Hamilton Automatic (A. Schild Cal. 1673)…

Another Hamilton on the blog, this time one of their vintage automatic models.

(Click pictures to enlarge)

Founded in 1892 in Lancaster Pennsylvania, Hamilton is one of the most widely known American watch companies. It may surprise some readers then to hear that Hamilton haven’t manufactured any watches in the US for more than 60 years.

Following Hamilton’s acquisition of the Buren Watch Company in 1966, after a brief period of collaboration, Hamilton closed down their 13 acre manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania and moved all production to the Buren factory in Switzerland.

Surprisingly, in 1971 after just two years, Buren was returned to Swiss ownership, the Hamilton-Buren partnership was dissolved in 1972 and the Hamilton brand name sold to the SIHH conglomerate (which became The Swatch Group we know today) in 1974. Hamilton remain a part of The Swatch Group today and their watches are now produced in Biel, Switzerland.

The subject of this post has a few interesting features both in terms of its history and ‘tech’. Hamilton were producing automatic watches from the 1950’s onwards, but rather than develop their own automatic calibres, their watches were fitted with calibres from a range of Swiss manufacturers, namely; ETA, Certina, Buren and A. Schild – which is why you’ll see ‘Swiss’ on the dials of many Hamilton watches produced before manufacturing moved to the Buren factory in 1969.

The watch in this post is one such example, Swiss branded and powered by an A. Schild cal. 1673, a 21 jewel, 18,000 bph, time only calibre produced between 1955 and 1963.

Hamilton used very few A. Schild automatic calibres, making this watch quite unusual, the only others being the cal. 1876, and the 36,000 bph (“high frequency”) cal. 1920.

Also unusual is the layout of the cal. 1673 which as you can see above has an off-centre winding rotor. The reason for this is that the automatic winding mechanism, rather than being placed in a separate module on top of the calibre, is integrated into the main calibre, allowing for the slimmest possible profile – just 4.5 mm high in this case, including the winding rotor.

Hamilton produced slim dress watches for many years with range names such as Thinline, Thin-o-matic and Intramatic, many of their automatics being powered by Buren micro-rotor calibres.

The watch here arrived in decent overall condition, running but dirty and long overdue a service. All went well, the movement was serviced without issue, the case cleaned and crystal polished, but when re-cased ready for testing, on winding the watch manually to get it started, the crown cap sheared off. Gah!

Thankfully I had a small number of Hamilton branded crowns in stock, one of which was a good match in terms of style and size.

Here’s the watch all finished up…

If owning a slim automatic watch appeals to you then you may be interested to know that Hamilton re-issued a modern version of their classic Intramatic model – just 10mm thick and available in both 38 and 42mm diameters, with gold plated or stainless steel cases. They don’t have a funky off-centre or micro-rotor like the vintage models though, so you know what I’m recommending. 😉

Rich.

** Many thanks to Mark Cawthorne for letting me feature his watch on the blog. **