American Watchmaking History Help

Vladislav

Good day, everyone. I wanted to learn more about the iconic watches and brands that were around when American watch manufacturing was prevalent. Let me know your thoughts on the subjects and favorite sources.

#usawatchmakers #americanwatchmaking #history #iconic
Reply
Aurelian
·

The information, or at least the basics, are on the internet. There are really good sites on Elgin, Bulova, Hamilton, and Gruen. There is less on Waltham, Timex, and Benrus. You can find old web pages devoted to Hampton, Clinton, Helbros, Wittnauer, Jaro, and Gothic. There is practically nothing on some brands like Gotham and Welbros, both popular in their day.

I find that the best search is "[brand name} watch company history". Otherwise, you get eBay and Watchcharts listings.

Aurelian
·

I think that the American industry had a century, but I think that your period was its height as compared with other countries (and that is a good post).

defsNOTgenta
·

Ask @minutemeg! This post in particular should get you interested.

Oldmanwatches
·
Image
Image

Hope this helps

minutemeg
·

Thanks @defsNOTgenta! Hamilton is a great place to start since there’s so much information out there. Waltham, Elgin, and Benrus are also good threads to follow. I find any university library search engines helpful for primary sources that have been digitized, as well as Google Scholar.

Illuminatingwatches
·

Apologies for the shameless sharing of my own link , but if you are interested in their electric and electronic watch era then I did a video on it: https://youtu.be/HtW1IM5yl00?si=twtcj5X39VqmeUIG . Otherwise the big ones to look into are Bulova, Gruen, Elgin, Waltham and Hamilton. Timex also there of course - their roots in Norway an interesting history to explore.