Swiss Fakes

In the late 19th century, American made "railroad grade" watches were widely considered to be about the best available. In addition, the American market for watches was huge and growing. This led to the appearance of cheap, Swiss-made imports designed to look like high-grade American pocketwatches. Here's a nice example.

This watch's "manufacturer" always makes me laugh. The watch is marked "H. Milton W. Co", not to be confused with "Hamilton" (or is it?). It includes many of the features typical of these sorts of high-grade imitation watches.


Note the jewels. The watch is marked 21 jewels, however the "jewels" are actually just caps over non-jeweled pivots. The "jewel" for the center wheel is missing, making the actual pivot visible. And in fact, the "jewels" are likely to be celluloid. Next, note the balance wheel. It is one piece, not split and not bi-metallic. The timing screws are actually just pins sticking out from the wheel.

The regulator includes a spring that actually doesn't do anything except hold the regulator in one place. It's just there to look nice, and to imitate actual micro regulators.

There is no click on the "ratchet wheel". And in fact the exposed winding wheels are also just for show. The do not move.

Lastly, the watch is marked as adjusted for temperature. This adjustment is of course simply made up.

It's not unusual for these watches to include non-sensible claims on the movement, misspelled words, fake wheels and other humorous features. Meanwhile, the movements definitely resembled high-end American makes. The cases also often would include a picture of a steam engine, as was at the time a popular way to give a watch an association with quality.

All in all, not exactly a great watch! But it is an interesting piece of history.