Elgin pocket watch – The most popular brand in pocket watches.
The Elgin pocket watch was supposed to have machine made parts, which were interchangeable. The company got the city of Elgin as part of their name since it was the first site of their factory. The city of Elgin is in Illinois and the factory, made up of donated land, was finishes around 1866. J.C. Adams was the person behind the Elgin pocket watch. He convinced several people, including the mayor of Chicago to invest in the factory.The city of Elgin was chosen as the factory site and the city itself donated land, more than 35 acres, to accommodate the factory. It took several attempts to fashion the first mass produced pocket watch but when the Elgin pocket watch was finally out in the market, there was no stopping people from buying one.
When an Elgin pocket watch broke, one would just have to change the broken part. No skills were necessary to change the broken part. In those early days, when a pocket watch broke, one would have to look for a skilled person with the necessary tools who would be able to fix it, usually by hand. The Elgin pocket watch revolutionized the pocket watch scene by making the repair of the watches affordable and easy.
The Elgin pocket watch was the brain child of The National Watch Company. They first accommodated the railroad workers who needed durable pocket watches to tell when the train departs and arrives. In 1874, The National Watch Company name changed to Elgin National Watch Company. This was because people called the pocket watches “watches from Elgin". Elgin stopped producing Elgin pocket watches and changed their name yet again to Elgin National Industries, around the middle of the sixties. The Elgin National Watch Company closed after manufacturing almost half of the pocket watches in the United States, not including dollar type pocket watches.
The Elgin pocket watch is still popular today despite the century or so age. These watches are still very easy to maintain and use. There are still some parts which are available to fix broken Elgin pocket watches. Despite being not as accurate as the watches of today, the Elgin pocket watch can still deliver time.
