er 61 246,501 12 National Watch Co. 70 246,513 88 B.W. Raymond 70 246,601 100 H.Z. Culver 61 246,701 100 H.H. Taylor 20 246,801 100 G.M. Wheeler 63 255,001 410 Mat. Laflin 68 255,411 90 G.M. Wheeler 63 255,501 100 Mat. Laflin 68 255,601 300 G.M. Wheeler 63 255,901 100 Nameless 68 256,001 1,000 G.M. Wheeler 63 257,001 1,700 M.D. Ogden 8 258,701 300 G.M. Wheeler 63
For most of Elgin's records, watch runs were assigned serial numbers in multiples of 1,000, but in this case we have lots of small runs. Stem winders clearly were low-volume items at first; if Jacques David's estimate is right, in 1876 only 10% of Elgin's watches were stem winding, and 1873-1876 were lean years because of the financial crisis of 1873.
Schlitt's database also has this interesting comment about the strange 12-watch run recorded at 246,501:
("1896 MC" refers to Elgin's 1896 Material Catalog.) Although I haven't seen a watch from this range, I think that Schlitt's guess that this is a typo appears to be unjustified. We already saw above that according to the 1874 Almanac, Elgin's first stem winders did not have a stem setting mechanism. And as I will discuss below, I actually do have a stem wind/key set Elgin that confirms that such watches were made.4th stem-wind but key set! only case of this, typo in 1896 MC?
I have the following Elgin stem wind watches ≤300,000:
Serial # Grade name Setting Winding 155,399 H.H. Taylor Key Stem and key 155,743 H.H. Taylor Slide lever Stem and key 237,604 H.Z. Culver Pull-out lever Stem and key 255,344 Mat. Laflin Slide lever Stem and key
I only just got started on my database of watches I've seen online, but I have recorded this one:
Serial # Name Setting Winding Notes 263,206 Raymond Pull-out Stem and key Serial # recorded as grade 69 key wind; looks funny, maybe hand engraved?
"Stem and key wind" means that these are so-called "transitional" watches that have both the stem winding mechanism and a key winding post in the movement. "Slide lever" refers to George Hunter's 1874 patent lever set mechanism, while "pull-out lever" refers to a more conventional lever-set mechanism.
This data, although minimal, does yield several interesting observations:
- The stem wind/key set movements implied by the 1874 Elgin Almanac certainly do exist. Such watches are likely to be the earliest Elgin stemwinders.
- Elgin's serial number records are, unsurprisingly, fallible; there exist stem winders ≤300,000 that were not recorded as so.
- There is an extra piece to the puzzle that the materials above do not mention, which is the existence of two distinct lever setting mechanisms: George Hunter's 1874 slide lever set, and a more conventional pull-out lever set.
- The serial numbers may turn out to be a poor predictor of the mechanism in the watch. #155,399 and #155,743 are recorded as part of the same run, and only 344 serial numbers apart, yet one has lever setting and the other doesn't.
The most interesting of these questions is probably #3. Here I am hampered by the fact that I haven't learned to work on watches just yet (I really need to at this point), and my lack of knowledge of lever setting mechanisms; but as I best understand so far, the "pull out" lever set mechanism in these watches is more or less the same as what became the industry standard among American companies. This means that for all that Elgin's 1874 Almanac boasted of their proprietary lever set mechanism, they abandoned it very quickly in favor of the conventional design.