A surprising number of folks are filing into the lobby of the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania, a small community in the south-central part of the Keystone State. Nearly 200 visitors enter the Museum to hear about Caliber 801, the new movement from Roland G. Murphy and his RGM Watch Company, based in Mount Joy some twenty minutes away. Mount Joy is also a stone's throw from Lancaster, the center of American watch making in the first half of the 20th century.

Caliber 801 is the first American-made mechanical watch movement since the death of the venerable American watch company, Hamilton, in 1969. The Hamilton factory was located in Lancaster, and Murphy uses Hamilton movements in his Signature Series of specialty RGM watches. Tradition is important to him.

Most of the fans attending the event are locals, though some have come from quite a distance away. One of many Good Customers adds- as he was wearing the Rare RGM / Hamilton 222/923 "Its a singular beauty" ," Is this your only RGM I ask? " "No", he sighs. "Its not my only and definitely not my last,". The project to create this watch almost took a year to complete, this beautiful 222 with a custom made guilloche dial. As we linger over cases of watches monitored by Murphy and Richard Baugh , RGM's Chief Designer and General Manager. There are no sales, but you sense deals being made, orders being placed. There's a custom made cake designed in the form of Caliber 801. There are refreshments and free gifts.

And there are RGM watches, spanning the new model 801 manual wind model , among the whole collection of RGM watches to be seen. The William Penn tonneau models both in Steel and Gold ; various pilot's watches including the 250 Classic Aviator's model, a particularly sleek and modern variant; and the new 300 Professional Diver;'s watch - an unusually rugged, imposing diver's watch, RGM only producing 100 pieces in the Limited Series of Professional Models. Those with exhibition case backs routinely showcase perlage, cote de geneve decoration and blued, highly finished screws.

Toward the end of the evening Murphy assembles his fans for the showing of a special short film on the "Production of Caliber 801" , a 16-ligne movement he hopes follows in the tradition of the American railroad watches of a century ago, watches that set the standard for elegance and, of course , accuracy. Among his role models: Hamilton ( of course ), Illinois and pocket watches manufactured by the Howard Watch Company of Boston. The Edward Howard model, that company's best, is a particular talisman. "Coming out of the 1800's and into the 1900's, one of the most astonishing things you'd see in American watch making were the high- end railroad watches, very high-quality watches that were stat-of-the-art for the time and beautifully finished," Murphy says that the same morning, when opens his "plant" in Mount Joy to a reporter and photographer. "How things looked was very important: The finishing, the decoration, the shape of the bridges, the quality of the finishing on the steel parts. They also had railroad watches that weren't railroad-issue. Any of their high-grade products were like that."

"American watchmakers, they did make some complications, but that wasn't where the market was," he says, warming to his subject. "The market was really driven at that time by the railroad industry; so as far as complications went, it was time-only, beautifully and solidly made, with wonderfully decorated movements. "Made to last forever" was how they built watches, and that's what we want to do with the 801: make a well built caliber that would outlive me by several generations," he adds.

"As a watchmaker , it's always a dream: Anyone who works with high end watches, especially who is building them, wants his own movement. That's really the heart of the watch. That is where it all starts."

Where it all comes together is 801 West Main Street, the RGM stronghold and the namesake of Murphy's first original movement; it relies on some Swiss parts, including jewels, balance and hairspring, but the bridges and plates are made in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and its all put together right here at RGM.

The RGM office is a former 1920's Ban Building equipped, naturally, with a vault where Murphy stores his watches and parts. The main floor boasts five machines for engine turning. All RGM watches are hand engraved and not stamped, and hand assembled.

A 1913 Leinhart Rose Engine Machine gets the heaviest use. Murphy puts a brass plate into a machine with five rosettes to demonstrate engraving. Watches aren't the only things he applies it to. While he's a watchmaker first and foremost, Murphy is also a catalyst, a self-styled "engine" of other local industry. His company brings together various disciplines to yoke old-style craftsmanship to the most modern technology.

"I love these machines," says Murphy, a Maryland native who attended the Bowman Technical School in Lancaster in the early 80's and then went to work for a large Swiss watch company where he learned about the interchangeability of parts. That's also where he discovered he wanted to create something of his own.

He's also branching out beyond watches. A telephone company has hire him to design high-end bezels using these vintage machines. Also a well known computer firm wants RGM to prototype guilloche samples as well. Still, he'll do the work. "I love to use the engine-turning equipment, so if there's an opportunity to do a few small projects, this will continue to hone our skills as Guillocher's here at RGM. Murphy and Baugh couple such old-world machinery to computer numeric control , or CNC, infusing their classically oriented products with modern technology.

"It all starts with drawings, which are on the computer," Murphy says. "You have to have a design, which you put in the computer. There's a lot of work that goes into making a CAD ( computer-aided design ) program file." That involves an expert writing that program the "tells" the machine how to make a part so "the machine knows which tool to make first," Murphy says.

Murphy and his crew are very busy, busy enough producing 300 to 400 RGM Watches each year, but they also spend at least half of their time servicing and maintaining other high end brands. "Because there are so many watches, there's a severe shortage of people to service them," Murphy says. "half of out business is service and we are always backed up; we never catch up. There are only so many of us who know how to do the work ...right, so even though we have these great demands on us, we can't do them as fast as we would like, Quality not Quantity."

Meanwhile, Murphy and his colleagues will craft watches in their own, singular style, including custom orders. "We do a lot," he says. "Some of them involve taking an existing RGM model and perhaps make a custom dial, or custom hands, custom finishing, or would could build an entirely new watch. It could be a particular function they're looking for, a case style, a certain size." The prices varies by customer desire, and the range is wide, generally between $2,500 and $15,000, though one highly complicated , custom model was priced at $175,000.

"I do not want anything to pull me away from RGM," Murphy says. "Over the next few years, the RGM line will narrow a little bit, but the focus will be more on things like the 801 and variations and building more special things.

"Building things like the 801 takes considerable amount of time than building something using an existing movement," he says, "so something will have to stop."

If the economy continues to worsen, it will affect everyone, he says, "but that's when you have to really focus on doing a good job."