The case serial number is 2422066 and is 0.900 Silver, Longines logo, character which looks like S and anoher mark. Logo also says E F Co. Movement doesnt appear to have serial number but may well be below the dial, if atall. To me it seems like a Glasgow Hallmark with S standing for either 1837 or 1889. The watch was an 11-jewel, 18 size, key-wind in a silver hunter case, and was produced in January of 1863. In 1885, the company became the 'American Waltham Watch Company'. In 1865 prices for movements only (no case) were: William Ellery $13, P. Bartlett $16, Bartlett-Ladies $30, Appleton Tracy $38, A. & Co Ladies $40, and American Watch. Enter the Longines serial number found on the watch movement. Hampden Pocket Watch Serial Numbers Use this table to look up the serial number of your Hampden Pocket Watch and hence the year of manufacture. When looking for the number on your watch you should be looking at the serial number on the movement, not the case.
Elgin National Watch Company
In the spring of 1864 half a dozen ambitious Chicago businessmen decided that if Massachusetts could build a factory that built watches – Illinois could, too. Harper’s magazine summed their sentiment perfectly: “It was the genuine, audacious, self-reliant Western spirit.” By August of that year this consortium, including then-Chicago mayor Benjamin W. Raymond, purchased an abandoned farm 30 miles north of Chicago and built a watch factory there. After a year of designing and building the lathes and machines to achieve seemingly impossible levels of precision, a team of watchmakers and mechanical engineers produced their first pocket watch movement, named for mayor “B.W. Raymond.” The watch was exquisite: Elgin National Watch Company was born.
By 1910, word of Elgin’s obsession with precision had spread around the world. Elgin engineers built their own Observatory to maintain scientifically precise times in their watches. Later, their accurate “wristlet” watches proved to be vital to the WWI war effort, helping to fuel a craze back in the states for something called “The Wrist Watch.” By the opulent Jazz Age, if you weren’t displaying the exuberant symmetry of an Elgin wrist watch or carrying a svelte, distinctive Elgin pocket watch, then who were you? Elgin had helped define the American pocket watch as unsurpassed in “Railroad Accuracy.” By 1930, the post Civil War dream factory imagined by a handful of American entrepreneurs had produced 32 million “time machines.”
During World War II, all civilian manufacturing was halted and the company moved into the defense industry, manufacturing military watches, chronometers, fuses for artillery shells, altimeters and other aircraft instruments and sapphire bearings used for aiming cannons.
While their altruism was vital to the war effort, Elgin’s patriotism ironically opened an opportunity for the Swiss. By 1964, after a Mid-Century decade that saw the rise of the elite “Lord and Lady Elgin” series, the original Elgin factory closed. Over the course of a century, the dream factory just north of Chicago had produced half of all jeweled pocket and wristwatches manufactured in the United States.
The legendary Elgin watch has become woven into the fabric of America:
Robert Johnson, pre-eminent Delta bluesman, sang “She’s got Elgin movements from her head down to her toes” in his 1936 recording of “Walkin’ Blues”.
NBA Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor was named after the Elgin National Watch Company.
Daniel Beard’s sketches of an angel at the end of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court are based on the Elgin National Watch Company’s logo.
The Steeleye Span album Bloody Men contains a track titled “Lord Elgin”: ostensibly a love song, it is, in fact, about the Lord Elgin Watch.
Elgin Watch Company is referenced in the video game L.A. Noire, which takes place in post-World War II Los Angeles.
While we can't make you into an antique watch expert with just a few web pages, we hope we can share a little of our knowledge in order to help you learn more about your vintage or antique watch. We've tried to provide answers to some of the more common questions about the proper care and handling of a vintage watch, in order to help you learn more about this fascinating area of American history.
Two Parts: Watch Case and Watch Movement
There are two distinct major 'components' to most pocket watches: The watch case and the watch movement. The movement is the inner 'works'... the actual time-keeping mechanism of the watch. The watch case is the outer protective cover, including the crystal that covers the dial. The case also includes (or accommodates) the winding stem and crown.
What's important to know about antique American watches is that cases and movements were usually made by different companies. There were watch manufacturers and there were case manufacturers. American pocket watches used a system of (relatively) standard watch sizes, so it was possible for a customer to select the watch movement they wished to purchase, and then select a case to hold it. Cases could be made of a wide variety of metals: gold, sterling silver, coin silver (made from melted US coinage), nickel, and plated brass.
Left: Watch case with crystal; Right: Watch movement with dial and hands
Open Face or Hunter Case?
This is one of the easiest questions to answer! If there is a metal cover over the dial of the watch (it's called the 'dial' not the 'face') then it's a hunter-case watch. If there is no metal cover over the dial, then it's an 'open face' watch. An open-face watch just has a 'crystal' over the dial (usually made of mineral glass). If there is neither a metal cover nor a crystal, then it's likely that something's missing. Sometimes the bezel (the round metal ring that retains the crystal) is lost, which makes it impossible to replace the missing glass (see this article for more information on vintage pocket watch bezels).
Hunter-cased watch has a metal lid over the dial of the watch which closes to protect the crystal, hands and dial.
Left: Open face watch with bezel and crystal installed, Right: Same watch with bezel and crystal removed
Demi-Hunter Case
A minor variation on the hunter case is the demi-hunter style, which has a small 'window' in the front cover through which the hands (or part of the hands) may be viewed. This is sometimes complemented by an enamel inlaid 'dial' in the lid in the case, so that one can easily tell the time without needing to open the watch. Thus the demi-hunter provided the convenience of an open-face watch with the protection of a hunter-cased watch. Demi-hunter cases are much more common on watches of European origin; we don't see very many American watches in demi-hunter cases.
Swiss demi-hunter case with inlaid enamel dial in the case-lid, by Thos. Russell
Side-Winders
Note that in the photos above, the winding stem is at the 3:00 position on the hunter-cased and demi-hunter-cased watches, and in the 12:00 position on the open-face watch. This is by design. Movements were made either for a hunter-case or for an open-face case. The primary difference between a hunter-case movement and an open-face movement is the relative positioning of the winding arbor and the seconds bit, and the positions of the dial-feet.
When a hunter-case movement and dial are mounted in an open-face case, it is called a 'side-winder' because the winding stem will now be at the 3:00 position instead of the 'normal' 12:00 position. While this doesn't present any real operational difficulties, a side-winder is generally not considered to be a 'correct' matching of movement and case. Note that it's only called a side-winder if it is a hunter-case movement in an open-face case. We sometimes hear people calling their hunter-cased watches side-winders because the winding stem is at 3:00... but they should only be called side-winders if in an open-face case.
For more information, please see our article on side-winder and side-seconds watches.
Pair-Cased Watches
You're probably not going to run into very many of this case type, unless you have a very old watch that's been handed down to you. In the early to mid-18th century, it was common for watches to be housed in 'pair cases'. A pair-cased watch has an inner case which holds the actual movement of the watch (often a verge fusee), and an outer case which enclosed and protected the inner case. Since the inner case couldn't be made dust-proof because of the key-holes for winding and/or setting, an outer case would provide additional protection from dust and dirt. There were even some triple-cased watches made during the same period! Early pair-cased verge fusee watches were often ornately decorated with pierced and chased gold-work as seen in the photos below.
Cwc Co Pocket Watch Case Serial Number Lookup
Pair-cased 18th century verge fusee by Ja. Thomson, London