Elgin engineers built their own Observatory to maintain scientifically precise times in their watches. īy 1910, word of Elgin’s obsession with precision had spread around the world. Raymond.” The watch was exquisite: Elgin National Watch Company was born.
After a year of designing and building the lathes and machines to achieve seemingly impossible levels of precision, a team of watchmakers and mechanical engineers produced their first pocket watch movement, named for mayor “B.W. Raymond, purchased an abandoned farm 30 miles north of Chicago and built a watch factory there. Harper’s magazine summed their sentiment perfectly: “It was the genuine, audacious, self-reliant Western spirit.” By August of that year this consortium, including then-Chicago mayor Benjamin W. In the spring of 1864 half a dozen ambitious Chicago businessmen decided that if Massachusetts could build a factory that built watches – Illinois could, too.
