| | | quote | Originally posted by cliffw:
I would like to have it. I named one of my Sons Clinton , my favorite Uncle after he died in a motorcycle accident. Heh, I used to have a Clinton watch many years ago before I named my Son.
Where it is, only the shadow knows. |
|
Oh man, I was going to say something about that. The Clinton brand obviously has nothing to do with Bill Clinton, but the company is from the early 20s. I have one of their divers. They were mid-level watches in the early-days before the Swiss started making watches. You can read about their history here:
https://chronopedia.club/ClintonIt's worth mentioning that the Dutch effectively designed the first real mechanical watch (and the Egyptians are credited for the water clock). But high precision watches actually all came from the United States. Back in the 20s, 30s, and even into the 1940s... the Americans had extremely high-precision watches that no one else could compete with. We had multi-jeweled movements (jewels meaning the pivot bushings which are made of donut shaped rubies), that were intricately designed and with absolute amazing engineering. There were a couple of Canadian watch companies as well in Toronto that shared lineage with the American watch companies.
People who don't really know the history of watches look to the Swiss as something to behold. But in the 1950s, Switzerland was compared with how China is today. They've been making watches ALMOST as long as the Americans had, but their quality was complete crap compared to the United States. They cheaply mass-produced mid-level watches and flooded the U.S. market. American companies that previously were known to produce extremely high quality watches, like Waltham, Elgin, etc... couldn't afford to continue to produce their extremely high-quality watches at a price point that made sense. So... by the late 1950s, almost every American company had switched over to using Swiss movements because they were nearly as accurate, and significantly cheaper.
American companies still produced high-end watches, which had American movements in them, but almost every other level of watch (below "dollar watches") used a Swiss movement by that point. For the VERY accurate watches, the Swiss couldn't really meet that level of sophistication, so these were still made by American companies. These received a "Railroad Use" certification that was needed to keep trains, rail cars, etc., all on schedule. The Swiss could not produce watches like this in the 40s, so almost all "Railroad" certified watches and pocket watches were American.
Around the late 1950s, in order to try to protect U.S. watch manufacturing from basically going under... Congress passed a bill that imposed tariffs on Swiss watch movements. I just did a quick search to try to find it, but with everything going on regarding tariffs today... the search engines are literally bloated with current tariff news, so anything related to the watch tariffs from the 1950s are likely on page 99+ of the search results now. Bottom line, every watch movement was stamped with a 3-letter code which you could then reference to find out where it came from. The code was used to ensure that there was a proper import tax on it. At this point, the watches were still "made" in the United States, but most of the movements came from the Swiss (imported) and assembled locally.
But, THIS then sparked a new challenge... because to get around the import tariffs, many mid-level Swiss watch companies (and American companies) moved manufacturing to Hong Kong. They would build the movements, ship them to Hong Kong, and then many of the parts were made in Taiwan, China, or Hong Kong, with final assembly taking place in Hong Kong. These would then get imported from Hong Kong and wouldn't get taxed. I have a really nice Gruen from the 1960s, for example... it has a Swiss movement in it, and literally everything else was made in Hong Kong... despite being an American watch company. Most high-end watches from Switzerland were still being made in Switzerland.
A fun side-piece of history is that around this time (1960s), watches were advertising "WATERPROOF" on their watches. This, they clearly were not... and putting a watch underwater often resulted in it getting destroyed. So there was a large class-action lawsuit in 1963 that forced companies to change their advertising. This is one way to tell if a watch is newer or older than 1963. If it says "WATERPROOF" on it, it's 1963 or older. If it says "WATER RESISTANT" with a measure in meters or BAR, then it's 1964 or newer.
Anyway... manufacturing improved by the Swiss, and they eventually caught up in quality (even in the high end) to the American and Canadian companies, so almost every American watch company either went bankrupt, was purchased by the Swiss, or reverted to making cheap inexpensive watches and barely survived. More than 70% of watches are still manufactured in Hong Kong now as a result of that history. The Swiss even changed their laws so a watch can still be called Swiss so long as 60% of its manufacturing costs are in Switzerland. So most of the movement is made in Switzerland, and everything else is made in Hong Kong, even today in all but the most expensive watches. Even many Tag Heuer, etc... are made in Hong Kong.
Fast forward to the mid 1970s, and you had what was called the "Quartz Crisis" in the watch community. This is when early quartz timed / batter-powered watches started to hit the market, and people were enamored with the idea that they didn't have to wind their watches and it kept perfect time. The Japanese immediately cornered this market, and flooded the United States with brand new watches from Casio, Citizen, etc., and sold them at even cheaper price points than the Swiss had with their mechanical watches. At this point, almost every single pre-existing American watch company went bankrupt by the late 1970s except for companies like Timex, and maybe one or two others. Additionally, hundreds of watch companies from the Swiss were decimated and also went bankrupt. In the early 1970s... there were about as many watch companies incorporated as there are Chinese tool brands today. Almost all of these companies went bankrupt. If they didn't re-align to the new market, they basically lost out. Companies like Tissou created Swatch (if I remember correctly), which marketed to young people and that helped them stay afloat. There was still a demand for really high-cost expensive watches like Brietling, Rolex, and Omega... but everyting else was Seiko, Casio, etc.
The Japanese were cleaning house... but then by the year ~2005, the Chinese really started to get into the market, and it was having a profound effect on the Japanese watch business... which has basically subsided into two primary companies now... Citizen and Seiko. There were a bunch of others, like Epson, etc... (who also made printers) that was purchased by one or the other, I forget.
... and where we are now... everything has normalized because no one buys watches anymore since everyone buys the Apple watch. But the Chinese have been really good (working with UK companies) to buy back all the old trademarks that existed in the 60s, and they produce really high quality watches with either Japanese or high-value/low-cost Swiss movements... and you get stuff like this:
~25 years ago, a watch like above would have been a $3,000 watch. I think I paid $75 for it... and it's as good as anything you'll get from Seiko GS or Omega.
Anyway, I know that was a huge vomit ramble, and I know you weren't even responding to me... but I have the day off, 10 minutes to burn, and I type fast as **** .
Off to the garage!!!
(And no surprise, it's an Indian website... and probably a scam website at that.)
