... now I am somewhat confused as to the earliest known listing of CPR-approved watches. That's because a certain Harold Clitheroe had published an article in 2000 which claimed that there was a CPR approved list of pocket watches dated 1899. Here's a link to his article, as well as a direct link to the 1899 table of approved CPR watches as per that article:
Railroad Time
Make ...
Despite his good intentions of writing an informative article on
railroad watches, Harold fell into the trap of (apparently) depending upon secondary sources of information, especially ones that aren't traceable back to
primary sources (i.e. failure to cite specific primary sources or secondary sources that do). The result is that much misinformation is presented to be repeated by others.
This too is based upon, what I described in Post #11 as, "
It relies heavily on Ball's fairy tale that claims (in a 1910 Sunday Supplement interview) that Ball created Time Service inspection at the behest of the LS&MS in 1891 following the Kipton wreck." Ball is the only person who, 19 years after the fact, asserted that the the wreck was attributed to a watch being four minutes slow. Most accounts don't even mention the watch. No record has ever appeared of the (Ball mentioned) inquiry. Nor has any Post Office Department report on the wreck seen the light of day. The only official document available is reprinted in "
The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Company’s 1891 Disaster at Kipton, Ohio—Revisited," William M. Hoffer,
NAWCC Bulletin No. 346, October 2003, pp. 563-572 (available online to NAWCC members who are logged in), which contains the text of the Ohio State Inspector's report on the wreck - it fails to cite the watch being four minutes slow as a contributing factor.
Here's another part that ignores reality:
'... in 1893, the General Railroad Timepiece Standards were adopted, which mandated the following standards for railroad watches:
"
.... be open faced, size 18 or 16, have a minimum of 17 jewels, adjusted to at least 5 positions, keep time accurately to within a gain or loss of only 30 seconds per week, adjusted to temperatures of 34 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, have a double roller, steel escape wheel, lever set, micrometric regulator, winding stem at 12 o'clock, grade on back plate, use plain Arabic numbers printed bold and black on a white dial, and have bold black hands..."
These were the base standards for a railroad-grade watch, ...'
These standards came to pass, but most of them about 15 years later, around 1906-1908, refer to the
Railroad Watch Encyclopedia article for details.
The "
1899 table of approved CPR watches as per that article ..." is ls laughably inaccurate. The Elgin Veritas grades didn't exist at that time; the 18-size being introduced in 1901, the 16-size some years after. The same goes for Hamilton's Nos. 992 and 950 grades; and Illinois' 16-size Bunn, Bunn Special and Sangamo Special grades. South Bend and the E. Howard Watch Co. didn't exist in 1899, coming into being about three years later. So, you can't trust that list.
... So did the CPR list of features from 1922 speak to its internal timekeeping staff whose role was to vet watches for inclusion in an approved list from "head office" which would be circulated amongst the various local inspectors, or was that 1922 document speaking directly to various & sundry local time inspectors who had the discretion to accept watches meeting the 1922 criteria?
The 1922 blurb does open with "The Standards adopted by this Company are grades of movements that have been approved and listed by the Chief Inspector of Time Services which are equal to or above ..." (my emphasis) ...
I believe that the local inspectors had the authority to accept watches into service that met that list of criteria.
... Anyways I'd appreciate your comments esp. respecting the 1899 Clitheroe listing, continued thanks ...
![Ex. Leader mvmt [].jpg](https://mb.nawcc.org/data/attachments/472/472637-66d00757487d65261cc597db3414e1e4.jpg "Ex. Leader mvmt [].jpg")
