HAMILTON

The Hamilton Watch Company may be traced back to the Adams & Perry Watch Company, which was formed in September 1874 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania by John C. Adams and E. H. Perry. In the fall of 1874, work on a new brick manufacturing building along the Columbia Turnpike, planned by Chicago architect Clarence Luther Stiles in the Second Empire style. The first movement was completed in April of 1876, and watch manufacture began in 1875. Adams & Perry fell into receivership in June 1876.

The firm reformed in September 1877, founding a new corporation, the Lancaster, Pa., Watch Company, in order to raise extra funds to sell their product. The firm reorganized again in 1878, becoming the Lancaster, Pa., Watch Co. Ltd., then the Lancaster Watch Company in May 1879, following additional financial troubles. In 1884, Abraham Bitner took over as the company's president and general manager/factory superintendent. The Lancaster Watch Company's financial problems persisted.

In 1886, the firm was reformed as the Keystone Standard Watch Company, with the goal of selling lower-quality watches. In mid-1889, Henry J Cain took over as superintendent and began rearranging the facility in order to introduce a new product line. By mid-1890, Cain had left, and the Keystone Standard Watch Company had gone bankrupt.

The Aurora Watch Company in Aurora, Illinois was bought at auction in August 1890 by a group of Aurora investors led by Henry Cain and Charles D. Rood.

The Aurora Watch Co. had been making high-grade and mid-grade watches since 1884, but by late 1889, the firm had gone bankrupt. October 1890, Cain was appointed superintendent of the Aurora Watch Co., which reopened the Aurora manufacturing. Henry Cain began creating a new series of railroad-style motions in mid-1891.

Despite the fact that the Hamilton Watch Company didn't officially begin operations until 1892 and didn't produce its first watch until 1893, the brand was founded on a strong foundation of horological excellence—the Lancaster, Pennsylvania factory where Hamilton eventually settled had previously housed three other watch companies. The factory had been producing watches for years, and the machinery and employees were among the best in the industry.

However, unlike the other companies that had operated out of the Lancaster plant, Hamilton grew and prospered. This success was undoubtedly attributable to the watch's precision and exquisite mechanics, but there was more. The Hamilton Watch Company successfully marketed its designs to the newest American businesses and enterprises, relying on their designs' sturdiness and dependability to build their name.

The Hamilton Watch became synonymous with a cutting-edge mode of transportation: trains, very rapidly. And the railways in the United States were in dire need of Hamilton. There was no standard for time keeping at the time, and mishaps were common owing to tiny variations between conductors' pocket watches.

The 1902 926 pocket watch had a size 18 movement (roughly 3/5 inch in diameter) and 17 jewels (rubies, whose low friction enhanced bearing life and were positioned at locations of stress at the time), allowing for superior accuracy.

Hamilton could justifiably say that 56 percent of the railroad community was utilizing their product to safely get the people where they needed to be on time after taking the risk of basing everything on the product's reliability. To capitalize on this connection to America's main transportation system, Hamilton introduced the Railroad Pocket Watch in 1912.

Hamilton's achievement did not go unnoticed, and the business was awarded the coveted position of supplier to America's armed forces in 1914. And when American troops landed in France in 1917 to break the First World War's stalemate, they observed a new pattern. Soldiers and some watch businesses found means to strap pocket timepieces to the wearer's wrists so that their hands might be free to better make war, and Hamilton took notice. The 981 Wrist Watch was born soon after.

The Hamilton Watch Company soared to ever-greater heights with each new accomplishment. A Hamilton watch accompanied the pilots on the first first air mail delivery, from Washington to New York, in 1918, during the interwar years.

Hamilton watches joined the aviation mania that swept the American imagination and even the fashion world.

Hamilton watches had once again been tied to a novel and even more perilous kind of exploration, and their reputation for precision on land, air, and sea meant that the exquisitely crafted Lancaster watches would see combat all over the world throughout WWII.

By 1942, a year after the United States entered the war, the Hamilton Watch Company had stopped producing civilian watches and concentrated primarily on timepieces for the military.

But this endeavor wasn't confined to the infantry and diver's (far right) watches seen above; Hamilton's reputation for precision had made them the greatest choice for producing the war's most technologically complex and delicate equipment. The Lancaster, Pennsylvania facility also produced bomb timers for the Air Force and chronometers for the Navy. The Chronometers were manufactured so quickly and so well that the US Army and Navy awarded Hamilton the "E" Award for excellence even before the war ended in 1943.

The 1950s were a watershed moment for the Hamilton Watch Company, however it may also have marked the pinnacle of the company's development. During this time, the U.S. consumer economy exploded, allowing for many more watch purchases, and the firm served both civilian and military sectors at the same time.

The Ventura, the world's first battery-powered watch, was a triumph for Hamilton in 1957. The watch made an impression not just because of its technology, but also because of its appearance. In the 1961 film Blue Hawaii, Elvis Presley may be seen sporting one of these asymmetrical electric beauties.

Things grew a little more difficult in the 1960s, and the decade was a stormy one for the company. On the plus side, Hamilton purchased Buren Watch Company of Switzerland in 1966, along with its micro-rotor. This acquisition paved the way for even thinner automatic (self-winding) watches, and Hamilton developed future timepieces for the cast of Stanley Kubrick's iconic film 2001: A Space Odyssey the following year. However, when the decade came to an end, so did the Lancaster plant.

Hamilton, collaborating with Electro/Data Inc. of Texas, created the digital watch just four years after being commissioned to make a "futuristic" watch for a classic science fiction film. In the process, they created a watch that looked a lot more like HAL 9000 than the timepieces that ended up in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Hamilton departed the United States in 1969 and worked in Switzerland for a few years with Buren before being purchased by the Swatch Group, a Swiss multinational. The traditional Hamilton watch designs were revived in the 1980s—albeit this time created in other countries—and the once-American watch brand was still featured on the silver screen in movies like Men in Black in the 1990s.

Hamilton introduced the Hamilton Khaki Navy BeLOWZERO in a limited edition of 888 pieces in 2020, inspired by the prop Hamilton watches built for Christopher Nolan's film TENET. John David Washington wears a steel Hamilton Jazzmaster Seaview Chronograph in the film.