for artillery shells, altimeters and instruments for aircraft and sapphire bearings used in the aiming of cannon.

Elgin never made the very highest quality watches in the world, nor did they make the very cheapest, but together with Waltham (the American Watch Company), they dominated the vast middle ground of the watch market in the United States.

Today, collecting Elgin watches is quite popular. Because Elgin produced so many watches and produced so many spare parts, they can still be easily bought and fixed, so even a 100 year-old Elgin can be used, with care, on a daily basis.

from http://www.vintagewatchrestoration.com/history/body.html