Authentic 1916 Swiss Trench Watch "Helvetia" 15 Jewels F. Borgel Sterling Silver Case

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$1,351.00

• Details
  As you read this description, I want you to transport yourself to 1916. This very early wristwatch was the creation of two companies, one eventually became, Omega and the other Helvetia. What a great story.
  
  This watch is a hard-to-find watch. It was never meant to sell in the USA. This watch was developed, manufactured, assembled and finished in Switzerland.
  This case is designed and developed with a well-known case manufacturing partner. Francis Borgel, a giant among the horological watch industry at that time. His stamp in present that is stamped inside the case back ( notice the case does NOT have a traditional case back to open, this was one of the hallmarks of the Borgel cases.
  
  Stamp Explanation :
  
  FB Case Manufacturer
  General W.C. Swiss Maker of watch
  935 stamp. This is silver purity; it means the watch case is 93.5% Sterling Silver
  Depose = Registered
  
  Trench Watch Movement
  
  This movement was used in General Watch Co 'Trench' Watches from roughly 1914 to 1918. It appears to have just been known as the Helvetia 13 Ligne movement. From 1919 to the mid 1920s a new Helvetia movement was used based on the AS 137 movement but with the bridges altered to resemble the earlier Helvetia 13'" movement.
  
  On the 14th April 1892 the Swiss watch company Louis Brandt & Frere registered the name ‘Helvetia’ as one of the brand names for their watches. Two years later in 1894 they also registered the name ‘Omega’ and applied it to a new range of high quality lever movement pocket watches they had developed using cutting edge manufacturing technology.
  So successful were the new Omega watches that the Brandt brothers decided to form a new company alongside Louis Brandt & Frere and move the production of some of their other watches to it to in order to make extra room in their Bienne factory to allow increased production of Omega watches.
  
  On the 5th August 1895 the new company ‘Société d’Horlogerie La Générale’ was formed in La Chaux de-Fonds as a joint venture the directors being Louis Paul Brandt, Edouard Boillat of the ébauche company Ed. Boillat & Cie and initially Louis Courvoisier though he resigned in 1897. 1897 was also the year that the company was additionally registered under its English name, ‘General Watch Co’, and moved its registered office to Bienne.
  
  
  Following the founding of La Générale production of most of Louis Brandt & Frere’s lower quality cylinder watches were moved there including the brands Helvetia, Paradox, Jura, Gurzelen and Cosmopolite
  The start of the first world war in 1914 signalled some major changes to the Swiss watch industry. The need to be able to tell the time quickly and easily in the trenches without fumbling for a pocket watch meant that wristwatch use and production rose rapidly and the poor conditions that a watch was liable to meet also meant that water and moisture resistance became more important. La Générale appears to have started to specialise in watches with this type of protection around this time. They had actually developed a screw case, swing ring, pocket watch with water resistant properties by 1903 and during the war a large percentage of their wristwatches were of the hunter or half hunter types that included a hinged lid to protect the face of the watch from damage. They also provided adapted pocket watches for use in German aircraft cockpits and sold watches under the brand names Kitchener and Les Poilus (a nickname for French troops) in allied countries.
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