The "It's Only A Matter Of Time" Story: Part II - The Visit" Story

RGM Watch Company

It was an ordinary day.  Standing inside the door of the RGM Watch Company at 801 West Main Street in Mt. Joy, PA waiting to meet Mr. Roland G. Murphy, owner and founder of the company that bears his initials.  His company is housed in an old bank building, equipped with a huge vault that confronts me as I look around the entrance to the building. Workbenches line the walls with watchmakers, male and female alike, busily assembling different parts of watches.  Roland has eleven employees who work with eye loupes as they assemble parts almost too small to see with the human eye.  

The large vault from the original bank.

Everywhere I look is antique equipment that for centuries has seen and felt the hands of masters of their trade of watchmaking.  Three rose engines, or engraving machines for the novice, as well as one straight-line engine consume much of the entrance way.  They are the machines that create the delicate patterns, or guilloche, which adorn the watch cases, dials and movements.  RGM is striving to pursue the art of guilloche which is practiced in traditional centers of watchmaking in Switzerland and Germany.  Within a few minutes I am led to the second floor of the building where I get my chance to meet Roland.  

Owner, Roland G. Murphy

He is a very affable guy who sports a full head of gray hair with mustache and greets me with a firm handshake.  He gladly answers some of my preliminary questions as we head down the stairs to the basement where I get to view of a small room that holds some of his computerized equipment that helps in making the small pattern jigs that are used to assemble his movements.  It is here that I got to see his son-in-law, Adam Robertson, apply perlage, which is a French word meaning metal adornment, to the main plate of a watch that is being made.  Many of the pieces of equipment housed throughout his business are antique, hand-operated pieces that have been adapted to make more precise parts for his timepieces.

Adam adding perlage to a main plate.  Click to enlarge.

Back on the main floor Roland shows and explains the rose engine machines to me.  These machines are used for the fine movement and dial guilloche.  In the large safe, equipped with the original safe deposit boxes from years ago, is his personal collection of watches.  

This container holds parts that will soon become
a watch at RGM Watch Company in Mt. Joy, PA.

Time pieces of all types and manufac- turers fill a small cabinet against the far wall of the safe.  It is here that I pulled out my grand- father's pocket watch to show to him.  I tell him of my father and he tells me he remembered him from his trips to Meiskey's Jewelry Store years ago.  He takes a look at my pocket watch and heads to his nearby work bench to take it apart to show it to me.  With his loupe he is able to retrieve the serial # of 8670839 - an Elgin watch with hand engraving dated 1900.  

Viewing the Elgin pocket watch.

He opens the rear and shows me the interior parts of the watch.  I am always amazed when I see something that can work with gears and screws so tiny you need an eye loupe to see them.  Workers surround me in the main room.  Some are assembling movements that have over 200 parts to them and require picking them up with tweezers to place them on the jigs that had been made in the lower level.  Immense patience and skill is needed to be a watchmaker, something that I do not possess, even when I was in my prime three or four years ago.  I talked with Benoit, a young man who answered an ad on RGM's website a few years ago and moved from France to Lancaster to be able to work for Roland.  

Two of the rose engines that will add the guilloche.

I can see and feel the talent and skill this young watch- maker possesses.  Another worker, Raphael, who was born in Brooklyn, began work in 2003 for Roland.  He too remembered my dad and smiled when he talked about him.  He was at a bench were he was performing repairs to customers watches.  

Benoit assembling some of the minute pieces of the watch.

Helen, who has worked for more than a decade at RGM, has been assembling RGM's model 801 watches for more than 10 years she told me.  The RGM Caliber 801 began production in 2008 and is the first mechanical watch movement to be produced on American soil for close to 50 years.  

This is the Pennsylvania Tourbillon masterpiece that is one
of the mainstays of the RGM collection of watches.

It brought international attention to the RGM company and made Lancaster, Pennsyl- vania into a watch- making center once again.  In 2011 RGM introduced the MM2 Pennsyl- vania Tourbillon which is 90% American made.  It sells for $95K in stainless with models available in gold.  

Raphael is busy at work making repairs to a customer's watch.

This movement is engraved with a "T" inside a keystone, which is the symbol of Pennsyl- vania.  A tourbillion has a mechanism to isolate the escapement from shock and motion during wrist wear.  The RGM Company produces watches primarily by request and hand-makes about 300 a year.  

Helen is assembling the 801 movement.

My visit today was not only interesting, but infor- mative.  I fear I left knowing very little about RGM Company and how watches are made.  The technology, thought it is carried on with the use of antique machines, is amazing.  I was humbled to know I had the chance to visit with probably the only watchmaker in the world who is producing hand-made watches in the Unites States. I left today knowing that  watch making is alive and well once again in the United States.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

This is the Caliber 20 watch.