A Rare IWC Jones Pocket Watch And New York Time
Adrian van der Meijden
The calibre Jones watches are the earliest products from
IWC, designed and manufactured by F. A. Jones almost
150 years ago. Collectors immediately recognise the Jones
watches as their dials seem, at first sight, rather uniform:
white enamel, classic slender hands, Roman numerals, small
seconds at 6 o'clock and the logo depicting the name of the
manufacturer. It is the logo which has been written in many
different ways. The authors of the already-classic book, F.A.
Jones: His Life, Legacy and Watches recognise five different groups
of how 'International Watch Company' has been written,
using different styles and abbreviations of the three words,
Figure 1.
Alan Myers states: 'at thorough inspection it turns
out that no logo is identical to another, indicating that they
were applied one by one and by hand'. In the Jones reference
book, two other logos are depicted. Here the manufacturer's
name has been deleted and instead the name of the retailer has
been applied. These two names are 'J.H. Johnston, New York'
and 'William H. Sandifer, New York', respectively. Further
names referred to by Alan Myers are: Carrolton Baltimore
Md, K&W Tichel, Savage Lyman & Co, Montreal, Mc A H
& B and Thos Kirkpatrick. Now another name has turned
up, not known so far: Sam'l Hammond, New York, Figure 2.
It is not strange that some names are accompanied by
'New York'. After all, the complete early production had been
exported to New York City where Jones had F. H. Mathez
as an agent for further distribution. This was also the time
when 'New York' was engraved on each movement, Figure 3.
When Ferdinand Seeland took over the production, following
the first bankruptcy in 1876, 'New York' was no longer
engraved on the movements because he stopped the export
overseas and he reserved the produced watches for the
European market. As on the 'Hammond' watch the usual
International Watch Co. logo is lacking, so this watch can
easily be overlooked by collectors. However, it is a genuine
Jones, pattern 'B', referring to the early production batches,
according to the movement number dating from the period
1872-1874. On the movement, the name 'Passingham' has
been engraved but could not be identified as a jeweller or a
watchmaker from New York in those days. Given the style,
comparable with many other IWC engravings from the same
era, it had been applied almost certainly in Schaffhausen,
Figure 4.
Samuel Hammond & Co was located at the corner of
Wall Street and William Street, New York City. He had
been a partner of Samuel Ward Benedict since 1841 and
continued the business alone after Benedict retired in 1860.
Hammond was a smart businessman. Although there were
abundant American engine-produced watches available,
European hand-produced watches were considered by some
as of higher quality and prestige compared with the mass-
produced timepieces from gigantic manufacturers such as
Elgin and Waltham. Hammond advertised that he was the
exclusive importer of complicated and chronometer watches
of European origin, Figure 5.
Chronometer watches and very accurate timekeepers were
sought-after by a special group of customers:
captains of naval vessels docking at the nearby East River.
The watches imported by Hammond had
exclusively his name on the dial, suggesting to the customer
that they had been made especially for him. To see who had
produced the watch was not of interest to every client. Printing
only the name of the retailer or wholesaler was also not a big
problem for European watch manufacturers, as they eagerly
wanted access to the American market. It was done for 25 or
50 cents extra per piece. It is known that Hammond imported
chronometer watches produced by A. P. Walsh, a famous
chronometer maker in London, and watches made by F. A.
Lange in Germany and Vacheron Constantin, Switzerland.
Hammond must have had confidence in the quality of
products made by F. A. Jones in Schaffhausen as well.
New York, during the 1860s, together with Boston, was
already an important commercial city and a gateway to
world seas and the European continent. There were many
watches around and these were not only increasing in number
but also in accuracy. However, unlike Boston, there was no
standard time in New York. At least six different times were
provided, four of which were determined by local jewellers
showing the time on buildings visible from far away. This
was causing confusion, certainly for business people, as the
important city clocks were not synchronised and the jewellers,
spread over the city, all claimed to be the keeper of 'New
York Time'. Also, Hammond assured the New Yorkers that
his time was the correct one. It could be read from Trinity
Church at walking distance from his shop, the clock of which
was maintained by him. There were several other important
city clocks, among them the City Hall clock and Tiffany's
Hercules. Businessmen complained at the stock exchange
that important deals could be disturbed by the fact that one
partner had Tiffany's time, the other Trinity time, set on their
respective watches. The city press had, not without irony,
repeatedly called upon the city council to accept a standard
time instead of maintaining six different time zones in one
city. Moreover, it was unacceptable that the time was not
determined by an officially controlled state organisation, but
by private jewellers at their own discretion! Finally, in 1864,
20 years after the telegraph had been introduced in the USA,
the Albany Dudley Observatory sent its first time signal and
standard time was born in the metropolis.
The same issue was present in Schaffhausen.
Here also,there was no standard time available during the Jones period,
and for many years thereafter. The watches were regulated
in the regulation room in which a tall pendulum clock was
present, to be used as the master clock. A pendulum clock was
considered the most accurate timekeeper available and this
remained so until the development of the atomic clock, shortly
after WWII. It took more than 40 years (1912) before IWC
had access to astronomical time determined by the Neuchatel
Astronomical Observatory. But that fact did not withhold
Samuel Hammond, four decades before, from ranking the
Jones movements among the best timepieces available.
Adrian van der Meijden
ENDNOTES
1. D. Seyffer, T. Konig and A. Myers, F.A.Jones: His Life, Legacy and
Watches, (IWC, 2013).
2. D. Seyffer, Die Unternhmungsgeschichte von IWC Schaffhausen. Ein Schweizer
Uhrenhersteller zwischen Innovation und Tradition Teil 1, 2, (Oberhausen:
Athena Verlag, 2014).
