BALL
The history of BALL watch
Webb C. Ball was born on a farm in Knox County, Ohio, and married Florence I. Young of Kenton, Ohio, in 1879. Wilma Ball, Florence Ball, and Alice Ball Andrews were their three daughters. They had one son, Sidney Y. Ball (born September 19, 1880), and three daughters, Wilma Ball, Florence Ball, and Alice Ball Andrews. Aaron Taylor Ball (born December 19, 1820 in Fredericktown, Ohio) and Sidney Ann Clay were his parents (born April 2, 1820 in Frederick, MD). Zenas Ball (born November 15, 1792 in South Orange, NJ, died October 3, 1860) and Sarah Taylor were his grandparents (born May 24, 1796, died March 30, 1860). He was survived by his wife and children when he died at his home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
Ball landed in Cleveland, Ohio to work in a jewelry business after a two-year apprenticeship with a jeweler.
At Kipton, Ohio, in 1891, an accident between Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway trains happened due to a malfunctioning engineer's watch. Webb C. Ball was appointed Chief Time Inspector by railroad officials in order to develop accuracy standards and a trustworthy timepiece inspection system for railroad chronometers.
He established strict guidelines for the manufacture of durable, dependable precision timepieces, including resistance to magnetism, reliability of time keeping in five positions, isochronism, power reserve, and dial arrangement, as well as the keeping of records of the watch's reliability at each regular inspection.
His Cleveland jewelry company morphed into the Ball Watch Company (now located in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland), which perfected and resold movements from other watch firms. Ball Watch Company also placed orders for entire watches from other watchmakers. Ball employed movements from leading American manufacturers Elgin, Hamilton, and Waltham in their wristwatches until the 1940s, when they moved to Swiss Avia movements. Elgin National Watch Company and most of the other American makers, such as Aurora, Hamilton, Hampden, and E. Howard & Co., followed Waltham Watch Company in promptly complying with Ball's criteria. Seth Thomas of Illinois was later joined by Audemars Piguet, Gallet, Longines, Record Watch, and Vacheron Constantin of Switzerland.
Webb C. Ball was promoted to vice president of the Hamilton Watch Company, where he concentrated on producing railroad watches. Minutes of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers' Third Triennial Convention, held in the B of LE Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio on May 31, 1921 at 2 p.m. Grand Chief Engineer W.S. Stone called the convention to order, and during the afternoon session, Webb C Ball was introduced, gave a statement, and a resolution was carried overwhelmingly, making him an Honorary Member of the Brotherhood.
They were the first wristwatches to be authorized to be worn on railroads (using a Swiss manual-winding mechanism), and they were swiftly followed by Elgin, the first American-made wristwatch to be worn on "the roads."
Until the 1990s, when the license to use the name was sold, the company was controlled by direct descendants. The new company maintains the heritage, employing Swiss-made (mostly ETA) movements to create timepieces for athletes and even minor railways. Webb C. Ball was in charge of over 125,000 miles of rail lines in the United States, Mexico, and Canada by the conclusion of his career, and he considerably contributed to the safety of all railroad systems. On October 20, 1921, the Horological Institute of America honored his achievements.