Watchlords

What should a wristwatch nerd know about American pocket watches and the industry that made them? In my opinion, from the late 1850s until just after WWII, the American watch industry produced more and probably better portable timekeeping machines than the rest of the world combined.

What should a wristwatch nerd know about American pocket watches and the industry that made them? In my opinion, from the late 1850s until just after WWII, the American watch industry produced more and probably better portable timekeeping machines than the rest of the world combined.

I said portable timekeeping machines instead of watches, because during the same time the Swiss produced a lot of fabulous and technically amazing watches. The American watch industry primarily produced time-only watches while the Swiss made these, and also a lot of exquisitely complicated watches. What drove the American watch industry was the idea of producing tool watches for the masses. The founders of the industry were starting from scratch and they wanted to produce quality timepieces that the common man could afford. Early on they knew that the way to do this was to develop the machinery, and a production system, which could mass produce a precision watch with as close as possible to interchangeable parts.


https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/ameri ... -collector