Cort's post about the unfinished Waltham reminded me of a watch I had 25-30 years ago. The picture is a scan of an enlargement from a 35mm black and white negative. The picture was taken long before anyone had thought of digital cameras. I believe the watch was manufactured for Howard by Waltham and someone ground off the brand name and polished the bridge in the lower left part of the movement. There is an obvious offset to the top area of the bridge. There is no name on the dial and the movement is a hunting model and was housed in a plain white metal hunting case. It is 16-sz, serial number is 1,010,560 and 19-jewels, adjusted. The reason I think it is a Waltham-Howard is that I found an article in the October 1968 issue that gave me the information I needed. The article is on page 548, "Another Howard (Waltham Product) Watch", by J. George Jefferson. The serial number on the watch discussed in the article is 1,010,401 and it also is a 16-size 19-jewel movement. The Waltham serial number is on the pillar plate of the Jefferson watch and is 12,610,401. The number on the watch I had is 610,560, the first two digits of the Waltham serial number were left off I think. The puzzle is why anyone would remove the Howard name.

Yes, this is a Waltham-Howard. This is one of a group of 1000 19-jewel 3/4-plate movements (600 hunting & 400 OF) that Waltham produced for Keystone's Howard brand. The removal of the name has also been seen on 23-jewel bridge models and 12-size movements. There is no record of why the name was removed, but my theory is that when Keystone got their own movement production under way they no longer wished to sell the movements that Waltham made for them. Rather than destroy these (and other) fine movements they milled the E.Howard & Co. name off, refinished the plates, and jobbed them out as anonymous movements. Keystone did something similar several years later when their own 16-size hunting movements fell out of fashion and they re-engraved them "ABBOTT WATCH CO".

For more information on the varieties of movements that Waltham made for Howard also check out a brief illustrated article I put in the "Research Activities and News" column of the June 1998 Bulletin. I and my co-researchers illustrate the basic movement types and include production data by serial number. This is a major research project of mine that I have been working on for way too long now. I hope to retire in a couple more years from my real job, at which point I plan to complete this project and several others for publication in the Bulletin.

Weird. I'm starting to look forward to Jerry's retirement too. It is wonderful to have a true expert aboard to keep things straight and also enlighten us. Thank you for all the information Jerry!
-Cort

How often do we see a watch in an old Bulletin or auction catalog and wonder "Where is that watch today?". I was fortunate enough, some 35 years ago, to buy George Jefferson's Waltham-Howard from him. He also sold me his open-face model. Here is the pair of them, still together.

... and here are the dials of these two, typical dials for both the 19-jewel version and the 23-jewel bridge model.