[irenedear]

As I understand from the history in the catalogue, Ball is the name of the founder in the U.S. with the U.S. railroad as the background, so my question is is the maker in Switzerland an American based company or a local Swiss company? This is an issue of authenticity.

The history does not tell how and when the the production got started in Switz.

 

[~tc~]

The brand was "revived" a few years ago, my understanding is the original family is still involved to some degree.

To my knowledge, the original Ball company never made watches themselves, they were all contracted out to the major names of the time, most of which were American, a few of which were Swiss.

 

[Beinwatched]

As I understand from the history in the catalogue, Ball is the name of the founder in the U.S. with the U.S. railroad as the background, so my question is is the maker in Switzerland an American based company or a local Swiss company? This is an issue of authenticity.

The history does not tell how and when the the production got started in Switz.

Ball watch is American owned and produced in Switzerland. The institutional knowledge to make a fine quality watch is not in America and has not been since the early 70's. So it would have been a very difficult job to get these watches produced in the US due to the skill set needed to make them is not here.

Ball went bankrupt in 1988 and was bought by the current owners in approx 1992. The Ball family is friends with the current owners but to my knowledge not involved in any real sense.

They did produce their own watches in the US but not a large number. Primarily Webb Ball taught other watchmakers how to make their watches keep time, by inventing the double escapement, among other modifications. He "single-handedly" stopped (or nearly stopped) train accidents in the US because of this.