Elgin Watches

The Elgin Watch Company was founded in 1864 right as the civil war was ending. Their first watch was an 18-sized B W Raymond railroad grade watch. Over the next 100 years, they produced close to sixty million watches. In 1910, they produced their first wristwatch, leading all other American watch companies by many years.

Elgin started out as the National Watch Company, but in 1874, the name was changed to Elgin National Watch Company. This name was kept until the late 1960s when the company stopped producing watches and changed their name to Elgin National Industries.

The founding idea of Elgin watches was the mass production of high quality pocket watches using machine made, interchangeable parts. Up until 1850, most pocket watches were made by hand so that if something broke you needed to find someone with the right tools and skill to fix the broken part.

Elgin never made high quality or cheap watches but they dominated the vast middle ground of the watch market. Today, Elgin is popular with watch collectors. Since Elgin produced so many watched and spare parts, you can still easily buy them today and fix them easily. Even a 100-year-old Elgin watch can still be used so long as you give is daily care.

In 1964, the Elgin Company closed after producing half of the total pocket watches ever manufactured in the United States and this figure doesn’t include the dollar type pocket watches that Elgin also produced. The rights to the name Elgin were sold. Therefore, all Elgin branded watches made after 1964 are not connected to the original Elgin Watch Company.