Hamilton Watch Company was incorporated in 1892 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, built out of the assets of the failed Keystone Standard Watch Co. and tooling brought over from the Aurora Watch Co. of Illinois. The same Columbia Avenue site had already seen half a dozen watch companies fail before Hamilton took it over. Its first watch, designed by founding member H.J. Cain, arrived in 1893 under the brand's original tagline, "The Railroad Timekeeper of America," built around the accuracy railroads needed to keep trains from colliding. American manufacturing ended in 1969, when production shifted to the company's Buren factory in Switzerland, where it's made ever since.