The Hamilton Watch Company originally manufactured this splendid pocket watch in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1929 — the same year that the first guide dog school opened in the United States. Dorothy Harrison Eustis and Elliot S. Humphrey opened the The Seeing Eye guide dog school in Nashville, Tennessee. Some German schools had already experimented using dogs to guide the visually impaired during World War I, when numerous German soldiers suffered injuries that caused partial or total blindness. Eustis learned about the Germans’ use of guide dogs while running a German shepherd breeding and training facility in Vevey, Switzerland. She wrote an article about the German seeing eye dogs called “The Seeing Eye.” The article was a big hit, and many visually impaired individuals reached out to Eustis in the hopes of obtaining a guide dog. A blind man named Morris Frank convinced Eustis to help him obtain a seeing eye dog so that he could become more independent.

Eustis didn’t yet have any experience working with guide dogs, but she and fellow trainer and geneticist Elliot S. Humphrey got to work researching and training guide dogs. They supplied Morris Frank with one of the first guide dogs, and they opened their facility in Frank's hometown — Nashville. The Seeing Eye remains one of the largest guide dog schools in the United States, and today, it’s located in Morristown, New Jersey.