Waltham Wristwatch - Cusion Case - Grade 365 - 1919 Movement - Wadsworth Pilot

On March 21, 1919, in France, First Lieutenant Charles M. Burgess saw a Waltham advertisement in an American magazine and wrote the company. His mother had given him a Waltham Riverside wristwatch in November 1917. When he shipped overseas the following summer, he carried three watches because he had been warned that a wristwatch could not be trusted when the zero hour came. For a time he averaged all three to the second. Eventually he stopped. The little Waltham on his left wrist had become the one he trusted, and any night, he wrote, he could check it almost to a second against the time wirelessed from the Eiffel Tower.

Waltham records date the movement in this case to 1919. It is Grade 365, Model 1907, a 3/0-size, 15-jewel movement in hunting configuration. That layout translated naturally to the wrist. A hunter pocket watch was already arranged with its crown at three and subsidiary seconds at six when the dial was upright, so the same geometry could move into a wristwatch case without sending the seconds register around to nine. The architecture came from the pocket-watch world, and the year it was made, that world was moving onto the wrist.

The dial has aged to a soft ivory, with spotting and uneven toning across its surface and darker aging toward portions of the edge. Large ornate Arabic numerals fill the chapter, surrounded by a dotted minute track, with WALTHAM printed beneath twelve. The recessed seconds register at six is marked at ten-second intervals. Openworked hands cross the dial with aged luminous inserts that remain warm in tone with areas of darker, almost blackened discoloration. The deeply domed crystal has only light marks.

The movement itself is nickel finished with wave damaskeening across its three-quarter plate and is signed A.W.W.Co., WALTHAM, MASS., 15 JEWELS. Waltham's records identify a Breguet overcoil and list the grade as unadjusted. It sits inside a Wadsworth Pilot cushion case, its broad rounded shape ending in short pointed lugs. Inside the back, the Pilot mark carries a 25-year guarantee. Wadsworth had raised the Pilot guarantee to twenty-five years by 1905, and the grade was made in 10K gold fill. Much of that surface remains, with scratches from use and visible wear through around portions of the bezel edge, case edges and lug tips.

A gold-tone Mark VII expansion bracelet is fitted to the watch, with alternating polished and crosshatched sections and MADE IN U.S.A. stamped beneath. It shows scratches and wear, and I cannot establish it as original to the watch. The watch runs, and its service history is unknown.

Burgess wrote that he had gone through five straps in sixteen months while the Waltham itself continued to earn his trust. The bracelet here came later too. Beneath it is a movement Waltham records to the same year he wrote from France.

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.

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