Time Telling through the Ages

by Harry Chase Brearley

This picture shows one corner of the huge plants which produce twenty thousand Ingersoll watches a day.

"Everyone wishes to tell time," it said. "There is not one of the millions who crowd the cities, travel the highways, or spread over the country districts, who does not wish repeatedly during his waking-hours to know what time it is. Sometimes he is in sight of a clock, but more often he is not. Here and there is a man with a watch in his pocket. That man has a chance to be efficient; but good watches cost money, and most people cannot afford them. Here am I, a tiny little ticking clock; I am a good timekeeper and I am cheap. Make me a little smaller, sell me for a dollar, and you can put the time into everyone's pocket."

At this point, the non-technical man, who knew nothing about watches, but who understood human needs, realized that something had happened; he pondered deeply and began to investigate. He took the little clock to a machinist in Ann Street, New York, and together they studied the possibility of reducing it in thickness and diameter. Presently it was discovered that both the New Haven and the Waterbury Clock Companies had already produced articles that embodied these conditions. This somewhat checked enthusiasm until it was recalled that neither of these products was an especial factor in the time-telling field. The manufacturers had merely made mechanisms; they had not grasped the Big Idea of universal service.

The timepiece of the Waterbury Company was the smaller, and Robert Ingersoll decided to test his mail-order market, buying first, one thousand clock-watches at eighty-five cents each, and afterward contracting for ten thousand more. These articles were offered in the mail-order catalog for 1892 at a dollar each, for the sake of price-uniformity with the other dollar specialties upon which the firm was concentrating. This was done, however, in a small way. It was not desired to sell too many on such an unprofitable margin, but merely to test the dollar-watch idea, hoping that manufacturing charges might ultimately be brought down through quantity production.

These so-called "watches" must not be confused with the Waterbury watch; that, as already described, had been the output of another company. The "watches" marketed by the Ingersolls and bearing their name were in reality thick, noisy, sturdy little pocket-clocks, wound from the back. They were crude and clumsy affairs compared with present-day styles but were, nevertheless, reliable timekeepers.

The public responded to the idea of dollar watches, although these proved to sell faster in gilt cases than in nickel, and still faster when a five-cent gilt chain was added. The next year, came the World's Fair in Chicago and the odd little mechanism with an appropriate design stamped upon its cover attracted some attention from the visitors.

Thus was born the Ingersoll watch, although it bore slight resemblance to the watch of to-day. This is due to the fact that an immediate policy of experiment and improvement was inaugurated. During these changes, however, several points remained fixed. One of these was that the watch must be in no respect a plaything, but a practical accurate timekeeper, not liable easily to get out of order. The second was the definite association with the price of one dollar, so that it became possible to refer to it humorously as "the watch that made the dollar famous;" and the third was that it should have a sturdy ruggedness of construction that would defy ordinary hard usage.

Each of these points had its social value—that of the last-named being the fact that the dollar price put the possession of a real timepiece within the reach of multitudes who were engaged in forms of activity wherein a delicate timepiece would be apt to get out of order.

The Ingersolls soon became convinced that they had a worthy object for promotion, and they did not entertain the slightest doubt as to the existence of a waiting public. There passed before their minds a picture of the millions of farm-boys who did not know when it was time to come into dinner, of the millions of working-men who had nothing to guide them in reaching the factory on time, of millions of clerks and school-children and of still other millions comprising the bulk of American homes where more good timepieces were needed.

Their problem, therefore, resolved itself into two main divisions—those of manufacture and those of sale. The manufacturing end involved a contract with the great plant of the Waterbury Clock Company, by which this factory was to produce the goods according to the specifications and under the name, trade-mark, and patents of the Ingersolls. This arrangement continues to this day, but has been supplemented, as the line has become more extended, by the acquirement of two factories of their own, one in Waterbury, Connecticut, and one in Trenton, New Jersey. To-day the three plants produce an aggregate of about twenty thousand watches a day. Before such manufacturing results could be obtained, however, there were many structural problems to be solved. It was not so easy as it sounds to build a practical and accurate watch within the narrow limits of a dollar and still leave a profit for both the manufacturer and dealer.