![]() ![]() The lack of the kind of skilled labour available in Switzerland led to a different kind of excellence, that of tooling over assembly. The demands of the military for precision and durability forced Smiths to produce high-quality movements. Starting from scratch with scant supplies was tough, and although a GSTP pocket watch was produced by 1942, it was only after the war’s end that wristwatches were achieved.įast forward to the present and wristwatches are again being made wholly in Britain Aware that Britain was over-reliant on both Germany and Switzerland for horological supplies, Government funds were used to re-ignite watchmaking R&D. It was wartime necessity that drove Smiths back to watchmaking. Vehicle and later aircraft instruments including speedometers, became the mainstay of the business with watches dwindling to nothing. ![]() Samuel Smith was soon to see the branding possibilities of watch retailing over and above jewellery and secured a supplier of high-quality watches that allowed him to achieve good results at the Kew Observatory trials and then publicise the fact in the Guide to the Purchase of a Watch.Ĭompetition from the USA and Switzerland led Smiths to develop new areas of expertise and the booming automotive industry was the perfect opportunity to use its precision engineering in a more profitable direction. At this point the watches were either English-made but usually Swiss imported with the shop name applied to the dial. Its trade was in diamonds, clocks and watches. Smiths began as Samuel Smith (later & Son), a jeweller based in Elephant & Castle in 1851. This was when Smiths was making high-grade movements at its factory in Cheltenham but as with many things in British industry, the history is much more convoluted than that. ![]() The last time Britain had a home-grown mass-production wristwatch manufacturer was in the brief period between the end of the second world war and 1970. This column has always sought the long view with regard to watches and when it comes to ‘Best of British’ there is a delightful symmetry in that the past and present as both come down to a man named Smith. ![]()
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