DIETRICH GRUEN RAILROAD PRECISION RR
The serious railway accident in Kipton OH / USA on April 19, 1891 resulted in 8 deaths and enormous damage to property. The cause was a railway engineer's clock that had stopped for 4 minutes and then continued to run normally. In order to avoid such accidents in the future, the railway administration demanded very special quality features for railway watches ("RailRoad Watches"). The quality standards for RR-RailRoad-Watches were checked with tests and only watches tested in this way were allowed to be signed on the dial with "RR-Watch" = "RailRoad-Watch" as a special precision watch.
Photo Ronald Geweniger DGS Glashuette i. Sa. GmbH
According to historical tradition, the GRUEN RR PRECISION watches remained the only watches in the railway test series without any complaints. Because of their origin outside of the USA, however, they were not allowed to be used on the US-American railroad, but were permitted wherever premium quality was otherwise in demand; - i.e. privately on the American continent as well as worldwide, either by private or official institutions, e.g. on other railways such as the Canadian RailRoad in Canada.
see also: http://www.pixelp.com/gruen/1894.html or http://www.schill.name/7.html
Photo Thorsten Bechtoldt DGS Glashuette i. Sa. GmbH
After the wristwatch had established itself worldwide as a personal timepiece, GRUEN continues to focus on "PRECISION". The advertisement below, from the time of World War II, focuses on the PRECISION of the then technically demanding GRUEN-CURVEX watch models.
Photo Ingeborg Bechtoldt DGS Glashuette i. Sa. GmbH
(also see the menu chapter GRUEN-CURVEX for further photos)