# A Piece Of History!



## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

A fellow Hamilton Electric enthusiast sent me this rather sad looking movement. He sent it to me without warning, wanted me to have it and asked for no payment.









To the casual observer , it doesn't look much, maybe fetching a few quid on eBay...but it is a unique piece of electric horology and I'm astounded that he gave me this. Thank you Dan!









So what is it? It is Serial Number 19 out of the 23 made (original plans called for 25). Produced by Hamilton in 1953 and known as the Model 2; these were R&D "wear test" prototypes given to the Hamilton executives to try out in real life. This was 4 years before the world's first electric watch went on sale in 1957.

Serial Number 17 features in Rene Rondeau's 4th edition of "The Watch of the Future" book. The movement features weird things that never made it to production: for instance, this movement had large, flat, permanent magnets which led the researchers to believe that a steel balance & hairspring would be upset by the close magnetic forces....so majors parts of the balance are made of epoxy resin (the yellow / buff colour on the balance in photos below)! The contact mechanism is also very different .... as can be seen, these 23 research movements are fairly roughly made.

The "wear test" was moderately successful but many problems were found; for instance, humidity was found to affect the epoxy resin, the non-magnetic stainless steel pivots wore out really fast, etc, etc

But this prototype movement did give rise to the production 500 and the world's first electric watch. I had better look after this little piece of watch history.









Cheers

Paul


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## jasonm (Nov 22, 2003)

Wow!! That is history indeed









Good for Dan


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## mach 0.0013137 (Jan 10, 2005)

As Jason said, Wow!!









What a fantastic addition to your collection Paul


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## Bladerunner (Jun 4, 2006)

Very interesting piece Paul.


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## JoT (Aug 12, 2003)

Great Paul and well done Dan


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## JonW (Mar 23, 2005)

Nice one Paul! Very cool indeed... both the gesture and the movt.


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## Marky (Sep 29, 2005)

Thats amazing, to be given such a rare and important piece of history. Must be worth a bit too.....

Does the movement still work Paul? and will you but finding a case for your own "wear testing"?


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## Roy (Feb 23, 2003)

Very nice Paul, brings back memories of the tuning fork prototypes that I had once.


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## ETCHY (Aug 3, 2004)

It's fascinating all this stuff about Hamilton's.

That's a very interesting movement & a real piece of horological history - a great gift to receive.

Cheers

Dave


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

so when can we expect to see you on mastermind Paul, you must be one of the worlds authorities on electric watches by now. Fantastic item, I know you'll preserve it for history.


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

Marky said:


> Does the movement still work Paul?


I doubt it. The contacts look in pretty bad shape as do the pivots.



Roy said:


> Very nice Paul, brings back memories of the tuning fork prototypes that I had once.


I remember those Roy. You should post the photos again. Now those would be worth a bob or two today...



pg tips said:


> so when can we expect to see you on mastermind Paul


Err, not just yet









Here's a couple of shots of the resin balance, complete with air bubbles in the resin!


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