Across ups and downs, it’s uplifting to chronicle the superlatives a city can take pride in. Baltimore, for example, is the site of the first Catholic diocese in the United States. It’s where Samuel Morse sent the first long-distance telegraph in 1844, and where the first electric streetcar line was built.
And here’s one that you might not know: Baltimore is home to the earliest dated watch in the world.
Resting in an unassuming but well-designed wood-and-glass case inside the Collector’s Study of the Walters Art Museum is a golden spherical object known as Melanchthon’s Watch.
Engraved on the bottom of the small sphere is this inscription: “Philip Melanchthon, To God alone the glory, 1530.”
There is no handheld timepiece anywhere in the world with an earlier date.
Who was Philipp Melanchthon?
Philipp Melanchthon, a German, was the closest collaborator of Martin Luther, and one of the most important thinkers in Western theology. In 1530, the same year as the watch was made, Melanchthon published “The Augsburg Confession,” the primary statement of faith for the Lutheran Church.
The watch was either commissioned for him or gifted to him, and the motto engraved on on it is a core slogan of the Protestant Reformation.
What do we know about Melanchthon’s Watch?
The watch was made by Peter Henlein, a Nuremberg clockmaker who is widely credited with inventing the mainspring mechanism that allowed for portable timepieces.
Melanchton’s Watch is built in a style known as pomander, after the perfumed musk balls that wealthy people carried centuries ago to sniff and offer protection against bad air and disease. Inside is an iron movement wound with a key. The watch has only one hand because it only tells hours, and is accurate to roughly the nearest half hour. Only two examples of this type of timepiece remain.
How did the watch come to Baltimore?
A railroad magnate, philanthropist and collector, Henry Walters bought the watch in Paris in 1910 from Jacques Seligmann, an art dealer who fostered American interest in building collections of European art during the gilded age.
When Walters died in 1931, he left a full art collection amassed by him and his father to the City of Baltimore, which created the Walters Art Museum. It has been in the possession of the museum ever since. Henry Walters was “definitely interested in watches,” said Earl Martin, a Walters curator.
According to the @filthyobjects Instagram account which shares tales of unique museum pieces with its 60,000 followers, the watch “sat in an American collection, catalogued and stored, with nobody quite registering what it was. It took later curatorial research to look properly at the engraving on the base.”
The watch was extensively studied in 2014 as part of inquiry known as the Henlein Watch Controversy to identify forgeries and establish Henlein’s place in history. According to the Walters, “scholars concluded that its characteristics are consistent with an attribution to Peter Henlein, responsible for this pioneering development in the history of the time piece and indeed in the history of the hand-held calculating device. So this is the earliest dated calculating device meant to function in the hand.”
Has the watch ever left the museum?
The watch was repaired in 1999, with work done by Hartwig Balke and George Thomas of the Towson Watch Company. During that restoration, according to a blog post on the company’s website, “it became apparent that the movement contained components made of brass, an anomaly for the time period. Additionally, some parts in the movement’s time-train appeared to be installed by a jeweler in a later period, not consistent with the original construction of the 16th century. This led to the realization that Melanchthon’s clock had undergone previous repairs, resulting in the inclusion of non-original parts.” George Thomas did major research, and crafted replacement parts from iron to match the original components.
Melancthon’s Watch has also been lent for exhibits in Germany and Washington, D.C.
What is the historical significance of the timepiece?
Former Walters executive director and CEO Julia Alexander, who died in 2025, said Melanchthon’s Watch was her single favorite object among the 36,000 items in the museum’s collection.
In a 2024 podcast, Alexander noted that watch was made at the height of the Renaissance, as great thinkers like Leonardo Da Vinci were exploring art, science and technology, and an information revolution sparked by Guttenberg’s printing press was underway.
The watch “is a physical manifestation of one of the most significant moments in the history of Western Judeo-Christian society,” Alexander said. “Time was no longer told only by the sun, sundials or churchbells…When I look at this incredible object, I see the actual moment when humankind quite literally took time into its own grasp.”
Can I see the watch?
Admission to the Walters is free, and the watch can be found in its own case in the Collector’s Study on the second floor of the museum. The case was crafted after Alexander’s death in 2025, creating a new home for her favorite object – and one of the hidden jewels of Baltimore.
