Mechanical Movements of the Cold War: How the Soviets Revolutionized Wristwatches collectorsweekly.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from collectorsweekly.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Lacking the domestic manufacturing capacity, the Soviet leadership looked overseas and found help in Canton, Ohio.
The equipment and know-how for Moscow s First State Watch Factory was imported from Dueber-Hampden Watch Co., a Canton company that went bankrupt in the late 1920s, according to the city s local newspaper, the Canton Repository. A 2016 report in the paper said that a company representing the Soviet Union s trade interests in the United States bought bankrupt Dueber-Hampden s watchmaking machines for $325,000, loaded it onto train cars and shipped it off to Russia.
The Dueber-Hampden Watch Works in Canton, Ohio. The USSR went on to buy equipment from the factory and ship it to Moscow. Credit: Alamy