Founded by Jack Linahan in 1897, Star  was originally the Illinois Watch Case Co., located in Elgin, Illinois.  After a fire in 1905 the company was relocated to Ludington, Michigan. In 1906 the company became Star Watch Case Co.   Forty years later, the company occupied 75,000 square feet of factory and office space.  Employment peaked at around 550 in the late 40's dropping down to about 400 in the early 70's, when Star was making cases for the Pulsar.  In 1948 Star merged with Schwaibold & Northman but retained the Star name.  Edgar (Ed) Schwaibold became the director until he purchased the company in 1972.  In 1979 the company was sold to Precision Watch Case.  Precision was a US subsidiary of SSIH of Switzerland.  This was the same company who owned Omega and had previously purchased Hamilton Watch Co. from HMW (Hamilton).  Efforts to continue making watch cases ended in 1982 when the plant was closed.

Star specialized in high-end cases, including solid gold, gold filled, and silver.  Interestingly, they always kept $200,000 worth of 24k gold bars in their vault. It was then reduced to a lower karat by mixing alloys. The factory had a rolling mill for producing gold fill.  Like making dough, rolling two metals at very high pressure, it reduced the thickness of the two metals to one fifth.  When the exact thickness was achieved, it went into an oven to anneal (bond) the metals.

During the Pulsar era, Schwaibold personally was involved with Hamilton.  Many existing documents are signed by Mr. Schwaibold.  Star made all the solid gold and gold filled watch cases for Time Computer, including the Omega and Hamilton LED cases that housed the Pulsar modules. Only some stainless cases were made by other watch case companies.  It should be noted that Star, like other case making companies only made cases, bracelets were a separate trade and were not made at Star.

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