found inside antique elgin watch g218874

It was a requirement for railway workers to wear a pocket watch, as the timepieces were responsible for keeping conductors on schedule. In the late 1800s, the open-face pocket watch became a staple on the American railroad. For example, the Marius Lecoultre pocket watch - made circa 1890 - does everything but uncork your wine. For collectors, pocket watches are big, and that means a larger canvas provided for functions without crowding the dial.

(Today, they’re among the most sought after by collectors and enthusiasts.)Īt the onset, pocket watches resembled small round table clocks, and pulling your small round table clock - perhaps of the silver variety - out of your breast pocket in front of someone else demonstrated unequivocally that you cared about punctuality. Artfully crafted pocket watches were a symbol of wealth, and manufacturers such as Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe became known for theirs. The earliest pocket watches were luxury items, and, owing to cost, they weren’t commonplace until the 19th century. With a suit and a waistcoat, a pocket watch can be a refreshing alternative to a wristwatch. I hope those of you out there who are more knowledgeable (and that's most of you) will correct me if I am wrong on any of this.Can you pull off a vintage pocket watch? Of course you can. Needless to say I quickly stopped complaining. He looked at the number, checked his records, and showed me it had been almost three years since his repair. One watchmaker who had worked in Chicago(now long dead) told me that, if the police found a watch on an identified body, they would circulate the repair numbers to local repair shops in hopes of finding the corresponding watchmaker, who in turn could give a name to the deceased.Īs far as using the watch serial numbers as a tracking system instead, it seems to me that, in pre-computer days, this would be impractical-how would the watchmaker have maintained and searched such a large and ever-growing data base? (I guess he could have recorded each repair on a separate index card and filed by serial number, but think of how much space such a file would eventually occupy.)Īs an anectdote, twenty-some years ago I took a watch back to my regular repairman and complained that it was not running right, even though I remembered him having cleaned it fairly recently. It was my understanding that there was no established system of marking-every watchmaker used his own. As long as it was done neatly I never had a problem with it.

I thought this was still a common practice-the watchmakers I have used in the past still did it.

Found inside antique elgin watch g218874