Objects
A small collection of the physical watches and timekeepers through which you can see watchmaking change: each one a turning point, each inside a history. References and specifications are in the Watch Vault Archive.
- The pomander watch of 1505
A gilt pomander watch found at a London flea market in 1987 and now in a private collection.
- The Melanchthon watch
A small ball watch of gilt brass engraved with Philip Melanchthon’s name and the year 1530, which the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where it is held, calls the earliest dated watch known: the collection’s firm anchor for the first watches.
- Harrison’s H4
John Harrison’s large watch of 1759, the timekeeper that kept time within the Longitude Act’s strictest limit on the 1764 trial to Barbados.
- Mudge’s lever watch for Queen Charlotte
The gold watch Thomas Mudge made in 1770, which the Royal Collection, where it remains, calls the earliest known example of the lever escapement: the escapement that went on to regulate almost every mechanical watch.
- Breguet No. 160
Breguet’s science gathered in one object: the pocket watch with every complication then known, ordered from Breguet in 1783 for or in the name of Marie-Antoinette and finished after his death; stolen from a Jerusalem museum in 1983 and recovered more than twenty years later.
- The American Watch Company prototype
A gold pocket watch with an eight-day movement, made about 1850–52 by Oliver B. Marsh as a prototype for the Roxbury venture that became the American Watch Company of Waltham: one of the seventeen watches, still made largely by hand, that came before the factory’s machine-made watches built from parts checked against gauges.
- The Ingersoll Yankee
The Yankee, a pocket watch made by the Waterbury Clock Company for Robt.
- The Hamilton 992
Hamilton’s grade 992, a 16-size, 21-jewel pocket watch made at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, from 1903 to 1940: built to the rules the railroads set for their crews’ watches, and advertised by Hamilton as the most popular watch on American railroads for time inspection.
- The Seiko Laurel
Seikosha’s wristwatch of 1913, which the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Seiko Museum describe as Japan’s first, designated Mechanical Engineering Heritage No.
- The Harwood self-winding watch
The crownless self-winding wristwatch John Harwood patented in 1923–24 and Fortis began making in Grenchen in 1926, which Fortis and the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum describe as the first automatic wristwatch made in series: the object that brought automatic winding to the wrist.
- The Rolex Oyster
The sealed wristwatch case that Rolex introduced in 1926: a screw-down crown patented by Paul Perregaux and Georges Perret and a screwed case patented by Hans Wilsdorf, launched in 1927 with Mercedes Gleitze’s Channel swim.
- The Hamilton Electric 500
The battery-driven wristwatch Hamilton of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, put on sale in 1957: a balance wheel kept swinging by a coil and a button battery in place of a mainspring, which Hamilton’s own display calls the world’s first electric watch, and which the Science Museum in London and the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum keep.
- The Bulova Accutron
Bulova’s Accutron, on sale from 1960: a wristwatch kept in time by a tuning fork vibrating 360 times a second and driven by a transistor, designed by the Swiss engineer Max Hetzel in Biel.
- The Seiko Astron
The Seiko Quartz Astron 35SQ, put on sale in Tokyo on 25 December 1969: the quartz wristwatch Seiko and the IEEE describe as the first, the result of ten years’ work at Suwa Seikosha, and now an IEEE Milestone and a designated piece of Japan’s mechanical engineering heritage.
- The original Swatch
The plastic quartz watch shown in Zurich on 1 March 1983: 51 parts, a moulded case closed by ultrasonic welding, assembly by machine and a design by the ETA engineers Elmar Mock and Jacques Müller under Ernst Thomke.
- The Junghans MEGA 1
The Junghans MEGA 1 of 1990, a digital quartz wristwatch that set itself from the German time signal DCF77 through an antenna in its strap: the watch that Junghans, PTB and three museums describe as the first radio-controlled wristwatch, and the point at which a national legal time reached the wrist.
- The Pobeda
The Soviet wristwatch named Victory in 1945, built on a movement reworked from Lip’s R-26 and made at Penza, Moscow, Chistopol, Petrodvorets and other factories from 1945.