5/4/2023 0 Comments Timex pocket watchThe so-called “Quartz Crisis” began in the early 1970s with the arrival of cheap mechanical watches from new Asian companies, which then was further exacerbated by the advent of quartz-powered digital watches from some of these new players on the scene. The unforeseen success of this new watch led the company to change its name in 1969, and thus, the Timex Corporation came to be.īut Timex and the rest of the watch industry were in for a nasty shock. By the early 1960s, one in three watches sold was a Timex. The Timex watch would be the cheapest watch on the market, thanks to clever manufacturing practices and those wartime innovations we previously mentioned.Ĭlever advertising helped too, and Timex became known as the “watch that takes a licking and keeps on ticking.” TV spots showed Timex watches being submitted to “torture tests,” which proved that the watches could withstand all manner of torment and keep on trucking. The heads of the United States Time Corporation fully devoted themselves to lowering costs as much as possible. Though the Timex label was first used on a limited run of nurses’ watches during WWII, the first proper Timex watch appeared in 1950. ![]() The company’s war research ended up benefitting their watch designs, especially the use of armalloy, a new hard alloy that could be taken from wartime missile bearings and used to replace the costly jewels traditionally used in watches. But this business could last only as long as the war and when aggressions petered out during the Korean War, USTC reverted to their original business model-watch manufacturing. However the brand wasn’t focusing on watches, but rather on precision timers for bomb fuses. The Second World War would also be extremely lucrative for The United States Time Corporation as the brand became known in 1944. Ever heard of it? The deal was first made public in 1933 at the Chicago World’s Fair and the Mickey Mouse watches and clocks became the company’s first-ever million-dollar line. The Great Depression could have proved disastrous to the brands that would eventually become Timex, if not for a 1930 deal with a little company called Disney. ![]() Poor salesmanship and overall mismanagement caused Waterbury Watch to fall into bankruptcy. ![]() Back in Waterbury, Benedict and Burnham had introduced a new prototype for a watch with cheap, brass pieces and were soon selling these little pocket watches like crazy, but all was not well. WCC’s teamwork with Ingersoll was a huge success, but they were about to get too big for their britches. Some folks even said that this was “the watch that made the dollar famous.” An early victory came with the partnership with Ingersoll Watch Company, a team effort that began after Robert Ingersoll and his brother noticed the immense success of WCC’s first big hit, the pocket watch known as “Jumbo.” The fruitful partnership came to a head in 1896 with the release of the Ingersoll Yankee, a pocket watch that broke ground for its sheer affordability: these babies cost a single dollar! Sure, a dollar had quite a different value back in those days, but Timex, under the Ingersoll name established itself as the super-budget option for folks in need of a watch.
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