Below is my "new" 23 jewel Hampden Special Railway, Deuber-Hampden's top of the line railway watch when it was made around 1899. Yeah it is pretty grungy, so its headed into the watchmaker's shop pretty quickly.

Dueber-Hampden lasted as one of America's larger watch factories from the mid 1870s until it closed down at the start of the great depression. The company was purchased by a Soviet concern and, along with the Ansonia clock company, packed of to the Soviet Union where the government wished to start up their own industry. Some American employees went to the USSR on short term contracts to show the new owners how it was done and so the First State Watch Factory was born.

That is until the German's gave the Russians a reason to pack it up and move it beyond the Urals for a few years. When that unfortunate time was over with, the Russians moved it back west where it became the First Moscow Watch Factory.

This concern went on to produce watches under several names including Sturmanski (Navigator's) and Poljot.

Sturmanski was the watch on Gagaran's wrist when he became the first man in space. It was also the first watch on a walk in space. The company also produced movements for pretty much everything used on the early Soviet space program as well as a lot of the Soviet navy's chronometers. So we've reach this weird spot where a team of Americans living in the Soviet Union showed the Soviets how to make their first watches so they in turn could make the first pieces to go into space.

WTF...

meanwhile... back to the Special Railway.

check out the gilt screws, gold mounted jewels, rack & pinion regulator, two tone demaskening and the size of that friggin jewel on the barrel! Crazy stuff that will make @Maddog drool!

 

The jewels were natural stone in those days, not the synthetic crystals that came later (invented in 1902). Having that many meant it was an expensive watch.

 

Usually, low grade Burma ruby was used as ruby jewels, in that era. The better grades were reserved for use in jewellery. Gem material such as garnet, sapphire, quartz, aquamarine, diamond, spinel, and perhaps others were used as well.

 

Being a rail road pocket watch nut & the son of a locomotive engineer from the steam days, I’m familiar with most of this history... but what the hell is a spinel???

did you mean spaniel? Where they making watch parts from nasty floppy eared dogs? Enquiring minds need to know!


(Actually... i looked it up... learn something new everyday... thanks @Canuck , although I though we had finally found a use for those nasty little dogs.)

 

Spinel is spinel. It is found in many colours. Spinel ruby (the red form) was most often found as watch jewels. I have read that the earliest material used as bearings in early watches, was agate.

 

I can see using agate, wasn’t that what Waltham used in its stone movements for the plates?

admittedly not the best idea, but a cool bit of work by any standard!

 

Kinda cool that all participants in this thread are Canadian!

 

As an American child of Canadian children of Russian emigres, I claim all three heritages!

I actually spent this past weekend trying (futilely) to track down another family heirloom- watch of unknown make given to my (Russian-born) great-grandfather on the occasion of his retirement in Winnipeg, sometime in the 1930s or 1940s. I've seen it a few times in my life; most recently during the 1980s. It seems to have disappeared sometime around 1990. I used the "☢ This watch is full of ☢ radium ☢ and possibly ☢ very dangerous ☢. You should let me have a look!" line, but that didn't have the desired effect, or any effect. Probably lost.

 

I may have that watch. Can you describe it?

 

30-40mm? silver colored- or maybe gold.
Metallic bracelet.
Dial must have been patinated because I remember it being unreadable.

 

@Fritz
The first watch on a spacewalk was an Omega Speedmaster 105.003...
Moreover four Omega Speedmaster chronographs as both Gemini IV astronauts Edward White and James McDivitt wore 2 Speedies 105.003 and due to the open concept of the two-person Gemini capsule, both astronauts were exposed to outer space !
During Leonov's March 1965 Voshkod-2 spacewalk he wore a Strela chronograph underneath the Berkut spacesuit...
For a Soviet-Russian wristwatch to be worn exposed to outer space we have to go to January 1969 for the first two-man spacewalk between Soyuz 4 & Soyuz 5... use the search version on this forum to find more info with photographs & TV footage #MoonwatchUniverse

 

They were competing well at this time period.


Mine has a single sunk dial, no secondary minutes track in red, but a cool Dueber-Hampden display case, which are hard to source.

Circa 1904.