Waltham 1899-Cronometro Victoria

R.R. Fogel of New York had an agreement to sell Waltham watches into South American markets, the special order movements were styled  "Cronometro" and came from various Waltham product lines and grades.  The 1899 model "Victoria" is a 15 jewel movement similar to the -620. The movements were often recorded in production records simply as "Export" and could be in mixed runs so it is not known how many were made. But they are rare in UK.

Waltham 1899-Cronometro Victoria, hunter movement, 1905

Waltham 1899-618

Waltham 1899-618, 15J, 1904

I have only seen a couple -618's, the open faced version above and the Hunter below. It is essentially a 15 jewelled version of the Traveler. The 1908 equivalent appears to be the "Marquis" which is more common.

Waltham 1899-618, 15J Half Hunter, 1907

 

Waltham “own label” movements.

Waltham “own label” movements are very rare in UK – I have only seen them for Russell of Liverpool and Preston’s of Bolton, but they are somewhat more common in the USA. They come in two varieties. The first have different specifications to mainstream models, such as this 1908-641 branded the Preston’s senior which appears to be a 1908-PSB with the addition of a double roller.

Waltham 1908-635 The "Russell Model"

The second more common own label, is a standard model with engraving added to brand them as “own Label" The Preston's junior is of this type as is the Russell model above which includes the Waltham name on the movement and this 1899-630 marked for jewellers Harry A Dillon of Gloversville New York but without the Waltham name although in this case Waltham is on the dial.

 

 

 

A Pocket Watch for use on Nuclear Submarines.

I was a little sceptical about this but the story checks out. The watch is a standard size 16 Waltham 1908-1609 with 9 jewels, a Swiss lever escapement and a Breguet sprung cut compensated balance with double roller. It is adjusted for temperature and in three positions. The serial number dates it to 1942.

As confirmed by the catalogue number it was originally supplied to the Royal Navy during WWII with luminous hands and face, it was retained at the end of the war, unlike around two million pounds worth of surplus watches and clocks that were sold off.

Later, following the introduction of Nuclear submarines in 1960, it was given non-luminous hands and dial so that the relatively high radiation levels (by todays standards) would not confuse on-board radiation detection equipment. The case was then stamped "Non-Lum".
The American screw backed case is in base metal case and was made by the Star Watch Case Company, it is stamped with the military catalogue number, the Military property mark, the service allocated serial number and "Non-Lum" as described above.

Waltham 1908-642

Waltham 1908-642 from 1918.

This is one of a series of posts illustrating the main grades of Waltham size 16 watches, primarily the 1899 & 1908 models.

A fairly rare movement with only 3,000 made in two runs, as an intermediate grade between the -640 and -645, it appears to be a 1908-640 but adjusted to 5 positions rather than 3 and without some of the decoration of the -645. The two runs were mixed Lever Set Railroad watches and Pendant Set Railroad Grade. I have had 3 of these, all pendant set and it is possible that the Pendant set versions were for the UK where Lever Set watches were not popular.

The 17 jewel movement is also adjusted for temperature and possibly isochronism, it has a Swiss lever escapement with a steel escape, Breguet sprung cut compensating balance, double roller and screw micro adjustment.

Waltham 1908-Riverside.

This is one of a series of posts illustrating the main grades of Waltham size 16 watches, in this case the 1899 & 1908-Riverside.

Waltham 1908-Riverside, 1908

This following description is from an advert of 1913:

A rare pair of papers.

click the picture for a larger view

It is very rare these days to find watches with watch papers intact (they are collectable in their own right), I had only 2 or 3 from the last 600 watches. And today two turned up together, I knew one was coming but the second was a nice surprise.

 

The papers were used for advertising and would have been put in by sellers or repairers and occasionally you find a watch with a stack of them but usually they are glued together, to the case and / or are falling to pieces. Both of these are original to the watch and have the same retailers names as are shown on the watch faces.

 

The blue one is on a Rotherham from 1901 retailed by Hoefler of Devonport. The watch itself is something rather special - watch this space!

The red paper is on a Waltham 1908-610 half hunter sold by Harral of Barnsley, it has the serial number of the movement on it and is dated 11 years after the watch was made so presumably they were warranting a repair or they had bought back the watch and had resold it.

An early and rare Waltham Traveler

About 286,000 1899-Travelers were made as well as almost 400,000 of the 1908 model, this watch was in the first 10,000 made (5th run) and in the first batch of the 11 jewelled version of which only 4,500 were made in total (Hunter and Open Faced).

It has a split plate movement with 11 jewels, screw set apart from the lever. The Swiss lever escapement has a cut compensated balance with Breguet Spring. The serial number dates it to 1899.

The half hunter "Empress" grade case is in Filled Gold and is by the Canadian factory of the American Watch Case Company - locating manufacturing operations overseas to save tax is not a new phenomenon!

A rare "Own label" Waltham 1908-641 model:

Very few UK resellers, I can only recall two or three, commissioned special "own label" movements from Waltham, this grade 641 from 1918/19 looks to be a P.S. Bartlett with the addition of a double roller. The total production run of this grade was 150 open faced movements and 350 hunter movements.

It is signed "Preston Senior, Especially made for Prestons Ltd, Bolton, By Waltham Watch Co, Waltham U.S.A.".

I have also seen 1908-635's branded for Thos Russell of Liverpool and a lower grade, probably a 15J branded the "Preston Junior". A couple of others I know are now with a collector in Australia.

An interesting watch case

This high end size 16 Waltham has an interesting watch case by the Philadelphia Watch Case Co.

The main body is either filled or rolled gold, the bezel and back are in American "Sterling" silver with the back inlayed with yellow, green and rose gold.

Click on the image for a larger view.

An early Ehrhardt crown set watch based on a Waltham idea.

The watch is by William Ehrhardt for "The London Manufacturing Goldsmiths Co Ltd of Nottingham" and signed by them and dated from the hallmarks to 1895.

It is an early (for an English Watch) crown negative, pull to set, movement when most English keyless watches were pin set.

It is laid out as an English Lever with a Swiss style club tooth escape wheel and lever, again this was an early adoption by Ehrhardt as a half way house to the full Swiss Lever.

Naughty Mr Ehrhardt.

This is a 1910 series by Wm Ehrhardt branded "The British Watch Co" one of their trading names after 1921. They come up very infrequently and this was the first one that required some work on the winding and setting mechanism and what did I find?

Ehrhardt. had ripped off the design of the shifting sleeve setting mechanism from the Waltham 1899/1908 models. They are in fact identical and to fix this watch I used a small piece part from a Waltham.

Not that it did them much good as they stopped manufacturing not long after this example was made whilst Waltham continued making pocket watches until just after WWII and wrist watches until 1957.

Waltham 1899 Riverside Maximus.

Here at last is a Riverside Maximus, in fact two of them! Except for a few specials and limited editions, the Premier Maximus (think £20k++ in a London store) and the rare American Watch Co Bridge model, this is the highest grade of watch made by Waltham.

Left: Waltham 1899 Riverside Maximus, 23J, 1901 and right 1902.
Click any image for a larger view.

The 1902 example opened up.

Waltham developed the 1899 Vanguard for railroad use, although many were  not used as such, the Riverside Maximus with essentially the same mechanicals was designed purely for the luxury goods market. Production was small with only 13,800 made (another source shows 14,600) of which 10,900 had 23 Jewels (rather than 21) and 7,050 were open faced with 23 jewels.

Production runs were small ranging from 100 to occasionally 500, the older of these two watches is from the third run of 23 jewelled open faced movements. The movement plates are damascened to the back whilst the face pate has a jewelled finish.

The  movement has a gold train, except for the escape wheel which is steel. Top plate jewels are set in raised gold mounts, the barrel is jewelled and there are four diamond cap jewels to the balance and escape with the rest being "fine ruby and sapphires".

Like the Vanguard it is adjusted to temperature, isochronism and five positions and it has micro adjustment to the Breguet sprung cut compensating balance with a double roller

The three piece dials have lettering in a font reserved for the Maximus, the Roman dial on the left is particularly rare with one selling recently for almost $300.

The Waltham 1899-174 & other 11 jewel watches that try to look more than they are.

Waltham 1899-174, 11J  1902

This 1899-174 is essentially an 1899-Traveler with 11 jewels, it is rare with only 2,500 open faced and 4,500 hunter case versions made, many, if not all, of which I suspect came to the UK.

But the interesting thing is how the jewels are laid out. After the basic seven jewels the most efficient layout is for them to be in pairs top and bottom of each staff and put where they will do most to reduce friction and the impact of that friction on the watch. That will be the staffs moving fastest which happily in a watch are also the ones with the most gearing effect.

So with four additional jewels these would normally be set in pairs on the lever pallet and escape wheel or, as favoured by a number of quality English makers, on the escape and seconds wheel. But on this movement the extra jewels are lined up on the top plate, why?



Cyma 10J for Thos Russell

The simple answer is marketing, Waltham were following a common practice of Swiss makers which was eagerly taken up by the more aggressively market orientated English resellers, Thos Russell & Son of Liverpool being a leading culprit right through to the 1930's. If you click on the image above for a larger view you will see that contrary to Waltham's normal practice for movements of more than 7 jewels, the number of jewels is not shown on the movement.

This is so that the buyer (or perhaps a seller?) can show off the watch and claim it has 15 jewels!

Others went further, the second movement shown has ten jewels in the presumed  hope that no one will notice that the top pivot of the lever pallet, small and hidden under the balance, is not jewelled.

Waltham 1908-Royal Lever Set Variant.

My previous post was on the 1899 & 1908 Royal Grade, this is a rare Lever Set version from 1919.

A total of around seventy-five thousand 1899 & 1908 Royal grade movements were made but they are normally pendant set. The production records show that only five production runs totalling 4,000 movements included some open faced lever set variants, what the proportion was is not known, all are 1908 models dating from 1919 or later.

Apart from the lever setting the movement is the same as the 1908 pendant set version.

Waltham 1899-Royal & 1908-Royal

This is one of a series of posts illustrating the main grades of Waltham size 16 watches, primarily the 1899 & 1908 models. Note that specifications did change over time, the description below being typical.

The 1899 and 1908 versions are essentially the same and so can be treated together.

These were one of the highest grades before getting to the Railroad grades and their "civilianised" variants. The damascened nickel movement has 17 Jewels, a Swiss lever escapement with a Breguet Sprung cut compensating balance with micro adjuster and is adjusted for temperature and three positions. The top jewels are screw set in gold mountings and it has a gold centre wheel.

The example shown, which has just been restored, has an unusual 3 piece plain dial and which probably originally had a retailers name applied, (see related posts on watch face construction and on  blank dials).

How come my 30 hour watch runs for > 40 hours? Or: Management of Isochronism in watches.

Waltham 1899-Vanguard 23J
click on the images for a larger view

This post was inspired by a query from a customer who was surprised that his newly acquired 23J Waltham 1899-Vanguard featured in my post  anatomy of 1899 vanguard was still running 14 hours after he received it after c24 hours in transit.

Firstly what is isochronism in a watch? In brief it is the ability of a watch to run at the same rate as the mainspring unwinds and that is critical for the accurate running of a watch and is a required "adjustment" in a railroad grade watch. So what has this to do with how long a watch runs?

Most pocket watches are designed to run for 30 hours (some are designed to run for 8 days but I am ignoring those for this discussion), to achieve this the mainspring will have to be of sufficient strength to operate the escapement and to have sufficient length and space in the spring barrel for 30 hours operation.

There is then a major problems to overcome, a mainspring of consistent thickness will provide more power when fully wound than when it is almost run down and although careful design of the escapement can make it less susceptible to varying power input it is unlikely to be completely immune so will run fast when fully wound, slower when partially wound and then faster and less reliably when almost wound down due to a weak (short) balance action.

Historically there have been a number of design features built into a watch to overcome these problems including:

• 

  An English Fusee movement
  showing the chain drive from the
   Fusee (right) with its spiral path for
  the chain, to the mainspring
  barrel (left) 

  The Fusee chain drive which gave a continuously variable gearing and had a high gear at full wind  reducing linearly to a low gear as it ran down. This meant that the torque delivered to the gear train was more consistent. It also reduced the minimum and maximum power delivered by the spring in the same way as...
• The Geneva stop gear used by the English and Swiss in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but like the Fusee not adopted by the American industry. This limited the winding of the spring from a pre-tensioned state to four complete turns of the mainspring arbore (not the winding gear). This meant that the mainspring was never at maximum or minimum tension and delivered power in a more linier fashion over a narrower range. But it also limited the run time of a watch, particularly one not in tip-top condition.
• Introduction of more jewelling to reduce friction requiring less mainspring power (see below) and more accurate fitting of the components to reduce friction and other inefficiencies.
• In later years, as metallurgy and manufacturing processes improved, mainsprings were made of varying thickness through their length to provide more consistent power as they wound down, this technology was not however effective around the turn of the century when the Waltham 1899 & 1908 models were designed.

So why did the Vanguard run for so long?

Waltham 1899-Vanguard 23J
mainspring & barrel assembly



Highly jewelled variants of a movement can run for long periods because of the low friction enabled by so many jewels and in particular the jewelled spring barrel, this means that a weaker spring than the lower jewelled variant is often used (apart from other reasons the movement may otherwise run too hard and break the impulse jewel). A weaker spring is thinner so can be longer and still fit into the usually optimum outer 33% of the diameter of the barrel before winding. So it runs for longer but time keeping will be affected as it runs down.

But as watches are regulated for 24 hours (with a 30 hours maximum) this is one of the ways Isochronism is managed, if the watch runs for say 40 hours then the pressure exerted by the spring will be more consistent over the first 24 hours than if it only ran for 30. 

So a 23 jewel Waltham Vanguard and similar movements in good condition, with a good escapement and a weak main-spring (perhaps 0.15mm thick in the case in point) of the correct length (25.5") will run for considerably longer than a 7 jewel Traveler with its need for more power to overcome friction and a thicker (0.19mm) and shorter (21.3") spring. And because of the extended run time, the Vanguard over the first 24 hours of running, will not suffer the same reduction of power in the later stages than the Taveler and, even before other design factors come into force, will deliver more constant performance.

Length matters!

 

The Waltham Traveler

 
This is one of a series of posts illustrating the main grades of Waltham size 16 watches, primarily the 1899 & 1908 models. Note that specifications did change over time, the description below being typical.

 

Made in large quantities over an extended period the Traveler (yes with one "T") was a very successful movement and for good reason. Again the 1899 and 1908 models are essentially the same but the 1908 version came in one of the two plate designs as illustrated here. Hunter and open faced versions were produced, all are pendant set.

The 1899 model was as the design of the lower movement shown. Some late 1908 Travelers were made in nickel but the majority are Gilt.

Over six hundred and seventy thousand 7 jewel Travelers were produced in total, with more being made as special order or with other branding. Almost eight thousand 11 & 15 jewel versions were also made, see also the entry for the Marquis model. The movement normally has 7 Jewels, a Swiss lever escapement with a Breguet sprung cut compensating balance. It is unadjusted and has a single roller.

The top movement shown is from 1918, the lower from 1917, both are 1908 open faced models.

 

Spot the difference - 1899 vs 1908 Vanguard.

1908-Vanguard 23J 1913/14

Top right is a newly restored 1908-Vanguard made in 1913 or 1914, below is the 1899-Vanguard made in 1904 or 1905 shown in detail in a previous post (anatomy of an 1899 Vanguard). Both have 23 jewels so what is the difference?

Well as you can see, not a lot, this particular 1908 model has the better type of regulator but most 1908's have the star macro regulator seen here on the 1899.

The later model also has ruby & sapphire jeweling with diamond end stones to the balance and the 1899 is missing the diamonds but again only a minority of the 1908's had them.

1899-Vanguard 23J 1904/05

In fact a glance at my 1939 edition of the Waltham spares catalogue show only trivial differences (trivial that is if you don't happen to need one of the few variant parts!). JS, a long term collector and correspondent points out that "The fundamental difference between those models is the configuration of the winding crown wheel. The radius of the right-angle gearing is greater (and it is beveled) for the 1908 model, making for easier winding, and less wear, but with more turns."

In fact there were some bigger changes to the 1908 during its extended life time than there are between the 1899 and 1908 models.

So the bottom line is that the model number change was as much a marketing ploy than anything else.

Some things never change.



The Waltham Equity

This is one of a series of posts illustrating the main grades of Waltham size 16 watches, primarily the 1899 & 1908 models. Note that specifications did change over time, the description below being typical.

The Equity was originally sold as being made by the Equity Watch Company of Boston and was not associated with Waltham, later after it became generally known that it was by Waltham it was bought in from the cold as a Waltham model.

It is essentially a Waltham 1908-Traveler with the variant plate design but in nickel.  The movement has 7 Jewels, a Swiss lever escapement with a Breguet sprung cut compensating balance. It is unadjusted and has a single roller. About 54,500 were made in total.

 

The example shown is from 1918 and is signed by Waltham.