justaboutwatches.com
Related Articles
Steam was the disruptor. Railways shrank countries. Journeys that once took days now took hours. Trains thundered across vast landscapes, connecting people and goods in ways previously unimaginable. But with this new speed came a new problem — time. Not time in the abstract sense, but time in the very practical, potentially deadly sense of what hour it was. If a train left London at 10:00 a.m. and another departed from Bristol at 10:05, what exactly did “10:00” mean when each city ran on its own local time? This wasn’t a philosophical issue. It was a logistical nightmare. And in several tragic cases, it was a matter of life and death.
In Britain, a solution emerged relatively early. The Great Western Railway, under the stewardship of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, began using Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in 1840. By 1847, most British railways had followed suit, and by the mid-1850s, nearly every public clock in the country was set to Greenwich time. There was still some resistance. In certain towns, two clocks were displayed side by side: one showing local solar time and the other displaying the now-essential “Railway Time.” But the shift was irreversible. Telegraph lines began transmitting the time signal from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich to railway offices and signal boxes across the country. For the first time, a nation began ticking to a single, synchronised rhythm.
This was the beginning of something far bigger. While Britain was aligning itself with GMT, the problem of time coordination on a global scale remained unresolved. The world, now connected by railroads and steamships, needed to speak the same temporal language. And so, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. Twenty-five nations came together — an astonishing act of global cooperation — and agreed to establish Greenwich as the Prime Meridian, the reference point from which all other time zones would be measured. The Earth would be divided into twenty-four time zones, each fifteen degrees of longitude apart, with noon in each corresponding (more or less) to the sun being directly overhead. For the first time in history, humanity had a shared framework for dividing the day.
But agreeing on the system was one thing. Implementing it — especially at the granular level of train operations — was something else entirely. This is where the humble watch took centre stage. To the railway companies, the accuracy of personal timepieces was no longer a matter of convenience. It was a matter of safety. Every train ran to a precise timetable. A discrepancy of just thirty seconds could spell disaster. Conductors, engineers, dispatchers, stationmasters — all of them needed watches that could be trusted in all conditions, at all altitudes, through heat, cold, jostling motion, and daily wear. And so the era of the railroad-grade watch began.
Now, these weren’t just watches that happened to be used on trains. They were purpose-built instruments, manufactured to exacting standards and regularly inspected. In the United States, following yet another horrific accident in 1891 — this time in Kipton, Ohio, when a train engineer’s watch stopped for four minutes and cost nine lives — the railroads took decisive action. They turned to a man named Webb C. Ball.
Webb C. Ball is a name every serious watch enthusiast should know. Born in Fredericktown, Ohio, in 1847, Ball had already established himself as a respected jeweller and timekeeper by the time of the Kipton disaster. After that crash, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway appointed him Chief Time Inspector, tasking him with creating a standardised system that would prevent such tragedies from happening again. And he didn’t disappoint.
Ball introduced a level of rigour and accountability that transformed American railroading. He mandated that watches used by railroad employees had to meet strict performance standards. They had to be accurate to within 30 seconds per week. They needed at least 17 functional jewels to minimise wear, had to be adjusted to five positions to ensure consistency in all orientations, and were required to handle temperature variation. All watches had to be open-faced, with the crown at 12 o’clock and bold Arabic numerals for quick readability. More than that, each watch had to be inspected regularly by designated jewellers, and records of performance were meticulously kept. If a watch was found wanting, it was immediately pulled from service.
This system worked. Under Ball’s guidance, the American railway system became the most time-disciplined network in the world. Ball didn’t just set standards — he inspired a movement.
Several American brands rose to prominence on the back of these new demands. Waltham, Elgin, Illinois, Hampden, and Hamilton all produced dedicated railroad-grade watches. These were not fashionable accoutrements. They were built like tools, with beautifully finished movements hidden beneath functional cases, each bearing inspection stamps and serial numbers that could be traced back to every repair or adjustment. Some featured advanced lever-set mechanisms, requiring the user to unscrew the bezel and engage a lever before setting the time — a deliberate design to prevent accidental misalignment. There were many evolutionary needs in the relationship between railroads and time zones, each designed to provide as much accuracy for the commuter.
It was never going to be the case that one of the pioneers in railroads didn’t get involved with precision timekeeping on the railroads and as mentioned above, they weren’t slow in getting involved with the goal to achieve:
- Necessity for Synchronisation: The expansion of railroads highlighted the chaos of local timekeeping. Trains needed consistent, reliable schedules, which led to the demand for standardised time across regions.
- Birth of Time Zones: In 1883, North American railroads introduced a system of standard time zones—Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific—laying the groundwork for the global time zone system adopted later.
- Enhanced Safety and Efficiency: Uniform timekeeping allowed railroads to prevent collisions, streamline operations, and create accurate timetables, transforming travel and commerce across vast distances.
- Influence on Global Timekeeping: The success of railroad time in North America prompted other countries to adopt similar systems, ultimately leading to the 1884 International Meridian Conference, which established Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the global standard.
Ball himself eventually began producing watches under his name, often in partnership with other manufacturers. “Ball Official Standard” became synonymous with reliability, and the name still carries weight today among collectors. Even now, when we talk about precision and durability in field or pilot’s watches, we’re drawing on the legacy Webb C. Ball helped build. He didn’t just make watches — he made systems, structure, and trust.
In Canada, similar systems were put in place, with brands like Zenith (yes, the Canadian one) and Swiss companies like Longines and Omega producing railroad-grade timepieces for transcontinental use. The demands were the same: legibility, durability, and, above all, accuracy. Europe had its traditions too, and in countries like Switzerland and Germany, the concept of synchronised time found its way into both civilian and military applications.
The significance of all this goes beyond the rails. The adoption of time zones, the demand for mechanical precision, and the establishment of global time standards all flowed outwards into society. Telegraph operators began using the same clocks as the train stations. Businesses opened and closed on more predictable schedules. Banks synchronised interest calculations. Postal services adopted standard cut-off times. And eventually, every home had a clock ticking to the same beat.
Today, it’s easy to take all this for granted. We look at our phones, see the time, and assume it’s correct, not realising that this entire seamless system of coordination was born from a time when one train was five minutes late and another was five minutes early, and the result was unthinkable. Even in our digital age, the principles Webb C. Ball championed still guide us. ISO standards, atomic clocks, satellite synchronisation — they all owe a debt to the age of steam and steel.
So the next time you wind your watch — or even if you just glance at it, quartz or mechanical — remember what it represents. It’s not just a tool for telling the hour. It’s a legacy of railways, of tragedies averted, of human cooperation on a planetary scale. It’s one of the rare cases in history where technology, politics, and necessity came together not to divide us, but to unite us.
One world. Many clocks. But one shared moment of agreement.
