This would be how Ball was born, Webster Ball, like several other jewelers around the United States, started distributing and inspecting railroad watches in the late 19th century.Īs a side note, this was not the only incident of bad timing that led to death on a train in 19th century United States. When the accident happened and he started his system of railroad watch inspections, he also started distributing his own watches through this system, using the inspectors as dealers. He was an early adopter of time signals in Cleveland when Standard Time was adopted in 1883 and successfully grew his jewelry business in Cleveland. He bought into a jewellery business in Cleveland called Whitcomb and Metten Jewelers in the late 1870s, when he moved to the city at the age of either 21 or 22. Now, Webster Ball was a jeweler from Cleveland, Ohio who was born in Fredericktown, Ohio in 1847. This was the most widespread railway watch standard at its peak. He also established the ‘RR Standard’ and was said to inspect nearly half of the United States’ railroads at his peak. Ball had watchmakers check the watches used on the line, developing a security system for the entire train line that he then extended to other jurisdictions (including Canada) by 1893.

As a result of this, the Superintendent of the train line, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, appointed Webster Ball to investigate the timing issue and develop an assurance system. And the engineer’s watch stopped running for about 4 minutes – leading them to leave their current station towards Kipton late! The engineer assumed he had 7 minutes until crossing paths with the train at Kipton but in reality, he only had 3…leading to quite the surprise…and unfortunate loss of life. The conductor did not check his watch, however, assuming the engineer did. And guess what? A reliable watch would’ve stopped this accident! The story goes that the crew of the Toledo Express were ordered to let the Fast Mail Train pass them at Kipton after leaving Oberlin, Ohio, as they were late. The two trains were the Toledo Express, which was going along slowly, and the Fast Mail Train No.

What happened that day was that two trains collided at a station, resulting in the deaths of 9 people.

goes back to April 18th, 1891 to an incident known to American history as the Kipton Disaster.

Ball railroad pocket watch