LOCATION:
We are located on the north end of Cheshire Bridge Road,
one block south of the I-85 overpass, between the
cross streets of Sheridan Road and
Chantilly Road.
A
pocket watch is a watch that’s made to be carried in a pocket,
as opposed to a wristwatch, which is worn on the wrist. Developed
in the16th century, The first watches were big and boxy, and
people wore them around their necks. By 1524, Peter Henlein, a
master locksmith from Nuremberg, was regularly making pocket
watches in England. Soon pocket watch manufacture spread
throughout Europe. Early watches only had an hour hand. The minute
hand didn’t appear on them until the late 17th century. It wasn’t
for another century that it became common for people to wear a
watch in a pocket. Henry Pitkin, along with his brother, produced
the first American pocket watches with machine-made parts in the
late 1830s.
As technology progressed, the watch cases and their movements
became smaller. Pocket watches were the most common type of watch
until wristwatches gained popularity after World War I. Most
pocket watches had a chain attached, known as a fob, which allowed
them to be secured to a vest, lapel, or belt loop to prevent them
from being dropped. Some, known as hunter-case watches, also had a
hinged metal cover to protect the watch crystal. At the opposite
end of the fob were fasteners designed to be put through a
buttonhole and worn in a jacket. Railroad conductors commonly used
this method.
The rise of railroading during the last half of the 19th
century led to the widespread use of pocket watches. Because of
the likelihood of train wrecks and other accidents if all railroad
workers did not accurately know the current time, pocket watches
became required equipment for all of them.
Open faced watches offer an unobtrusive view of the dial,
allowing the most important aspect of a watch, reading the
information. A requirement of a Railroad watch was an open face
case. However, a hunting case affords the best protection to a
pocket watch, with its metal cover protecting the crystal and dial
from dust, scratches and other
damage.
Activated by depressing the crown, the spring-loaded door opens
from the 3 o’clock side with its hinge at 9 o'clock. This
arrangement requires a 90-degree change in the orientation of the
location between the pendant and second hand locations and often a
mismatched marriage of the two results in a “sidewinder” with
the wrong movement in the wrong case.