# Anyone Know Anything About A Smiths Alarm?



## Smart Stig (Mar 27, 2010)

Trudging round the wet and windy car boot this morning picked up a bunch of allsorts. A trio of Seiko autos (tatty but running), some other lesser known brands (Regency, Diantus) and lower quality pieces (Trafalgar and a Timex auto), and this Smiths Alarm....



















It seems to be running quite well - the top stem winds the movement and sets the hands when pulled out; the lower stem winds the alarm in one direction and sets the dial centre disc alarm pointer in the other direction. The lower stem also pulls out but that position doesn't seem to do anything.

And the alarm does still work - an interesting rattly buzz, much like that made by a watch when some part of the train gives way and the mainspring winds out! Not a sound you normally want to hear from a mechanical watch....

Movement is a Ronda 1223-21, 17 jewels and the movement and inside case back are marked "Agon Chromatic Watch Corp".

Does anyone know when this dates from, and any idea of value? The Big G search engine get me nothing other than a few hits for the Ronda ebauche (according the Metatechnical it is quite a basic pin pallet movement, alarm complication aside), and frankly it is worth more than a few pounds it won't owe me any money.

Not looking to sell it BTW, unless it is a real hens tooth that someone will trade for a Speedsonic. :rofl:

Andrew


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

That's rather nice, whether or not it's a Smiths or whatever! I'd imagine it's quite rare, I certainly don't remember it from my brief sojourn working for Smiths Clocks, but I'd hazard a guess it would be a transitional piece to combat the march of the Quartzes - too little too late, maybe? :yes:

It's a not bad looker as well, and IMHO looks better than the equivalent Russki ones - I'd guess late 70's?80's :yes:


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## Smart Stig (Mar 27, 2010)

A bit more research on ranfft.de turns up the specific Ronda 1223-21, which seems to have been made from 1975 onwards, so I'd say Mel is right with the last pre-quartz hurrah so probably not much later than 1980.

It also confirms that the stems are operating correctly, which is nice.

Not my normal collecting area, but thought it was worth a punt for a less than a fiver.

Andrew


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## Chascomm (Sep 9, 2005)

From the late 1960s, Smiths started supplementing their in-house watches with imports. Some were foreign movements cased locally, others were complete imports. The good ones were from Seiko, the cheapies were Swiss, particularly interesting stuff like jump-hours, chronographs and this alarm. By 1980 they'd wound up all British manufacturing of watches, and then they quit the watch business altogether in favour of military aerospace instrumentation and suchlike.

Ronda were Swiss specialists in the manufacture of low-grade ebauches (movement blanks). The Ronda 1223-21 is an interesting design. Ronda came up with one base design that they were able to offer with pin-lever or jewelled-lever, jewelled or unjewelled train, date, day/date, jump-hour, automatic and alarm. For the alarm, they fitted a module between the base movement and the dial, with its own tiny spring-barrel (borrowed from a woman's watch movement). Apparently they even prototyped one with alarm, auto-winding and jump-hour. Imagine trying to fit that under your cuff! Unlike their comptitors, along with offering more and more features on cheap movements to meet the foreign challenge of quartz, Ronda also invested in developing their own quartz movements, and this is why they remain independent from the Swatch Group to this day.

Agon were one of many Swiss movement-finishers specializing in the low-end of the market. Their 15 minutes of fame was the joint development with Tissot of the Astrolon/Autolub all-plastic hand-winding movement. Google that for some light entertainment.

Five quid for a mechanical alarm watch? You're laughing.


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