These are my US aircraft clocks.

Elgin A-11




Wittnauer 8 Days




Does anybody know, what the abbrevation "BeMM" means?



Waltham A-13 A1






Have a nice day!

Regards
Gerd

Very nice.

-Seeing your Elgin, I now realize mine is missing the mounting nuts. I have not seen an example with original nuts.
Thanks for sharing.

Ron

I don't know if they are still in business, but up until recently the Bemm Aircraft Instrument Service company was a business based at Stapleton Airport in Denver, Colorado. There are/were in the business of overhauling, servicing, and calibrating used aircraft instruments to keep them airworthy. Aircraft instruments have to be serviced by specially licensed service companies whenever they break or whenever you want to sell a used instrument. This is called 'yellow tagging' after the yellow tag is traditionally tied to such an instrument to show it has been repaired/serviced by a licensed aircraft instrument repair guy. I assume the letters BeMM had something to do with the name of the guy or guys who originally started the instrument repair company? It is common for such repair companies and for their military counterpart shops to also mark, stamp, decal, or scratch their name on an instrument to show they serviced it.

Your Waltham clock is not actually a Waltham clock - it is a Waltham Precision Instruments clock. This is a different company from the famous Waltham Watch Company. The original Waltham went out of business in 1957 and what was left went to their international subsidiary, Waltham International S.A., which they had founded in Switzerland in 1954. A new company called Waltham Precision Instruments started up in late 1957 and began manufacturing and selling aircraft clocks and other timepieces. I believe WPI had acquired the old Waltham factory for their production but they were not the famous Waltham Watch Company. Waltham Precision Instruments went out of business in 1994 and was bought out by M.Z. Berger, Inc. Berger makes and sells watches today under several old brand names that they had acquired in this way including Waltham, Elgin, and Gruen.

Jim,

thank you very much for your detailed and very interesting answer. I was thinking BeMM was some kind of military unit for maintenance or something like that and couldn't figure out what the abbrevation could mean.

New to me is the fact, that "Waltham" and "Waltham Precision Instruments" are not the same. Thank you for explaining the difference!

You never stop learning...

Best regards
Gerd