Progress Watch Company?

I don't know anything about the history of Progress watches, but in spite of being marked "Progress USA" this movement showed several signs of being swiss made.

This family heirloom needed a new center staff and a mainspring for its current owner to put it back in service (just on weekends).

Do YOU Have Odd Experiences With Your Watch Customers?

From American Horologist and Jeweler magazine, December 1959

mourner corner

Do YOU Have Odd Experiences With Your Watch Customers?

IF YOU DON'T, YOU'RE PROBABLY NOT A FULL-FLEDGED WATCHMAKER!


A. T. Stonehouse, 529 University Avenue, San Diego, Calif., operator of a watch and clock repairing shop, specializing in antique clocks, recently suggested that some of the odd experiences of jewelers and watchmakers in their dealings with the public ought to be in print.


Writes Mr. Stonehouse, "I am sure your readers can supply plenty of them." 


From his own rich experience he provided a couple of experiences that would provide a year's supply of salt-water at a watchmaker's bench, and corrode every watch in sight.


Whose tears are more bitter than Mr. Stonehouse's when he can recall these experiences?


"A man brought in his watch. He said that he had the watch repaired by a New York watchmaker about two months ago, and that the New Yorker guaranteed the icb for a year, but the watch had stopped.  We made the needed repairs, and when the man came for it he took the watch, put it on, and started to walk out. The watch repairman was surprised and said: 'Hey wait a minute. You haven't paid me. The customer replied, 'Why should I pay you? The man in New York guaranteed my watch for a year.' He wasn't kidding, either. He absolutely and flatly refused to pay for it.


"Another time I repaired a chime clock for a lady, and of course carefully adjusted the hammers so that they struck evenly.  But she came back complaining that it did not sound like she remembered it! I explained that there was no way that I could get inside her head and find out just what her memory of the sound was, and that the chimes were correctly adjusted, but she insisted that she would have to take the clock elsewhere to have the chimes fixed.  I'm still trying to figure out a way to tell what another person's memory of a sound should sound like."

The Thousand Watch Project

We tend not to throw old watches away. There's something personal about them I suppose. Even cheap wristwatches are saved in a drawer someplace, for decaeds. The Thousand Watch project aims to collect 1,000 old watches, and their stories. When complete, the collection will be donated to the Smithsonian.

http://www.moskowarchitects.com/TKWP/index.html

Elgin Advertising, 1925

An engineer made him an Elgineer on his twenty-first birthday
One of a series of little biographies of Elgin Watches

Everyone knows what a watch means to a railroad man.  My father - a locomotive engineer in the days of wood-burning locomotives in the West - taught me how to read time almost before I learned the alphabet.

On my twenty-first birthday, he gave me an Elgin Watch and to a railroad man, the son of a railroad man, no finer gift could have been given.

During many years of railroad service, I worked by this Elgin.  Long after its heavy hunting case design went out of style, it remained dear to me.

Today I carry a modern Elgin - a Corsican model.  But the old watch still means much to me, the gift of a father to a son, a remembrance of railroad days.

- by Walter P. Chrysler

ELGIN

THE WATCH WORD FOR ELEGANCE AND EFFICIENCY 

Young Men!

From The American Horologist magazine, February 1936... Note that William Samelius's name is misspelled in this ad.

Young Men!

Learn Watchmaking

Famous Watch College Will Give You Start in This Well-Paid Field

If you are an ambitious young man over 17 and anxious to enter a fine profession, enroll in the Elgin Watch College. Limited number of openings now available. Hundreds of graduates own profitable businesses. Others make fine salaries as watchmakers for leading jewelers. College is sponsored by the Elgin National Watch Company. It offers intensive shop training under expert Elgin watchmakers. Moderate tuition. Write for full details on this unusual opportunity - Address Dept. E-1.

ELGIN WATCH COLLEGE

Founded 1921

W. H. Samelrus, Registrar Elgin, Illinois

Employees Given Vacations

From Horology magazine, August 1939...

"The Watch Motor Mainspring Company of New York this year inaugurates a new policy of giving vacations with full pay to all its factory personnel."

The First Elgin Watch

From Horology magazine, December 1938...

"After a search lasting several years, the Elgin National Watch Company has finally laid its hands on the first Elgin timepiece ever manufactured. The 73-year-old watch was originally presented to B. W. Raymond, first Elgin president and twice mayor of the City of Chicago. Like Elgin's finest railroad watch today, it is called the "B. W. Raymond model."

"Elgin Number One has 15 jewels, with key wind and key set. The movement is gilt and retailed for $117 without case.

"The famous American timepiece, which is still in good running order, will be on display in the Elgin exhibit the building at New York World's Fair, along with many of the newest models among its 38,000,000 descendants."