The solution began with the adoption of the "lantern-pinion," but the principal difficulty was that which had baffled both Howard and Dennison—the problem of producing the extremely minute separate watch-parts in large quantities by machinery, and yet with such exquisite precision that all parts of one kind should be absolutely interchangeable. By dint of unwearied patience and much scientific research, this problem was finally solved, and it is said that Henry Ford got his idea of quantity-production from the manufacture of the Ingersoll watch. Incidentally, it was demonstrated that low production-costs carry with them high wages. In the field of watchmaking, no element was more necessary than the skill of well-paid workers.
In the meantime, the public was waiting, but it did not know that it was waiting. It was going about its business quite unaware that mechanical and manufacturing problems were being solved in its behalf. There were no eager millions standing about demanding watches in order that their lives might be run more closely upon an efficient schedule. Therefore, simultaneously with the consideration of mechanical and manufacturing problems came those of sale, which will be discussed in the next chapter.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service
If this were purely a story of the development of timepieces as mechanisms, there would be little to add to the preceding chapter, save to detail the refinements and improvements by which a cheap, clumsy, but reliable watch gradually discarded its defects, while retaining its virtues, and the manner in which it developed into a variety of styles and sizes. Essentially, however, this is a story of Man and Time, of human needs as served by timepieces. The most perfect piece of mechanism in a showcase is like a stove without a fire; it is a mere possibility of service, whose value does not begin until it is set to work.
We have arrived, then, at a time when a small percentage of the total population carried accurate timepieces and was able to profit by the more efficient adjustment of its actions thus secured. We have seen how the promising experiment of the Waterbury Watch Company failed in an attempt to equip the masses with watches, principally through defects in its system of distribution, and we have noted the appearance of another low-priced watch dedicated to a similar experiment.
It is obvious, therefore, that if the Ingersoll firm has already been able to place fifty million separate watches in the service of humanity, something unprecedented must have taken place in the all-important field of distribution. It is significant that Robert H. Ingersoll first called his watch the "Universal;" indeed, his chief contribution to the development of the watch is the idea of universality, a word that makes us think more of people than of manufacturers' methods. Having, then, a watch that was universal in its possibilities as well as in name, and being keenly aware, through his own tastes and experiences, of the needs of the vast mass of the public, his greatest problem became that of universal distribution; in short, it was a selling-problem. At first, there could be no definitely formulated plan; various methods must first be tried out. From these experiences there gradually arose an adequate system of reaching the millions of people who needed watches.
In this, Mr. Ingersoll had effective cooperation. He was the pioneer, the salesman, the promoter, the one who knew men in the widest sense and had the faculty of getting results. His brother, Charles H., was the internal administrator and constant counselor. Later, there was added to the firm a nephew, William H., who was both a student and an analyst. He scrutinized trade-tendencies, deduced theories from what he saw, and gave them wide application in actual tests. Together the members of the firm worked out sales-principles of equal opportunity and equal treatment—words that had long constituted a slogan in politics but were something of a novelty as applied to business. In other words, they based their plans upon the consumer rather than upon the factory, and upon the idea of goods sold through the trade rather than to the trade. It took some time, however, to perfect their system of distribution but, when finally developed, it was the outgrowth of wide and varied experience.