Earlier this week we had an interesting discussion about Hamilton-Illinois watches. As I quoted from the 1952 Hamilton Annual Report, it was intended to be a low-cost competitive brand:

"NEW ILLINOIS LINE -- High domestic labor costs have heretofore prevented Hamilton from profitably producing watches in the $35 to $60 price range. A new line of watch movements imported from Switzerland will be timed and cased at the Hamilton factory and will enable us to compete effectively in this lower-priced field. This line will be offered to jewelers early in 1953 under the ILLINOIS trade name. The addition of the popular-priced line of ILLINOIS watches will afford broad coverage of the watch market over the large volume price ranges, and should add materially to the Company's sales volume."

Here's the interesting twist, which has never before been published. During the decision phase Hamilton considered making the movements in their Lancaster factory rather than importing movements from Switzerland. But to keep the costs down, they had to lower the quality. Hence this fascinating prototype, a 7-jewel 987A marked "Illinois" as well as "H.W.Co." The pillar plate was apparently recycled old stock, the serial number dates to 1940. The "Model 18" is probably the prototype serial number.

I don't know how many prototypes were made in total, nor do I know if any other "cheap" American movement variations were modeled. It's also an open question why they decided against this option. Were these still too expensive? Or did they decide that a 7-jewel movement was simply not of high enough quality for the image they wanted to create for the brand? Obviously there's more research to do...

René, Here is an ad to accompany that story.

What a great example of my favorite movement !

I expect a few were made like this - I wonder if any leaked out of the factory in watches ?

Awesome.

Dan, I have no doubt there were more made, and there may well be others still stashed away in Lancaster. It's too finely finished and marked to be a handmade one-off. I would imagine a modest number were made for tests. I have some prototype 980 movements with "sample" serial numbers into the 80s, implying a fairly large number made for tests. I can't rule out the possibility that some could have ended up being sold. We know that some prototype Electric movements made it into ordinary watches -- in fact you found the first prototype 502 to appear on eBay, in a Uranus case! I've seen some 500s with recycled wear-test movements in early Pacers and Venturas. I don't think Hamilton liked to waste things if they could avoid it.

René and all,

Thanks for the story and photo. It's an under researched area for sure.

I wonder if Hamilton's investigation of the possibility of cheaper American-made movements was instigated by the ongoing (at the time-1952) tariff dispute over imported Swiss movements, which cast Hamilton, Elgin and Waltham against Bulova, Gruen and Benrus in court and before the Senate. The Eisenhower administration had backed protectionist tariffs on Swiss made movements (purportedly due to the strategic necessity of having a sound watch production base). This 1952 story from Time Magazine's archive sums it up pretty well.

If Hamilton could produce a serviceable but less expensive movement than the Swiss could import, they could have continued to argue for more trade protection. If they were forced to join the importation bandwagon, they would have to jump sides in the tariff debate.

On a side note, Time has posted an archive of all of their published stories since 1923. Pretty neat stuff.

Just wondering, but it's another facet to the story.

Regards,

Cary