 Chapter 12 of Time Telling Through the Ages. Time Telling Through the Ages by Harry Chase Brearley. Chapter 12. How an American Industry Came on Horseback. At last the clock industry came to America and it came on horseback. If you had been upon a dusty country road in Connecticut about the year 1800, you might have seen a plainly dressed young man come rinding along with a clock strapped to each side of his saddle and the third fastened crossfires behind him. Hello, Eli Terry. You might have heard some farmers sing out as the rider drew near. Hello, Silas. The other would call back. Don't you think it's about time you bought a clock? Can't afford it, Eli. It takes me a long time to make forty dollars raising wheat. Yes, but you can't afford to be without one, Silas. And, dismounting, he would unstrap one of the clocks and bring it up to the stone wall. Then would follow the period of bargaining so dear to the shrewd, hard-headed sons of Connecticut. Perhaps, when young Terry climbed back into the saddle and set git up, one of his clocks would stay behind with the farmer. Like most successful salesmen, Terry was a close observer of human nature. He knew that habits once formed hard-hard to break. He discovered early that if a prospective customer could be made to depend upon a clock for telling time, the clock would soon sell itself. One day, during a rainstorm, he sought refuge in a farmer's home. He brought in one of his clocks and placed it on the mantle over the fireplace, explaining that he would like to leave it there, where it would not get wet, while he continued on his journey. I'll be back for it in a few days, he said, as he waved goodbye. When Terry returned, some days later, the farmer realized that the clock, which he had first regarded as an extravagance, had somehow become a necessity. And, with no urging on Terry's part, the sale was quickly completed. Some of the original clocks are still running in the very farmhouses where Eli Terry succeeded in selling them, and where they have ticked off the minutes of American history since the days of Adams and Jefferson. They were truly remarkable clocks, in spite of the fact that their works were cut out of hard wood with country tools and put together by a carpenter. The first American clocks were made of wood, and most of the early clockmakers were at first carpenters. We have seen clockmakers developing from priests and astronomers and blacksmiths and locksmiths and jewelers, but here is a new gateway to the trade. This came about naturally enough in a country where the cheapest and most plentiful material was wood, and where the carpenter and joiner was accustomed to constructing every possible thing of it. Eli Terry of Connecticut was one of the best known of these early New England craftsmen. He was born in East Windsor just a few years before the revolution. By the time that he was 20, he had made a few clocks, cutting the wheels out of hard wood with saw and vial and making wooden hands, dials and cases. Then he moved to Plymouth, not far from Waterbury, and set up a small shop where he employed several workmen. They would make a dozen or two at a time, entirely by hand. Then Terry would take these out and sell them, sometimes as far as the new country, across the New York state line. It took a long time to make a clock in this way, even for fingers that were as clever as Terry's, and it is no wonder that he was compelled to charge from 20 to 40 dollars a piece, a sum which by the way would be equal to at least four times as much today, according to the difference in the purchasing power of money. We must remember too that the family then bought its clock as it bought a wagon or a spinning wheel, almost as a man buys his house today. Certainly it was a far more important transaction relatively than the purchase of a motor car. Probably if one could have overheard some of these roadside clock sales, it would have been noted that the bargaining was not all upon one side, for there was not a great deal of money in circulation and people were very apt to swap. Likely as not Terry would have to take his payment in lumber, in clothing or in some other commodity, and these in turn he would dispose of when an opportunity presented itself. This was more or less the type of the old horseback-yunky trader of the days when men still remembered the Revolutionary War. These were the days when a man who produced some one thing was reinforced in order to realize on its value to trade it for almost anything else. When we think of the early American timepiece, we generally picture to ourselves the so-called grandfather's clock, the kind was the tall case which Longfellow wrote about as standing on a turning in the stair and ticking away, forever, never, never, forever, as it marks the passage of the years. But Eli Terry, the first of all American clockmakers, could not well carry such a big contrivance with him on his horseback trips. Therefore, while he made the works for these clocks, he left it for other people to construct the cases. The clocks which he sold complete were those which could stand upon a shelf or hang upon the wall. After a time, his orders increased to a point where he felt justified in moving into an old water power mill and rigging machinery to do some parts of the work. Thus we find machinery used in American clockmaking almost from the beginning of the industry. Terry was thus a real manufacturer. He had grasped the importance of machine production in contrast to hand craftsmanship. The move paid. It cut the cost of making nearly in half and greatly increased the output. He now could afford to sell his clocks more cheaply and the business grew at once. After a while, he began to make clocks in lots of one or two hundred and then indeed his neighbors shook their heads gravely. You are losing your mind, Eli, they told him in solemn warning. The first thing you know, the country will be so full of clocks that there will be no market for them. You are getting reckless and ruining your business. But Eli Terry followed his own judgment instead of that of the Crokers. Before he died, he was making ten or twelve thousand clocks in a year and was selling them too. They brought him a fortune. Thus was the industry of making timepieces born in America. It began in New England, which is still the chief center of manufacture and it began with clocks not watches for the simple reason that in those days a watch was a luxury where as a clock was a necessity. Like the watch industry in Switzerland, American clock making was an active business from the start and as we have seen, the man with whom it started was a typically Yankee combination of ingenious mind, skillful fingers and a knack for business. Of course, the conditions of life in America at that time had a great deal to do with methods used in building up the industry. Instead of a civilization centuries old that had wealth, rank, royalty and a complete organization of all methods of living, here was a new country learning to do things in its own way. It is hard for us to imagine the conditions which prevailed when our whole population was a mere fringe of scattered settlements along the Atlantic seaboard when people made long trips on horseback or by stagecoach and men wore powdered wigs and knickerbockers. When New York was a small town on the lower end of Manhattan Island and Chicago had not even been dreamed of. Still, it was necessary to tell time and our thrifty ancestors' needs must watch the minutes in order to save them as thriftily as they saved everything else. Not one person out of hundreds in a country where a living must be wrung from the soil by means of hard work could afford to own anything so expensive as a watch. But everyone felt it necessary to have a clock if possible and it became one of the greatest treasures of the home. This then was the market in which Terry and those who followed him had to sell. It was a market that could not afford to pay for ornament but desired practical service at low cost. What was needed, therefore, was a clock that would keep time and cost not a cent more than was absolutely necessary. The American industry was forced to start upon a basis entirely different from that of Europe. As Eli Terry's business grew, he needed assistance and he secured the help of a young mechanic named Cess Thomas from West Haven and the two worked together for some time. The name of Cess Thomas has appeared upon so many clock dials that it is perhaps the best known name in all American clock making. He was a good mechanic and a good businessman and he had ideas of his own about increasing trade. In the course of time, about the year 1800, he and a man named Silas Hodley bought the original Terry factory in the old mill and set up business for themselves. Terry, however, established himself elsewhere and continued to manufacture clocks. Thus the industry was growing. There were now two factories instead of one. Cess Thomas prospered by adopting each popular fashion or improvement in clocks as it came along and applying it upon as large a scale and as honestly and well as could be done. He built up such a reputation that even today, while the name of Cess Thomas on a clock face does not suggest any particular form or style of clock, it is associated with good timekeeping and honest workmanship. The third of the famous old New England clockmakers was Sean C. Jerome. He was a man younger than Terry and Thomas by nearly a generation. Like both of his predecessors, he was brought up to the carpenter's trade and like both of them, he was born New England trader. But of the three, Jerome was perhaps most the inventor and least the man of business. As a boy, he worked for Cess Thomas when Thomas was still building barns and houses. He worked for Eli Terry in the old shop at Plymouth. Then, after a period of soldiering in the war of 1812, he went back to clockmaking, sometimes manufacturing by himself and sometimes associated with one or the other of the two older men or in other firms and enterprises, two numbers to follow. Always he seems to have been somewhat of a rolling stone, although in his time he gathered as much moss as the best of them. Always he was inclined to experiment with new ideas. Jerome's carpenting skill caused him to be first interested in the making of cases and most of the familiar forms of old American clocks, the square clock with pillars at the corners and a scroll top, the clock with a mirror underneath the dial and the like, were designed by Terry and Jerome between them. Later on, when the establishment of brass foundries in Waterbury and Bristol had enabled American makers to construct their work of brass instead of wood, Jerome worked out a design for a brass one-day timepiece in a wooden case, small enough for easy transportation and cheaper than any clock ever made up to that time. Its price at first, near the place of manufacture, was only five or six dollars, but afterwards this was reduced. This low-priced clock was as remarkable in its way as was the dollar watch, which it foreshadowed. Unlike the watch, it would not have been possible except through machine work and quantity production. It was a success at once and Jerome's business rapidly increased. In 1840 he was established in Bristol, turning out the new clocks by the thousand and rapidly making a fortune. A year or two later he decided to send a consignment of them to England. Again, people shook their heads and prophesied failure. You're losing your mind, Shancie, they told him as they had told Eli Terry before him. The older wooden movements could not, of course, endure a sea voyage without swelling and becoming useless. A brass movement could, of course, be sent anywhere and some of the more expensive ones had been shipped to all parts of the country. Yet it seemed absurd enough to send American clocks to England where labour was so cheap to England which was then the chief clockmaker of the world. Nevertheless, Jerome persevered and his son sailed for London with the cargo of the cheap clocks. At first the English trade would have none of them. No clock so cheap could possibly be good, they said, and Connecticut was the home of the wooden nutmegs. It was only after great difficulty that they were introduced. Young Jerome got rid of the first few by leaving them about in retail stores asking no payment for them until sold. The enterprise was saved by an event which was a joke in itself. The English Revenue Law at that time permitted the owner of imported goods to fix their taxable value. But the government could take any such property upon payment of a sum 10% greater than the owner's valuation. Jerome's clocks were valued at their wholesale price and were presently seized by the customs officials on the ground that this valuation was fraudulently low. The elder Jerome chuckled upon learning of this. He was well satisfied to have closed out his first cargo at 10% profit and at once sent over another shipment which was taken over by the customs as promptly as the first. But by the time the third consignment arrived enough of the clocks had been sold to establish a demand for them among the retailers and the officials finally conceded that the low price might be a reasonable one after all. Jerome was not at the height of his prosperity. He had the largest and probably the most profitable clock business in the country and in the few years following his product was exported to all parts of the world. Then the Bristol factory burned down and he moved to New Haven where the Jerome manufacturing company enjoyed a brief period of great success. The business was constantly extended and the wholesale price of the cheap brass clocks was brought as low as 75 cents. This figure seems almost impossibly low for the time but the authority for it is Jerome's own autobiography. A few years before the Civil War the Jerome company failed and curiously enough this failure came about through its connection with that usually successful man P. T. Barnum, the famous showman. The story is too much complicated to be given here in detail but it seems that Barnum had become heavily interested in a smaller clock company which was merged with the Jerome concern. The overvaluation of its stock combined with mismanagement and speculation among the officials of the Jerome company served to drive the whole business into bankruptcy. Barnum lost heavily and it took him years to clear up his obligations. Jerome never did recover from it. After some years of failing power in the employ of other manufacturers he died in comparative poverty. His long and eventful life spans the whole growth of the American clock business from the days of Eli Terry and his hand-sold wooden movements down to the maturity of the modern business supplying by factory methods and the use of specialized machinery millions of clocks to all parts of the world. He had made clocks all over Connecticut in Plymouth, Farmington, Bristol, New Haven and Waterbury as well as in Massachusetts and for a time in South Carolina and Virginia. He had worked with his hands for Terry and Cess Thomas at the old wooden wheels and the neared cases which were pedaled about the country and sold for $30 or $40 each to be the treasured timekeepers of many households and he had headed a modern factory turning out dollar clocks with the tens of thousands. It is said that the child in the first few years of its life lives briefly through the whole evolution of civilized mankind that infant industry, American clock-marking likewise in the short space of 50 years passed through most of the steps of the whole growth of time recording between the Middle Ages and our own era. This country stands now among the leading clock-making nations of the world. Its product is famous in every land and a timepiece from Waterbury or New Haven may mark the minutes in the town from which Gerbert was banished for sorcery because he made a time machine or in that land between the rivers where the Babylonians first looked out upon the stars. Most of the American clocks are still made in Connecticut. In fact, more than 80% of the whole world's supply excluding the German comes from the Nogotuk Wally. The New Haven Clock Company which is the successor of the Jerome Company is today one of the largest. As far back as 1860 it was producing some 200,000 clocks a year. The Cess Thomas Company and others of the historic concerns are still at work in various portions of the state. And the Benedict Burnham Company with which at one time Chauncey Jerome was associated became the Waterbury Clock Company now regarded as the largest clock producer and of which we shall hear more later on. The keynote of the whole development was that new principle which American invention prompted and stimulated by the pressing necessities of a new nation brought into the business of time recording the principle of marvelously cheapening production costs without loss of efficiency through the systematic employment of machinery on a large scale. As long as the inventive brains and the technical knowledge of the old-time craftsman found expression only through his own fingers the results would be limited to his individual production and the costs would be proportionately high. When, however, the mastermind was able to operate through rows of machines each under the supervision of a mechanic trained to its particular function his inventive genius was provided with 10,000 hands and 100,000 fingers. Furthermore, the production gained in quality as well as in quantity because of specialization all the time its costs were in process of reduction. This perhaps has been America's chief contribution not only to the making of timepieces but also to the world's industry in general. End of CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. America learns to make watches While Eli Terry was sawing wood for his curious clocks back in the early days of the 19th century Luther Goddard, America's first watch manufacturer was preaching the gospel to the town and country folk in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Between sermons he repaired watches. Although we can find no record of such a meeting it is easy to imagine that while plodding along some dusty country road preacher Goddard met Terry jogging along with his cumbersome wooden clocks hanging from his saddle. The thought may have come to the minister mechanic that it would be much easier to pedal watches than clocks. Whatever may have been the prompting we find as a matter of record that in the year 1809 while Terry was making and peddling his clocks Luther Goddard set up a small watchmaking shop in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts the place of his birth. He employed watchmakers who had learned their trade in England. At that time there was a law in force which prohibited the importation of foreign-made watches into America and this gave Goddard his chance. But in 1815 when the law was repealed and the American market was quickly flooded with cheaper if not better watches from abroad he was forced to retire from the field. During those few years he had produced about five hundred watches. Discouraged by his venture into worldly affairs he turned again to his former occupation of preacher and evangelist and consoled himself with the remark that he had here a profession high above his secular vocation. In those days protection and free trade had not yet become the rival rallying cries of two great political parties otherwise we might have found this early manufacturer entering politics instead of the pulpit. While he is credited with manufacturing the first American watches however it is doubtful whether he and his workmen really did more than to assemble imported parts. More than twenty years now passed before another effort was made to produce watches in America this time by two brothers Henry and James F. Pitkin of Hartford, Connecticut. In 1838 they brought out a watch most of the parts of which were made by machinery and proved more or less a failure. After a brief struggle they gave up in discouragement. Henry Pitkin died in 1845 and his brother a few years later. While the Pitkin brothers were struggling with their problem in Hartford Jacob D. Custer of Norristown, Pennsylvania was engaged in a similar task. He succeeded in making a few watches in 1940 and 1845 thus gaining his niche in history as the third American watch manufacturer. But all of these were merely forerunners for now they're stepped upon the stage a young man whose ability and perseverance were destined to launch American watchmaking fairly upon its way. This young man was born in Hingham, Massachusetts in 1813 and his name was Edward Howard. It was born in him to be an inventive and ingenious craftsman and to feel toward the mechanism of timekeeping the devotion of an artist to his art. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to Aaron Willard Jr. of Roxbury one of the cleverest clockmakers of his time. Young Howard took to clockmaking as naturally as a Gloucester man takes to the sea. Some of the clocks he then made are still ticking as vigorously as ever. Having presently learned all he cared to know about clockmaking he cast about for other fields of action. His bent as he himself said quote was all for the finer and more delicate mechanism end quote and it was natural that these qualities of the watch should absorb his interest. It was equally natural since he was an American clockmaker at a time when that trade was being revolutionized by machine work that he should dream of applying such methods to the watch. One difficulty I found he is quoted as saying was that watchmaking did not exist in the United States as an industry. There were watchmakers so called at that time and there are great numbers of the same kind now but they never made a watch. Their business being only to clean and repair. I knew from experience that there was no proper system employed in making watches. The work was all done by hand. Now hand work is superior in many of the arts because it allows variation according to the individuality of the worker. But in the exquisitely fine wheels and screws and pinions that make up the parts of a watch the less variation the better. Some of these parts are so fine as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. A variation of one five thousandths of an inch would throw the watch out altogether or make it useless as a timepiece. As I say all of these minute parts were laboriously cut and filed out by hand so it will readily be understood that in watches purporting to be of the same size and of the same makers there are no two alike and there was no interchangeability of parts. Consequently it was cut and try. A great deal of time was wasted and many imperfections resulted. Howard's ambition lay in the production of a perfect watch for its own sake and he wanted to make it by machinery believing that in that way it could be made most perfectly. Other people had thought of the same thing. Pitkin had attempted it and there had been some experiments of like nature in Switzerland but the man who loves his work as Howard did will succeed in anything short of the impossible because neither time nor labor neither failure nor discouragement matter at all to him as against the hope of making his dream come true. As Howard was emerging into young manhood the great period of American invention was rapidly developing. Morse was struggling with the electric telegraph which he invented and perfected in 1835 and Goodyear was busy with machinery and processes for enabling rubber used commercially thus laying the foundation for one of the greatest American industries of today. Ingenuity was in the air and invention was conquering realms that had been believed beyond reach. When people told Howard that it was absurd to think of improving upon the manual skill of centuries he answered that he expected to make his machinery by hand and when they said that a machine for watchmaking would be more wonderful than the watch itself he only laughed and agreed that this might be so. Today we are familiar with such phrases as standardized parts and quantity production which explained to us how it is possible for a single factory to produce millions of watches in a year or for another kind of plant to turn out half a million automobiles in a like period. The way in which quantity production came about is curiously interesting. Watchmaking received one of its greatest impulses from a famous American inventor who probably would have been amazed had anyone told him that his idea upon quite another subject would someday help to put watches into millions of pockets. There is no particular connection between a cotton gin and the quantity production of watches but it is interesting to know that the same ingenious brain which designed the one also unconsciously suggested the other. Late in the 18th century Eli Whitney gained lasting fame as the inventor of a machine which would automatically separate the seeds from the fiber of crude cotton a machine which revolutionized the cotton industry of the south. In 1798 Whitney secured a contract to manufacture rifles for the government. He decided that they could be made much more rapidly and cheaply if he could find some way to produce all the separate parts in large quantities by machinery and then merely assemble the various parts into the completed weapon. The inventive mind which was capable of devising the cotton gin found this new problem to be comparatively simple and it was not long before Whitney was making thousands of rifles from machine-made standardized parts where only one could be made before. Half a century later his machinery was still turning out rifles parts in the great arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts and it was not until this period that it exerted a distinct influence upon watchmaking. While Howard in Roxbury was dreaming of producing watches by machinery another young man, Aaron L. Denison of Boston was also obsessed with the same dream and grappling with the same problem. It is therefore not strange that the paths of these two soon crossed. Born in Freeport, Maine, 1812 Denison was just a year older than Howard. He was an expert watch repairer and watch assembler having learned his craft among the Swiss and the English workmen in New York and Boston. The year 1845 found him adopting a small watch and jewelry business in Boston. Some few years earlier Denison had visited friends in Springfield, Massachusetts and while there he was taken to one of the interesting show places of the town the Springfield Arsenal. As he made his slow progress through the Great Rifle Factory he marveled at the wonderful machinery and the system which had originated in the brain of Eli Whitney nearly half a century before. Whitney was dead and gone but his works still lived. Denison returned to Boston fired with an ambition to apply the Whitney system and methods of rifle making to the manufacture of watches. He brooded over the scheme for years constructing a paste board model of his imaginary watch factory and planning in detail its organization. Then occurred a meeting that was to make history a meeting marking the first step in founding a great American industry and resting from Europe and Great Britain the watchmaking monopoly which they had continuously held since the days of the Nuremberg egg. Denison met Howard and the contact of the two minds was like the meeting of flint and steel. Denison shared Howard's belief that watch parts could be made better and more accurately by the use of machines. He had the watchmaking experience and Howard the mechanical skill to design the new machinery. One may imagine how the two young men inspired each other. They had the ideas. All they now needed was the capital and this was supplied in 1848 by Mr. Samuel Curtis who backed them to the extent of $20,000. Denison immediately went abroad to study methods in England and Switzerland and came back more than ever convinced of the soundness of their own ideas. I have examined, said he, watches made by a man whose reputation at this moment is far beyond that of any other watchmaker in Great Britain and have found in them such workmanship as I should blush to have it supposed had passed from under my hands in our own lower grade of work. Of course, I do not mean to say that there is not work in these watches of the highest grade possible but errors do creep in and are allowed to pass the hands of competent examiners. And it needs but slight acquaintance with our art to discover that the lower grade of foreign watches are hardly as mechanically correct in their construction as a common wheelbarrow. On his return in 1850 he and Howard established themselves in a small factory in Roxbury under the name of the American Hurologe Company and that little factory was the foundation of what is now the great establishment of the Waltham Watch Company the first and hence the oldest watch company in America and the parent concern of most of the rest. It was perhaps at this time that an employee, one P.S. Bartlett returned to his hometown on a visit and was asked by his old neighbors what he had been doing. I am working, said he, for a company which makes seven complete watches in a day. Great was the merriment at this reply. Why, where on earth could you sell seven watches a day, they shouted. With the advent of the factory the real troubles of Denison and Howard began. It is worthwhile to glance for a moment at the problem which lay before them if only to appreciate its difficulty. The old plan was to have a model watch made by hand by a master workman. This watch was then taken apart and its separate part distributed for reproduction by a multitude of specialized workers involving perhaps some forty or fifty minor trades. These parts, hand-made after a hand-made model were then returned to the expert who assembled and adjusted them. At the worst this resulted in gross error at the best in individual variation. A part from one watch could not be expected to fit and work accurately in another although the two were supposed to be alike in all their parts. The new idea was first to lay out the whole design on paper and then to make the various parts by machinery according to the exact design. It was supposed that a machine making one part would duplicate that part repeatedly without variation that in so far as the machines themselves were accurate the parts produced would necessarily be interchangeable. That any set of parts could therefore be assembled without fitting or alteration. The finished watch it was assumed would require adjustment only. Theoretically this idea was correct. Practically it could not be perfectly carried out and the results did not fulfill the hopes of the manufacturers. In the first place there were not in existence any machines of the required delicacy and precision. Every one must first be invented then designed then made and finally adjusted for practical operation. Even so and notwithstanding the great mechanical achievements of the company the results never succeeded in realizing the dreams of Howard and Denison of absolute interchangeability of parts. It remained for the Ingersoll organization many years later to develop such a factory system. Before Howard and Denison could make a single watch therefore they had to invent all the mechanism and themselves build and install every invention. Moreover, several of the processes had to be worked out from the ground up. There was nobody in America who understood watch-guilding for example or who could make dials or jewels. Thus they set to work developing the machinery as fast as they could do so and imported such parts as they themselves could not yet make. It was a staggering task and a discouraging devourer of capital. I do not think said Denison many years later there were seven times in the seven years we were together that we had money enough to pay all our employees at the time their wages were due. Very often we would find ourselves without any cash on hand but Mr. Howard would manage some way to produce enough to tide over with. The two men made a perfect team eager to give each other credit and each having unbounded loyalty and confidence in the other and in their enterprise. But curiously enough it was Howard the artist and dreamer who seems to have developed into the businessman of the two in addition to being the inventor and engineer whereas Denison the expert watch repairer became the designer and originator of plans. It was said of him long afterward that there was probably never an idea in American watchmaking that had not at some time passed through Mr. Denison's resourceful mind. He is known to many as the father of the American watch industry. Although he insisted that Howard deserved the title as much if not more than he. Denison schemed out what was to be done while Howard found the money and invented the machinery with which to do it. Their first model an eight day watch was Denison's idea. It was found to be impracticable and was soon abandoned in favor of a one day model. The name of the company had to be changed because it did not find favor with some of the English firms from whom they bought certain parts. They called it the Warren Manufacturing Company for a time and their first few watches were marked with this name. Later on they moved to a new factory at Wolfham and incorporated under the name of the Wolfham Improvement Company. It was while the act for its incorporation was before the Massachusetts Legislature that some wag there produced the couplet, a patent watch which air it goes besides the hands must have the eyes and nose. All this time the tools and machinery were giving trouble. There were innumerable difficulties. For example New England workmen objected to cutting the pinion leaves because they were shaped like a bishop's miter and financial pressure was always upon them. The building was one of the earliest attempts at concrete construction and was far from stable in stormy weather. Mr. Hull, afterward foreman in the dial room said often in those days we would jump from our stools when we felt something jar for fear the building would fall down. Somehow it never did. In 1854 the name was changed again. This time the American watch company. Incidentally Mr. Denison took his place among the large and honorable company of inventors who have been called insane. He earned that title by saying that they would eventually make as many as fifty watches a day. The company now makes between two thousand and three thousand a day. Just as they were on the point of a richly deserved success the panic in 1857 drove the young company into bankruptcy. The plant was purchased by Royal E. Robbins of the firm of Robbins and Appleton watch importers. Howard went back to the old factory at Roxbury taking with him a few trained workmen and patiently started all over again. He succeeded at last in producing really fine watches although in small numbers and his new business as we shall see later developed into the E. Howard clock company and practically abandoned the manufacture of watches. Meanwhile the Walfam factory under good business management and with Denison as its superintendent was safely steered past the financial rocks and shoals of the period and began gradually to reap the reward of its less fortunate efforts. It was the civil war with its great military demand for watches which first set the Walfam company squarely upon its feet by justifying quantity production. A dividend of 5% was declared in 1860 and one of 150% in 1866 the short-lived Nashua watch company having meanwhile been absorbed. Since that date its name has been twice changed first to the American Walfam watch company and then to the Walfam watch company which is now its title. At the present day the Walfam company employs nearly 4,000 people and produces about 68,000 complete watch movements a month or over 3 quarters of a million a year. This output is made possible only through the extensive employment of automatic machines all of which have been invented and manufactured at the Walfam factory. Even now it is not possible to buy watchmaking machinery ready made in the open market. It is all special work designed and often built by the watch manufacturers themselves and the development of this great industry employing at first crude devices operated for the most part by hand power to the complex automatic mechanism which seems to act almost with human intelligence has been a marvelous achievement. The company now makes 10 different sizes of regular movements in more than a hundred different grades and styles. Of these every part is made in the Walfam factory. It was the first establishment in the world in which all parts of a watch were made by machinery and under the same roof and its success revolutionized the methods of watchmaking not only in America but to a less degree in all parts of the world. A prominent London watchmaker who went through the plant in the early period of its success said to his colleagues I'm leaving the factory I felt that the manufacture of watches on the old plan was gone and the name passed into literature when Emerson describing a successful type of man said he is put together like a Walfam watch. End of Chapter 13 Recording by Linda Johnson Chapter 14 of Time Telling Through the Ages This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Time Telling Through the Ages by Harry Chase Breherly Chapter 14 Checkered History One of those mental marvels who can play 15 simultaneous games of chess blind-folded might be able to form a complete idea of the American watchmaking industry in the years that followed the Civil War. All that the ordinary mind can gain is a bewildering impression of change and confusion with companies springing up and merging or disappearing all over the industrial map. Inventions were as thick as blackberries in August and two investors as thorny as their stems. Countless revolutionary ideas in watchmaking revolved briefly. Few evolved and capitalists large and small learned the sobering lessons of experience as capitalists ever have and ever will. With it all certain points seem to stand out as clearly defined among them the fact that watch production appealed strongly to the public mind at a time when the nation galvanized into intense activity by the great conflict was entering an era of extraordinary self-organization. This is of course significant. The nation's time as well as its forests, mines and other resources must be a factor in the growth of public wealth and this could not be unless it were widely and accurately measured which in turn implied the universal use of the watch. The later history of American watchmaking is therefore a story of the formation of many companies the failure of most and survival in the case of comparatively few. In the sense of being founded by men whose experience had been gained at Waltham the Waltham Company was more or less the parent of the majority. Of the failures it may roughly and broadly be stated that the general trouble was most often a lack of cooperation between technical watchmaking skill and business management. Of the occasional successes due on the other hand to perfect harmony between these two factors the Elgin National Watch Company established at Elgin, Illinois in 1864 was one of the first. Its officials and promoters were not watchmakers but businessmen. Western capitalists who organized the company at the suggestion of a few trained men from Waltham to whose technical experience and knowledge they gave entire liberty of action from the first. This combination of Western enterprise and eastern mechanical skill was a great and immediate success. Within six years from its incorporation the Elgin Company had built its factory designed and made its own machinery and marketed 42,000 watches. It is said to be the only American watch company which has paid dividends from the beginning and yet this achievement cannot be traced to anything strikingly distinctive either in the policy or in the product. It was a case of doing rapidly and easily with vast previous experience to build upon what the current company had so long strived to accomplish and of doing this honestly and well. In a small way it was like the rapid growth of democratic principles in America having as it were the British Commonwealth of a thousand years on which to base itself. The period of the development of American watchmaking was also the period of the rapid and enormous expansion of railroads. The two were naturally related. In that railroading demands the constant use of a great number of watches while its progress in punctuality and speed is in direct proportion to the supply of reliable timekeepers. Precision is here the great essential. Every passenger must have the means of being on hand in time in order not to miss his train but what is a far greater importance railroad men must know and keep the exact time not alone for their own protection but in order that they may protect and safeguard the lives of those who aren't trusted to their care. Most of our great inventions and improvements can be traced to some pressing human need. Many of them unfortunately are delayed until some great catastrophe shows the need. It required a disastrous wreck to bring home to the railroads and make clear the necessity for absolute accuracy in the timepieces of their employees. In the year 1891 two trains on the Lakeshore Railroad met in head-on collision near Kipton, Ohio, killing the two engineers and several railway mail clerks. In the investigation which followed it was disclosed that the watches of the engineers differed by four minutes. The watch which was at fault had always been accurate and so its owner took it for granted that it always would be. But tiny particles of dust and soot find ways of seeping into the most carefully protected works of a watch and every watch should be examined and cleaned occasionally. So it was with the engineer's watch. A speck of coal dust perhaps had caused his watch to stop for a few minutes and then the jolting of the engine had probably started it running again. That little speck of dust and those few lost minutes cost human lives. This wreck occurred not many miles from Cleveland, Ohio. Then and now the home of Web C. Ball, a jeweler who, as a watch expert, was a witness in the investigation which followed. His interest thus aroused he worked out a plan which provided for a rigid and continuous system of railroad watch inspection. The plan which he then proposed is now in operation on practically every railroad in the country. A railroad watch must keep accurate time within 30 seconds a week and is likely to be condemned if its variation exceeds that amount in a month. It must conform to certain specifications of design and workmanship which are only put into movements of a fairly high grade. And the railroad man must provide himself with such a timepiece and maintain it in proper condition subject to frequent and regular inspection by the railroad's official inspector. There is thus a compulsory demand for watches of a definite quality and performance at a reasonable price. Expressly to meet this, the Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania was organized in 1892 the year after the Wreck which started this reform. This company therefore represents an enterprise founded for a specific purpose and concentrating upon a certain specialized demand although this does not mean that it is the only company which caters to the needs of the railroad man. All of the great companies produce timekeepers of the highest precision for railroad use but the Hamilton Company has devoted itself more particularly to supplying this one field. The Gruen Watch Company of Cincinnati, Ohio is typical of still another line of endeavor the beautifying and refining its founder, Dietrich Gruen, was a Swiss master watchmaker. He came to America as a young man in 1876 married here and established the international industry which bears his name. It might be said that his watch is not an American product as the Gruen movements are made at Modrabil in Switzerland and then sent over to America to be cased, adjusted and marketed. Perhaps the most notable contribution of this company to the watchmaking industry was to inaugurate the modern thin type of watch. This was evolved by Frederick the son of Dietrich Gruen and was made possible by the inverting of the third wheel of the watch so that the whole train runs in much less space than was previously required. The companies are by no means the only successful ones but they do typify the general trend of development of the American watch industry from 1850 until near the end of the 19th century when a new and even greater era in the history of timekeeping was inaugurated. The story of this development will be considered in later chapters. In the period then closed however, the ideal Howard which most people then regarded as an impossibility was realized to a degree which they themselves would never have thought possible. Denison died in 1898 and Howard in 1904. Although watchmaking is the creation of European genius and was rooted in European experience, with boundless capital at its command and carried on in communities and generations in the craft it is in this country that it has been brought to its fullest modern development. The census figures, while incomplete and somewhat misleading are expressive of the amount of growth and of its nature. According to these figures there were in 1869 37 watch companies in the United States employing 1800 and 16 wage earners an average of less than 50 workmen and their combined product was valued at less than three million dollars. In 1914 the last normal year before the Great War there were but 15 such companies the law of the survival of the fittest had been operating but these 15 employed an average of over 800 people or 12,390 in all and the combined value of their product was stated as over 14 million dollars. These figures are far below reality in that they do not include the large volume of watches produced in clock factories. American watchmaking is typical of the difference between the American and European industry in the 19th century. Here a complete watch is produced in one factory while in England, Switzerland and France most establishments specialize in the manufacture of particular parts and these parts are then assembled in other factories. Some 50 different trades there are working separately to produce the parts and the manufacturer whose work is chiefly that of finishing and assembling takes a large profit for inspection and for the prestige of his name. In the American system a thousand watches are produced proportionately more cheaply than a dozen and a thousand of uniform model more cheaply than a like number of various sizes and designs. Automatic machines tend to economy of labor and uniformity of excellence. The saving begins with the cost of material and ends with the ease and quickness of repairs due to the standardization Lord Grimthorpe said there can be no doubt that this is the best as well as the cheapest way of making machines which require precision although labor is dearer in America than here their machinery enables them to undersell English watches of the same quality. It now remained for American ingenuity and enterprise to level the ramparts of special privilege in the world of time telling by producing an accurate and practical watch in sufficient quantity and at a price so low as to place it within the reach of all. End of Chapter 14 Recording by Linda Johnson Chapter 15 of Time Telling Through the Ages This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Time Telling Through the Ages by Harry Chase Brearley Chapter 15 The Watch That Wound Forever The most important development in any affair is naturally the one which concerns the greatest number of people In the United States it is the people who count and nothing can be considered wholly American which does not concern the mass of the population We have already seen how watch movements were brought to a high degree of accuracy and have followed some of the steps by which the industry was developed in the United States but there remained one great step to be taken and that was the putting of an accurate watch within the financial reach of almost every person The way in which this was brought about was thoroughly American In 1875 Jason R. Hopkins of Washington DC after many months of patient labor perfected the model of a watch which he thought could be constructed in quantities for 50 cents each He secured a patent on his model and with Edward A. Locke of Boston and W.D. Colt of Washington sought to interest the Benedict Burnham Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut in its manufacture Failing in this Locke abandoned further effort so far as the Hopkins model was concerned Hopkins however continued and finally succeeded in enlisting the active support and financial resources of W.B. Fowle a gentleman of wealth and leisure who owned a finest state of Massachusetts This led to the formation of the Auburn Dale Watch Company Within a few years Fowle had sunk his entire fortune of more than $250,000 in the enterprise and the Hopkins watch had proved a complete failure In 1883 both Fowle and the watch company made assignments There are many who still remember the great centennial physician at Philadelphia in 1876 celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of American Independence Those who were there may recall the interesting exhibit of a huge steam engine at least it seemed huge at that time and in a glass case nearby a tiny engine so tiny that it could be completely covered by a small thimble This midget steam engine with its boiler, governor and pumps was just as complete in all of its parts as was the big engine Three drops of water would fill its boiler It was a striking example of mechanical skill and fineness of workmanship for it had been made under a watchmaker's microscope with jeweler's tools The most interesting thing about this little engine was that unknown to its designer it heralded the dawn of democracy in the kingdom of time telling just as it then was helping to celebrate the birth of American freedom In the spring of 1877 Edward A. Locke of Boston who, two years before as we have seen had been interested in the Hopkins watch visited the neighboring city of Worcester While strolling along the main street in a leisurely manner he chanced to glance in the window of a watch repairer's shop There he saw the tiny engine which had excited so much wonder and admiration at the Philadelphia exposition the year before For many months Locke and his friend George Merritt of Brooklyn, New York had been thinking and dreaming of the possibility of supplying the long felt and rapidly growing need for a low priced watch a pocket timepiece that could be sold for three or four dollars The cheapest watch in America at that time cost ten or twelve They had searched in vain for a watchmaker who was ingenious or courageous enough to attempt the making of such a timepiece Fascinated by the marvelous little engine Locke stepped into the shop and spoke to the lone workman at the bench near the window This obscure and humble watch repairer was D. A. A. Buck the proprietor of the shop and designer of the engine who was soon to gain renown as the inventor of the famous Waterbury watch For the sum of one hundred dollars Buck agreed to study the problem and if possible design for Locke a watch which would meet his requirements Day and night for many weeks he labored at this task and finally submitted a model It was not satisfactory Worn by his labors and disappointed by his failure he fell ill Some days later Mrs. Buck sought out Locke and joyfully told him that her husband had worked out a new design which he believed would correct the defects of the former model and that, as soon as he recovered he would begin work upon it Within a few months he had completed a second model This time he was successful Then began the struggle of Locke and his associates to interest capital in the new enterprise Most of the preliminary funds and factory space were provided by the Benedict and Burnham Manufacturing Company a brass manufacturing concern at Waterbury Connecticut and the predecessor of the present Waterbury Clock Company Thus the new watch came to be known as the Waterbury Within the next twenty-eight months many thousands of dollars had been raised and expended before a single watch could be turned out It was not until 1880 that the Waterbury watch company was finally incorporated and ready for business Then the factory proudly produced its first thousand watches They were perfectly good-looking watches but they had one important weakness They would not run because, as it was found the sheets of brass used in stamping out the wheels had an unfortunate grain and the wheels would not remain true Another thousand were made with this defect corrected This time most of the watches would keep time but there still was a large percentage of stoppers After more study experiment and expense the product was improved until only about ten percent of the watches refused to run and the Waterbury watch was really on the market It was a wonderfully simple piece of mechanism very different from the ordinary watch The whole works turned round inside of the case once every hour carrying the hour hand with them The mainspring was coiled round the outside of the movement so that the case formed a barrel and was wound by the stem It had the old duplex escapement of the days of Tompion and the dial was printed on paper covered with celluloid and glued to the plate It had only fifty-eight parts kept time surprisingly well was not much to look at but was sold at the then unheard of low price of four dollars It was put on the market with real Yankee ingenuity Some of us remember when Waterbury watches were given away with suits of clothes and the pride with which, as youngsters we exhibited our first watches thus obtained to our playmates who were less fortunate The nine-foot mainspring required unlimited winding which was one of its chief joys and our friends often solicited the privilege of helping in the operation Some of the more ingenious among us held the corrugated stem against the side of a fence and made the watch wind itself by running along the fence's length while other children looked on enviously In spite of the disadvantage of the time necessary for winding perhaps in part because of it the Waterbury watch became famous the world over and reached a very large sale for its day It was more or less of a freak contrivance People spoke of it with a smile Minstrels opened their performances by saying we come from Waterbury the land of eternal spring and there is a story of a Waterbury owner in a sleeping car winding until his arm ached and then passing it to a total stranger saying here you wind this for a while with the result that the stranger placed a large order for Waterbury watches to be sold by his agency in China At the time that the Waterbury watch was well established the world had advanced to a point fairly approximating the life of today all the marvels of invention which had lifted so much of the earth's manual labor from the shoulders of mankind and which had been expected to shorten working hours and to cheapen products until the standards of living through the possession of beneficial products inexpensively produced these had gone far toward establishing the factory system machinery had come into vogue in place of hand labor the steam engine the sewing machine the railway the steamboat the cotton gin the threshing machine and the harvester were indispensable aids were novelties no longer and the phonograph was becoming familiar electricity had taken its place as one of man's most valuable servants able to transmit his messages furnish him with power and turn his night into day these are but a few of the countless improvements that had contributed to the rapid rise of this country as a manufacturing nation instead of one chiefly agricultural millions had already found employment in the factories the transportation systems and other collective labor establishments schools had multiplied throughout the country trains for the most part were run on schedule time business offices accompanying the development of the great industrial concerns employed thousands the department store was beginning to appear public utility organizations and government departments were growing complex and extensive thus in every direction a stirring impetus was being given toward those intricate modern conditions which depend upon the watch the lives of nearly all people were beginning to be touched by affairs that demanded common punctuality a number of times every day the hour of opening factory school office or store the keeping of appointments the closing of banks and of males and the departure of trains the times were bursting with need for a closer watch on time from the industrial president to the common laborer and school child the pressure of modern life with its demand for punctuality itself increasingly felt yet strangely enough watches were still regarded as luxuries it was not yet realized that they belonged among the implements which the daily life required of all the notion still held that the watch was the mark of the aristocrat a piece of jewelry rather than an article of utility a thing more for display than for use the prices of good watches according to the standards of the day were such as to perpetuate the idea it is no wonder then that in spite of its crude characteristics the low priced waterbury watch attained a considerable sale a watch was a novelty an uncommon possession among average people and anything approximating a real watch was assured of a large sale if within of the ordinary purse therefore the commercial failure of the waterbury watch company involves something more than a mere business failure here is something which textbook economists may well undertake to explain since the article was good the need unsupplied the competition feeble and the profit satisfactory the waterbury watch enjoyed an initial success in spite of satisfactory quality its sale gradually fell away until notwithstanding several refinancings and changes of management undeserved failure ultimately overtook the first low priced watch venture it was not the manufacturing problems such as had overcome Howard and had sorely tried Denison but the problems of distribution which were the undoing the waterbury company and here the importance and power of the middleman stand out in an instructive way the conditions of the age demanded a cheap watch things to come could not eventuate except through the ability of everyone to measure his minutes almost from its first announcement the waterbury sprang into demand but later succumbed to false policies of sales eagerness for the large and easy orders which were momentarily attractive but finally fatal spelled ruin when first put out the watch was sold through stores at a very moderate price and proved to be such a sensation that it suggested itself to ingenious merchants as a trade bringer when offered as a premium Lloyd the famous puzzle man was among those who saw this possibility and he devised a scheme which resulted in the giving away of hundreds of thousands of waterburies it consisted of puzzles printed on cards these puzzles were so simple and yet so cleverly designed that while anyone could solve them each thought himself a genius for his success in doing so Lloyd's idea was to take his puzzles to clothing stores all over the country and sell them with watches in order that those dealers might distribute the puzzles all over town together with an announcement of a guessing contest each successful contestant upon return of the puzzle with its solution was privileged to buy a suit of clothes and get a waterbury watch with it free of charge such was the magic of a watch in those days that the waterbury boomed the business of hundreds of clothiers who as in nearly all something for nothing schemes were careful to add more than the cost of the watch to the price of the suit nevertheless the idea took so well that Lloyd spread it into Europe, China and other parts of the world thus the waterbury watch became a familiar object in many lands adaptations of the scheme applied to other wares were carried out by him and by others until giveaway propositions became the main channel of distribution for these watches for a time such methods flourished and the regular trade of ordinary watch dealers correspondingly languished but finally the scheme idea lost its nobility and pulling power people would not forever buy clothes in order to get watches in the process the waterbury name had become a byword for tricks in all trades shoddy clothes at all wool prices had become associated with it in people's minds they stopped buying these watches in ordinary stores because others gave them away regular dealers cut the prices to get rid of their stocks and this led to further demoralization because customers never knew whether or not they were buying at the bottom price dealers could make no money on them under such market conditions and because of this and of their shady association with giveaway deals the waterbury name became a stench in the nostrils of the legitimate trade thus when the scheme trade died away and the company again turned its attention to the watch dealers whom it had forgotten in the flush of its easy success it found no welcome it had forsaken its source of steady customers and was now forsaken in return after floundering about in several further reversals of trade policy and causing the loss of further investment for its backers the waterbury name was abandoned and the company reorganized as the new england watch company as such it ventured into new fields of watch manufacture and offered an elaborate variety of small and fancy watches and cases and numerous models sizes and styles of movements sold on vacillating marketing policies never did it attain a genuinely sound footing however for it vacated its field of fundamental and distinctive usefulness vis the production of a reliable low priced simple watch to meet the advancing requirements of its day it had gone back to the viewpoint of the watch as an ostentatious or ornamental bit of vanity hence the old waterbury business was compelled to close its doors and in fall of 1914 the first year of the great war was bought out at a receiver sale by a firm who had replaced it in the field of supplying watches for the masses this firm re-dedicated the organization to its original mission modernized its mechanical equipment and revived the waterbury name after a lapse of 20 years until today through the employment of judicious methods the factory is more successful than ever it was in its earlier days end of chapter 15 recording by Linda Johnson chapter 16 of time telling through the ages this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org chapter 16 the watch that made the dollar famous the next development is so typically American that it is difficult to picture it as occurring in any other country here to four the history of time pieces had been that of an easily traceable evolution for each of its steps had grown naturally out of those before it and the various improvements had been made by mechanics trained in the craft yet now, strange to relate, two young men from a Michigan farm with no mechanical training entered the field almost in a casual manner and in less than a generation not only became the world's largest manufacturers of watches but affected the most radical development in the whole story of telling time as it did the introduction of interchangeable parts quantity production and a low price these results might seem at first to be due to a matter of accidental good fortune on the contrary they were an example of evolution quite as logical as any that had proceeded and were perhaps even more significant the whole development came as the direct product of evolution, analysis initiative, perseverance and hard work the element of good luck being conspicuously absent all history gives evidence of the occasional need of a new impulse derived from outside and bringing with it a fresh viewpoint there seems to be a tendency in human enterprise for any development after a time to lose its original rate of speed and itself in complexities the people who have brought it about appear to lose their power to see things simply and in a big way and on the contrary they grow technical and occupy themselves with minor details whereupon the progress of development becomes slower and slower and threatens to stop entirely then over and over again there is the record of the advent of some fresh new force from an unexpected direction which restores youth and vigor in the last decade of the 19th century watchmaking seemed ready for such an impulse as we have already seen it had long been developing from within along technical and professional lines excellent and costly time pieces that were marvels of accurate mechanism had been produced that part of its work had been well done but the industry was in danger of losing its human touch watches were being viewed more as articles of manufacture and merchandise than as of widespread human service in meeting a general public need in a sense therefore the industry was unconsciously waiting the coming of a non-technical man who knew the public at first hand and understood people's requirements who was not fettered by tradition who had a vision of universal marketing and distribution and who was not held back by a foreknowledge of difficulties it was exactly this vision which Robert H. Ingersoll had of the industry and he developed it with the assistance first of his brother Charles H and later of his nephew William H he did not discover the dollar watch as many think but grew toward it during the course of a dozen years it came about as already stated in a manner that was typically American young Ingersoll left his father's farm near Lansing Michigan in 1879 at the age of 19 and went to New York to seek his fortune he was entirely without technical training save in farming he had a considerable first hand knowledge of the needs and desires of what Lincoln called the common people finding employment for a time he saved $160 and with this large capital started in business for himself in the manufacture and sale of rubber stamps before long he was able to send back to Michigan for his younger brother Charles H being of an inventive turn of mind he devised a toy typewriter which attained a considerable sale as a dollar article this was followed by a patented pencil a dollar sewing machine a patent key ring and other novelties of his own creation in the course of time the products of other manufacturers were added to the list thus the brothers soon found themselves with an industrial manufacturing and wholesale jobbing business the business grew and the next development was that of a mail order department in this branch they were pioneers and preceded by some years the famous mail order houses of Chicago and elsewhere their catalog ran into additions of millions of copies next the Ingersolls became pioneers in another sales plan they developed the chain stores idea starting with a retail specialty store in New York and following it with six others incidentally they found themselves among the largest wholesale and retail dealers in the country in bicycles and bicycle supplies all of this was a strange but nonetheless effective preparation for watchmaking and the marketing of watches by millions Robert Ingersoll who had remained in the selling and promoting end of the business knew little about watches but since he was constantly engaged in travelling about the country and in talking with merchants and others he was gaining a great fund of knowledge as to human needs and market possibilities presently he became convinced that his business in spite of its prosperity lacked something vital he grew dissatisfied with handling a succession of unimportant novelties it began to dawn upon his mind that these things were hardly worthwhile as a subject for a business since they satisfied only passing fancies on the part of the public he must find something which was really worthwhile something which filled a real human need on a large scale yet in a new way if this something could be found and the incredibly large buying power of the great American public could be focused upon it there was hardly any limit to the business which would result when this belief had crystallized in the form of a definite conclusion he began at once to search for the big idea the big idea had long been waiting for him to reach this state of mind it had been looking him in the face for many days had he but been ready to perceive it on the wall of his room in a Brooklyn boarding house there hung a very small B clock it was unobtrusive and apparently unimportant he had glanced at it hundreds of times with no thought beyond that of learning the time suddenly it ceased to be a clock and became an open door to the future it's ticking became articulate with a new meaning 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 a special 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 1,000 clock watches at 85 cents each and afterward contracting for 10,000 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 on 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 guilt cases than in nickel and still faster when a 5 cent guilt 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 today 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 anger souls 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 their past 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 goods according to the specifications and under the name trademark and patents of the anger souls 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 today the three plants produce an aggregate of about 20,000 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 the solution began with the adoption of the lantern pinion but the principal difficulty was that which had baffled both Howard and Denison 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 unwearyed patients 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 end of chapter 16 recording by Linda Johnson Chapter 17 of time telling through the ages this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org time telling through the ages by Harry Chase rarely Chapter 17 putting 50 million watches into service if this were purely a story of the development of time pieces as mechanisms there would be little to add to the preceding chapter saved detail of 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 time pieces the most perfect piece of mechanism in a showcases 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 time pieces and was able to profit by the more efficient adjustment of its actions thus secured we have seen how the promising experiment of the waterberry watch company failed in an attempt to equip the masses with watches principally through the 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 had already been able to place 50 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 a 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 of formal 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 took some time however to perfect their system of distribution but when finally developed it was the outgrowth of wide and varied experience the firm made its first sales efforts on the watch through its own mail order catalog the results brought some encouragement but proved that in itself this method could never bring the volume of sales necessary for a high geared uniform quantity of production the next recourse was to the so called regular trade channels the jobbers and retailers but these dealers displayed little interest they were not promoters of new lines but distributors of those for which a market already existed the jobbers sold what the retailers required the retailers what the public demanded Robert Ingersoll's original loud ticking watch impressed them more in the light of a curiosity than as a trade possibility in particular it failed to appeal to the jewelers since they felt to be out of keeping with the beauty and value which characterized their stocks of jewelry and silverware they reasoned also that sales of the new timepiece would interfere higher priced watches thus failing to grasp the fact since proved to be true that its use would greatly enlarge the sphere of their sales through cultivating a general watch carrying habit some effort was made with outside trades but these generally considered watches to be out of their line nevertheless in the course of time persistent effort began to bring results occasionally jobbers made purchases and here and there a jeweler or hardware dealer offered the watches for sale when the firm felt justified in spending some money for advertising the public began to learn at first hand of the Ingersoll watch and the sales gradually increased many people who ever expressed doubt as to the quality of a timepiece that could be sold for a dollar and the Ingersolls replied with a guarantee that has since become famous then in the natural course of business competition developed from the marketing of inferior goods and the firm found it necessary to place its name on the dial for purposes of identification in spite of all difficulties there grew up in course of time a very considerable public demand where upon certain dealers undertook privately to raise the price in order to increase their profits this situation was met by emphasizing the price more prominently on the boxes and in the advertising a policy which soon put an end to price raising but led in some instances to even greater difficulty of price cutting the better known became the price the greater became the temptation of dealers of a certain class to advertise its reduction in order to bolster up bargains upon other goods this naturally demoralized the sales of neighboring dealers and caused them to lose interest in the line thus instead of increasing the sales the reduced price proved a serious selling obstacle the same difficulty has been encountered by other manufacturers of widely advertised goods and some of them have sought through the courts to compel adherence to their prices the argument being is in the case of the Ingersoll watch that price cutting does not serve the interests of the public but tends to interfere with sales since it obstructs the channels of distribution at this writing the question in its legal phase has not yet reached the final decision in the courts but the Ingersolls have solved it in a practical way since their trade policies have brought about the voluntary cooperation of the retailers such cooperation however was not to be attained at once it came about through much study and after much experience it involved the assembling of a large amount of data upon commercial economics and a deep inquiry into the fundamental principles of retail distribution it proved necessary to weigh and compare recent and important factors in the retail situation for example because of the fact that so many manufacturers were giving indiscriminate discounts for quantity purchases it had become profitable to establish huge department stores chain stores and mail order houses whose scale of operation made it possible to handle goods in large amounts for a time the Ingersolls in common with other manufacturers gave discounts for purchases in quantity later as the business grew and its distribution problems were more scientifically studied they saw more clearly the way in which the principles of equal opportunity and equal treatment could be applied it was in this spirit that the firm began to ask itself whether the large distributors were really more efficient than the small retailers whether they actually earned the extra amount which they were paid for selling each watch and whether it would be a healthful thing for the country if all retail business were transacted through such organizations in short whether restrictions to such a system were really consistent with the theory of commercial democracy approached from this standpoint the answer was found to be in the negative a careful research among stores in all sections of the country showed unmistakably that the cost of selling in a small store was actually less than in the department store the chain store or the mail order house viewing the sale of each watch as an individual transaction it was seen that a small store in some far off country village gave quite as valuable service as did a large store in a metropolis and therefore should be paid as much consequently the Ingersolls introduced a selling plan which under the conditions was as revolutionary in the field of retail distribution as the discovery of Galileo had been in that of clock mechanism yet it was merely that of a flat price schedule in other words it was a provision that the dealer buying one dozen watches or even one single watch should pay exactly the same price as the dealer who bought ten thousand quantity discounts were definitely abandoned naturally this plan met with cordial response from the countless small retailers scattered throughout the length and breadth of the country and the close relationship thus established led to other logical developments in the way of cooperation such as that of display devices suited to the needs of these dealers a simplified accounting system to increase their efficiency and various measures of a similar nature in the meantime constantly increasing advertising appeal resulted in a rapidly growing demand from the public and this in turn made possible the assuring a uniform quantity of output which was in itself the basis necessary for maintaining uniform quality thus practical experience and scientific trade study were formulated into what has become to be recognized as a definite commercial philosophy namely that of uniform quality uniform quantity uniform demand uniform price to the dealers and uniform price to the consumer a statement of principles in which is in the works of a watch each part must be geared to every other to ensure effective operation during the time that these business principles were being formulated the line of watches was also in process of development with the goal of universality in view thus it was presently realized that while the dollar watch was essentially a man's timepiece watches were also needed by women and by children accordingly smaller models were developed to meet these needs at a later date the Ingersoll business principles were extended into the field of jeweled watches when the factories of the Trenton Watch Company and the New England Watch Company were acquired at the date of the present writing there are more than a dozen models each of which is adapted to a different need and use but the manufacture of no model is undertaken unless there is a market for at least a thousand watches a day and the latest development as this is written is the time of the dark watch do you recall a soldier in the forward waiting in the darkness with a perilous moment to go over the top with his eyes fixed upon the luminous hands and figures of the watch strapped to his wrist this watch may now be named it was the radio light how it came into existence in time to go into the great war is a story in itself this story is the latest step in that steady progress of democratization by which accurate time telling once a privilege of the few became the possession of the many a good many people wish to tell time in the darkness as well as in the light and if these people could afford to they bought expensive repeaters such watches however cost hundreds of dollars so that while telling time in the light had come within the reach of everyone telling time in the darkness was still possible for very few therefore the watch could not yet be held to be of equal service to all humanity in every one of the 24 hours this equal service at any moment was finally made possible in a somewhat extraordinary manner in the year 1896 Montre and Madame Curie started the world with the discovery of radium they found that certain substances emitted rays that would pass through solid matter as light passes through glass or as the wind blows through a screen they were finally able to secure tiny quantities of a whitish powder salt of radium which gave forth an energy that acted upon everything brought near to it and this energy they calculated would be protected uninterruptedly for 3000 years up to the present time radium and radioactivity are subjects of constant study and research but radium exists in such small quantities and is so enormously costly that comparatively few have had a chance to experiment with it it seems a little strange to think of using the most precious substance in the world many times more costly than diamonds in order to bring time telling in the dark within the reach of every person but this is exactly what has been done people had long been experimenting with paint made from phosphorus in order to give off a glow in the darkness to be sufficient for time reading but phosphorus has its limitations it must first be exposed to light before it is taken into the darkness and if a watch dial treated with phosphorus is buried in the pocket it cannot absorb enough light in the daytime to be luminous at night with radium however the problem was solved it was found that this amazing substance would affect certain other substances causing them to shine for years in the darkness by means of their own light thus it became possible to develop a luminous coating which the ingressols applied to the hands and figures of their radio light watch and presto the problem of telling time in complete darkness was mastered to the advantage of every buyer the inexpensive watch revealing the hour with equal visibility in inky darkness as in bright daylight had become a reality in passing it is interesting to note that the experiments with the watch face led to many other developments such as luminous compasses, gun sights, airplane guides and the like then came the world war and the wrist watch which had been often ridiculed as effeminate although it is hard to explain why since it was first adopted as an obvious convenience in the army and on the hunting field two of the most masculine spheres of activity it would be possible to imagine was seen at once to be the most easy means of knowing the time in actual warfare millions of watches consequently were strapped to the wrists of soldiers and sailors and the obvious advantages of the luminous dial placed it in enormous demand thus it came about that the scene described in the opening pages was typical of countless instances upon various fronts although matter of surprisingly few years considered chronologically there is a long distance measured by the scale of progress between the moment when a young man glancing casually at the clock on his bedroom wall read wonderful possibilities in its face and the time when the firm he founded was able to take note of such achievements as these factory facilities producing an average of 20,000 accurate watches a day distribution facilities including the cooperation of a voluntary chain store system of more than 100,000 independent retailers all operating upon a common plan and under common prices a product that has come into the most widespread use not only throughout the United States but in the farthest regions of the inhabited earth which has in fact in itself served to turn back the tide by which watches formally flowed from Europe into America so that it now proceeds from our shores toward those of Europe and other lands a name which has become as well known as any in commercial and industrial life and better than all the appreciable raising of the efficiency of the human race through universally promoting the watch-carrying habit and putting 50 million timepieces into service it is all together an Aladdin tale of modern business End of Chapter 17