Radium to Super-LumiNova: The Cost of a Glowing Dial
Reading a watch in the dark sounded like magic, and for a few decades it was sold that way. The full story of radium, tritium and the people who paid for the glow.
Second Hand Stories RSS
Second Hand Stories is where the watches on our shelves meet the history behind them: the makers, the movements, the rivalries between Switzerland and America, and the small details that rarely make it into the catalogs. Each story is researched across sources in several languages, so you read what the archives say, not only what the internet repeats.
What sets this blog apart is the experience of seeing it. Every illustration is an AI-generated image created individually from real references and in-depth research, so you can step into the workshops, offices and streets where these watches were born. © 2026 empress.cc. All rights reserved. The texts, research and illustrations on this blog may not be copied, reproduced, republished or used to train AI systems without our prior written permission.
Stories from the world of vintage watches: the makers, the movements and the history that shaped them, researched in depth and in several languages.
Our realistic illustrations are AI-generated images made individually from real references and in-depth research, an experience rarely found on other watch blogs. © 2026 empress.cc. All rights reserved. The texts, research and illustrations on this blog may not be copied, reproduced, republished or used to train AI systems without our prior written permission.
Correct Time, Please? How Elgin Took the Time From the Stars
Where does the correct time come from? Elgin's answer was a flickering dome on a hill, a transit telescope and a very patient web of spider silk.
Hidden in Rabbit Skins: The Trade War That Put Three Letters on Swiss Watches
Smoot-Hawley, rabbit skins and light bulbs full of Swiss watches. Turn over a vintage Swiss movement and you'll find three tiny letters with a smuggling war behind them.
A Brief History of the Railroad Watch, and the Four Minutes That Created It
There is a particular kind of silence that follows a railway disaster, and in the spring of 1891, that silence settled over a stretch of single track near Kipton, Ohio. Two trains of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway had been running toward each other on the same line — not through recklessness, but through the quiet, almost invisible failure of a single pocket watch. Realistic illustration of two steam locomotives approaching each other on a single track in the dawn mist, a signal post between them, evoking the approach to the 1891 collision at Kipton, Ohio. The engineer of the Toledo Express believed he had time. His watch told him so. What it did not tell him was...