Elgin - Engine Turned Dial - One of Two Thousand - Custom Case - 120 Years Old Circa 1906

In 1906 America still moved by rail and horse, its streetlights were changing from gas to electric, and the watch was the most precise machine in the ordinary American home. The automobile was a rarity that frightened the horses it passed. An airplane had flown, but so briefly and so far from anywhere that most Americans had only read about it. The watch had arrived ahead of all of it, wound each morning, carried on a chain in the vest pocket.

The movements for those watches came out of Illinois, from a town on the Fox River northwest of Chicago where the Elgin National Watch Company had built the largest watch factory in the world. The factory's ledgers survive. The serial cut into the plate of the movement here, 12464004, still has its entry in them: finished in 1906, one of a run of two thousand.

Everything in that world has since changed. The horses came off the streets and the gaslight went out, then the vests and the chains, and the pocket watch followed them out of daily life. The movement inside this watch is one hundred twenty years old, and it outlasted all of it. Its pocket case went with them, and it now sits with its original dial in a stainless steel case made in our own time, shaped for the wrist.

The dial is the one it left the factory with. It is silvered and does not hold one color: straight on it reads bright white, and as it tilts it goes grey and the circle at its center comes forward, engine turning laid over with pale scrollwork and small flowers, the Elgin name in a little framed window at the top. The numerals are drawn in black outline, the hands over them are blued steel, and the surface carries scattered dark specks across the face.

The movement is Elgin's grade 344, wound by hand, with seventeen ruby and sapphire jewels in screw settings, its nickel plates damascened in waves.

The case is brushed stainless steel under a polished bezel, with a tall domed crystal over the dial and a clear back that keeps the movement in view. It is a big watch. It suits a medium or large wrist and will overwhelm a small one. It comes on a navy sailcloth strap. The watch runs and keeps time. Its service history is unknown.

Terms: Please review all photos carefully as they are a part of the listing. This is a vintage timepiece. Accuracy, power reserve, and water resistance are not guaranteed. Vintage watches may require periodic service. Performance can vary with wear, temperature, and position.

All sales final.