Winton is a trademark used in commerce since May 01, 1919. It was originally owned by “Hipp. Didisheim Company, Inc.” in New York, NY. Didisheim also owned the trademark Nassau; the trademarks (and Didisheim’s business) were transferred around 1940 (?) to a company “L. Adels Company”, New York, NY. Said company was owned by Louis Adels. Adels owned the trademarks SLEDA (used since April 1925), ELBON (used since September 1927) and LACO (since 1922); LACO is the abbreviation of “Louis Adels COmpany” and isn’t to be mistaken with the German trademark “Laco” of LAner & CO”. Foundation of L. Adels Company probably was around 1922. Louis Adels sold his watches under his several brands, mainly under “Winton”, “Elbon”, “Nassau” and “LACO”, but also “Marc Nicolet” branded watch was sold by Adels/Winton Watch Co. Adels had an ad in Swiss Watch Magazine “La Féderation Horlogère Suisse” of 13. June 1934: In fact, Winton watch movements were quality movements made by well-known Swiss makers of the Èbauches SA Group, namely by A.Schild, Aurore, ETA, Felsa, Fontainemelon and Unitas. Only the caliber 523 was made by a non-Swiss company, namely German company Durowe (Durowe 202) what’s a little bit funny, because Durowe was owned by German company… Laco. The movements are signed in several ways;
All have an import code LXA. By coincidence I found a checklist listing all Winton calibers and explaining, what the caliber really is (e.g. Winton 86 = Felsa 690). That is the “Marshall Handy Manual” of 1966: https://watchguy.co.uk/technical/Marsha ... %20Manual/ You’ll need part 2 (pages NC 138 to NC 141) for the checklist and part 5 (pages INF 2 to INF 5 and INF 9) for the explanation of maker codes and for the abbreviations used. From this list I extracted the automatic calibers: In the very few discussions on the internet you will read about Adels that he “was an importer of Watches”. Well, this is not quite exact. Yes, he imported the movements from Switzerland, but the watches were at least mostly “cased and timed in New York” (quote from a legend of an Elbon box). Adels used cases made by US Case Maker Companies, i.a. I.D. Watch Case Co. Inc., Commodore Watch Case Co., Major Watch Case International Corp. (all of New York City, NY), Lapwell Watch Case Corp., Greenvale, NY and by Pioneer Watch Case Co., Inc., Mount Vernon, N.Y. These are at least the Case makers I’ve seen so far present on cases of Winton watches (as well as on the other brands, like Nassau, Elbon, LACO). So, Winton watches aren’t much differing from other US brands: quality Swiss movements in a US watch case. Why don’t they have the same reputation like – for example – a Hamilton Kinematic? The Kinematic I (and a number of Accumatics) has a grade 672, that is in fact an ETA 1256 - the same movement may be found in a comparable Winton of the 50's and 60's. I don’t know, maybe Adels simply had too many brands or it's just because Adels did not spend enough money for advertising his brand(s), maybe he outfitted too many private labels. In any case, in the hunt for a vintage watch as we always say: a “no-name” watch you can get for under $100 can be as much as interesting as a top $$$$$ collector’s dream – it might be a Cinderella, you just have to find the matching shoe! Comments are closed.
|
Old Time WatchesI enjoy collecting mechanical (manual wind and automatic) and early electric and quartz timepieces. I take great pleasure in researching and writing about the companies and people that created these beautiful watches. PF
Archives
September 2018
|