Centre-seconds wrist-watch with electro-magnetically impulsed balance with gold-filled case and leather strap

Record summary

Held and catalogued by British Museum (object number 1987,1012.23), this is a centre-seconds watch by Hamilton Watch Company, made in Lancaster (Pennsylvania), North America, dated 1957. The Atlas places it in the Modern Mechanical Horology period (1945 – 1969) of its Wristwatches collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: gold. Recorded dimensions: Diameter: 34.80 millimetres (case) Diameter: 29 millimetres (dial) Length: 235 millimetres (strap) Length: 39.80 millimetres Thickness: 12.90 millimetres. The record is illustrated with 3 photographs.

Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.

Catalogue description

Atlas type guide

Wristwatches

Bracelet watches were worn by women from the early nineteenth century — Breguet made one for Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, in 1810–12 — but the wristwatch only became a man's instrument with military use and aviation in the early twentieth century. Between the World Wars it overtook the pocket watch; the 1920s and 1930s brought rectangular Art Deco cases, water-resistant cases and the first automatic winding systems.

After 1945 the wristwatch became a carrier of identity — dress watches, sports and dive watches, chronographs, calendars — produced by Swiss, American, Japanese, German, Soviet and Chinese industries. The quartz revolution after 1969 and the mechanical renaissance since the 1990s, including the rise of independent watchmakers, complete the story.

General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.

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