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Timex Group USA
Timex Group USA, Inc. (formerly known as Timex Corporation) is an American global watch manufacturing company founded in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1944, the company became insolvent but was reformed into Timex Corporation. In 2008, the company was acquired by Timex Group B.V. and was renamed Timex Group USA.
Thomas Olsen purchased the Waterbury Clock Company in New York in 1941 and renamed it Timex, a portmanteau of the names of Time magazine and Kleenex.
Brass manufacturer Benedict & Burnham created Waterbury Clock Company in 1854 to manufacture clocks using brass wheels and gears. Waterbury Clock Company was legally incorporated on March 27, 1857, as an independent business with $60,000 in capital. The American clock industry was producing millions of clocks with scores of companies located in Connecticut's Naugatuck River Valley, earning the region the nickname "Switzerland of America". The Waterbury Clock Company was one of the largest producers for both domestic sales and export, primarily to Europe.
The company originally produced clocks as less expensive alternatives to the high-end European counterparts of the time. In 1887, they introduced the large Jumbo pocket watch, invented by Archibald Bannatyne and named after the famous P. T. Barnum elephant. The Jumbo was put on the market in New York City on a trial basis, catching the attention of Robert H. Ingersoll, a salesman and eventual marketing pioneer. During the turn of the century, Waterbury Clock Company produced millions of pocket watches for the Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. watch company, in which Robert partnered with his brother Charles. In 1896, Ingersoll introduced the Ingersoll Yankee, a dollar pocket watch supplied by Waterbury Clock Company. These watches gained such great popularity that they became known as "the watch that made the dollar famous."
In 1877, a new prototype was introduced to Benedict and Burnham for an inexpensive pocket watch made of 58 parts, mostly punched sheet brass. They immediately set aside an unused portion of their machine shop and began producing the Long Wind at a rate of 200 per day by 1878. The department quickly outgrew its space in the plant, so Benedict & Burnham incorporated Waterbury Clock's sister company Waterbury Watch Company in 1880 with a capital of $400,000 to manufacture and sell inexpensive watches and other timepieces. Waterbury Watch started out very successfully in its early days, employing hundreds of women for their "slender fingers" and "delicate manipulation", and it became the largest-volume producer of watches in the world by 1888.
Waterbury Watch quickly fell into bankruptcy, however, due to poor sales techniques where "jobbers" and salesmen gave away much of the product as loss leaders with little regard to the company's future, thereby cheapening the products' perceived value. In a last attempt to salvage the company, Waterbury Watch began to produce higher-end watch models which only created more demand on a workforce unable to keep up with the complexity of the new watches using several hundred parts. The company was finally reorganized as the New England Watch Company in 1898, as its London sales office was placed into liquidation. The company continued to focus on high-priced watch models and eventually fell into receivership, discontinuing business in July 1912. Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. bought the Waterbury plant and began manufacturing Ingersoll Watches there in 1914.
World War I brought new demands for timepiece design; artillery gunners, for example, needed an easy way to calculate and read time while still being able to work the guns. The Waterbury Clock Company met this need by modifying their small Ingersoll ladies' Midget pocket watch. They added lugs for a canvas strap, repositioned the crown to 3 o'clock, and made the hands and numbers luminescent for nighttime readability, thus producing one of the first wristwatches.
In 1922, Waterbury Clock Company purchased the Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. company for $1.5 million. The firm had gone bankrupt the previous year due to the post-war recession. However, Waterbury Clock was unable to deliver on Ingersoll's guarantee of quality in Europe due to the Great Depression, so they sold the London-based Ingersoll, Ltd. to its board of directors in 1930, making it a wholly British-owned enterprise. The Ingersoll brand name was continued in the United States by Waterbury Clock into the 1950s, while Ingersoll Ltd. produced the Ingersoll watch brand independently for the European and other markets.
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Timex Group USA
Timex Group USA, Inc. (formerly known as Timex Corporation) is an American global watch manufacturing company founded in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1944, the company became insolvent but was reformed into Timex Corporation. In 2008, the company was acquired by Timex Group B.V. and was renamed Timex Group USA.
Thomas Olsen purchased the Waterbury Clock Company in New York in 1941 and renamed it Timex, a portmanteau of the names of Time magazine and Kleenex.
Brass manufacturer Benedict & Burnham created Waterbury Clock Company in 1854 to manufacture clocks using brass wheels and gears. Waterbury Clock Company was legally incorporated on March 27, 1857, as an independent business with $60,000 in capital. The American clock industry was producing millions of clocks with scores of companies located in Connecticut's Naugatuck River Valley, earning the region the nickname "Switzerland of America". The Waterbury Clock Company was one of the largest producers for both domestic sales and export, primarily to Europe.
The company originally produced clocks as less expensive alternatives to the high-end European counterparts of the time. In 1887, they introduced the large Jumbo pocket watch, invented by Archibald Bannatyne and named after the famous P. T. Barnum elephant. The Jumbo was put on the market in New York City on a trial basis, catching the attention of Robert H. Ingersoll, a salesman and eventual marketing pioneer. During the turn of the century, Waterbury Clock Company produced millions of pocket watches for the Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. watch company, in which Robert partnered with his brother Charles. In 1896, Ingersoll introduced the Ingersoll Yankee, a dollar pocket watch supplied by Waterbury Clock Company. These watches gained such great popularity that they became known as "the watch that made the dollar famous."
In 1877, a new prototype was introduced to Benedict and Burnham for an inexpensive pocket watch made of 58 parts, mostly punched sheet brass. They immediately set aside an unused portion of their machine shop and began producing the Long Wind at a rate of 200 per day by 1878. The department quickly outgrew its space in the plant, so Benedict & Burnham incorporated Waterbury Clock's sister company Waterbury Watch Company in 1880 with a capital of $400,000 to manufacture and sell inexpensive watches and other timepieces. Waterbury Watch started out very successfully in its early days, employing hundreds of women for their "slender fingers" and "delicate manipulation", and it became the largest-volume producer of watches in the world by 1888.
Waterbury Watch quickly fell into bankruptcy, however, due to poor sales techniques where "jobbers" and salesmen gave away much of the product as loss leaders with little regard to the company's future, thereby cheapening the products' perceived value. In a last attempt to salvage the company, Waterbury Watch began to produce higher-end watch models which only created more demand on a workforce unable to keep up with the complexity of the new watches using several hundred parts. The company was finally reorganized as the New England Watch Company in 1898, as its London sales office was placed into liquidation. The company continued to focus on high-priced watch models and eventually fell into receivership, discontinuing business in July 1912. Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. bought the Waterbury plant and began manufacturing Ingersoll Watches there in 1914.
World War I brought new demands for timepiece design; artillery gunners, for example, needed an easy way to calculate and read time while still being able to work the guns. The Waterbury Clock Company met this need by modifying their small Ingersoll ladies' Midget pocket watch. They added lugs for a canvas strap, repositioned the crown to 3 o'clock, and made the hands and numbers luminescent for nighttime readability, thus producing one of the first wristwatches.
In 1922, Waterbury Clock Company purchased the Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. company for $1.5 million. The firm had gone bankrupt the previous year due to the post-war recession. However, Waterbury Clock was unable to deliver on Ingersoll's guarantee of quality in Europe due to the Great Depression, so they sold the London-based Ingersoll, Ltd. to its board of directors in 1930, making it a wholly British-owned enterprise. The Ingersoll brand name was continued in the United States by Waterbury Clock into the 1950s, while Ingersoll Ltd. produced the Ingersoll watch brand independently for the European and other markets.