Lessons in Wristory: William Bond & Son

William Bond & Son Chronometer

The earliest American watchmakers – we’re talking Colonial times – can, for the most part, be described as resellers and re-branders of British and Swiss made watches. Of course, they had the ability to fix and regulate these timepieces, but the production capabilities didn’t really exist on any sort of memorable scale. The raw materials needed just weren’t as available to the Colonies to support watchmakers. Large-scale production in America didn’t come around until the latter half of the 19th Century, thanks to companies like Waltham, Elgin, and among others. However, this isn’t to say there weren’t notable, more, one-off creations.

Tucked away on Boston’s Congress Street was William Bond & Son (1793 – 1977), possibly America’s oldest company in the late 18th Century, as it had been an established business in England prior to making the move across the pond. William and his son, William Cranch Bond, were noted silversmiths and watchmakers, who not only sold English watches, but also dabbled in producing their own watches and clocks.

Okay, maybe dabbled is underselling it a bit. Around 1815, William Bond & Son was actually the first American watchmaker to produce a marine chronometer. Only twenty-three years old at the time, William Cranch was its creator, and was able to leverage 50 years of chronometer improvements since John Harrison made the first ones in England in the mid-1700s. Although Bond’s chronometer was only used for one trip, it set a new benchmark for both American watchmaking and seafaring.

William Bond & Son - 1861

William Bond & Son ad for marine chronometers – 1861

William Cranch’s interests did not end with watchmaking. He also went from a bit of an astronomy hobbyist to somewhat of an extreme astronomy hobbyist. His enthusiasm for celestial bodies earned him the title of director of the Harvard College Observatory. To this day, his – at the time – state-of-the-art observatory is still in working order at Harvard.

As for William Bond & Son the company, they became well known for their chronometers, and all around skill with accurate timekeepers. That is why, in 1849, they were asked to create an official timekeeping standard for the Massachusetts railroads. Using William Cranch’s association with the Harvard Observatory, the standard was set by reading the sky from that specific point in Cambridge, rather than readings from stations all over Massachusetts, which leads to slight deviations. In addition to creating the time standard, which is essentially the first “time zone” of America, William Bond & Son was tasked with maintaining official railroad watches and clocks. They became truly a vital piece of early Colonial railroads.

It is true, American watchmaking isn’t littered with brand names like Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, and Vacheron Constantin. However, names like William Bond, and his son William Cranch Bond do exist, despite how rarely their stories are told. The birth of America created a completely different landscape for watchmaking, one of scarce resources and production capabilities. Just like with most other industries in America, watchmaking was pioneered with entrepreneurial spirit that took it from a veritable “Wild West”, to standards that would set benchmarks for generations to come. The Bond family of early Boston history laid the tracks on which future great American watchmakers would travel. Hopefully, true American watchmakers will once again use these tracks.

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Shane is one of the founding members of Wound For Life and a contributor to several other publications. A lover of all things mechanical, his true passions lie with watches and adventure. To keep up with the latest from Shane, you can follow him on Twitter (@shanegriffin1) or Instagram (@shanegriffin25). If you'd like to get in touch with Shane, email him at shane@woundforlife.com.

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