Antique 1900 Elgin National Watch Co. model 5 with original chain, it works perfectly.

Antique 1900 Elgin National Watch Co. model 5 with original chain, it works perfectly.

Elgin Serial Number : 8688819

Production Year : 1900

Size : 45 mm

Jewels : 17 jewels

Grade : 250

Model : 5

Class :64

Run Quantity :5000

Production Dates :1900

Total Grade Production :30000

Movement Configuration :Open face

Setting :Pendant Wind and Set

Movement Finish :Nickel

Plate :Full plate

Barrel :Going

Adjusted : no

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. 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. Raymond, purchased an abandoned farm 30 miles north of Chicago and built a watch factory there. 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.” The watch was exquisite: Elgin National Watch Company was born.

By 1910, word of Elgin’s obsession with precision had spread around the world. Elgin engineers built their own Observatory to maintain scientifically precise times in their watches.