Why was the railroad watch developed?
railroad pocket watch
To understand how important the railroad watch was, first we need to know a little about the railroad. By 1880 there were thousands of miles of track and hundreds of trains sharing these tracks at the same time. To be sure that no two trains met in the wrong direction, time was of great importance.
In those days there was no time standard, each city and town operated on their own time schedule. During this period the many railroads had 50 different time zones to manage.
The conductor of the train had to be aware of the always changing time zones to be able to avoid accidents. The railroads soon developed a standard of times zones across the country the Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific which was later adopted by congress as the national time standard.
However a great many accidents still happened due to inaccurate time keeping devices. In 1893 after a major accident claiming several lives, a standard for the manufacture of watches for railroad use was presented.