Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Waterbury Watch Co.
Options
-
31-07-2020 6:20pm#1Interesting snippet of watch history.
Intro: Today I bought a rare early cycling book called 'Tips for Tricyclists' published in 1887 which to my surprise has a short piece on 'watches'.
Watch recommended for cyclists (then tricycles were the machine women and older men rode) were the cheap 'long-wind' pocket Waterbury from the U.S. Riders were advised to leave their expensive watches at home.
They were called long-wind because the mainspring took 158 turns to wind. The author advises buying the better model (type E ?) which avoided the need to remove the bezel when setting the time and cost 15 shillings (three quarters of £1). 15s. was cheap for a watch if you were the owner of a tricycle, the equivalent of owning a Merc. today.
Here's a link to an article about the watches. http://www.oocities.org/waterburywatch/history.html
Edit: From the linked article
"Like most watch companies, Waterbury also occasionally experimented with products unrelated to horology. The most noteworthy example is a 10,000-mile bicycle cyclometer released in 1890. Named "The Trump", it accompanied the "Series I" watch of the same name. When purchased to accompany the cyclometer, the watch came with a special stand to clamp it to a bicycle frame. Strap-watch bands to hold 4's watches were sold for ladies."8
Comments
-
Some more relevant pics from the tricycle book and a bit of Wiki horology history.
"Waterbury Watch Company
In 1877, a new prototype was introduced[by whom?] to Benedict and Burnham for an inexpensive pocket watch made of 58 parts, mostly punched sheet brass. They immediately set aside an unused portion of their machine shop and began producing the Long Wind at a rate of 200 per day by 1878. The department quickly outgrew its space in the plant, so Benedict & Burnham incorporated Waterbury Clock's sister company Waterbury Watch Company in 1880 with a capital of $400,000 to manufacture and sell inexpensive watches and other timepieces.[8][9] Waterbury Watch started out very successfully in its early days, employing hundreds of women for their "slender fingers" and "delicate manipulation", and it became the largest-volume producer of watches in the world by 1888.[10]
Waterbury Watch quickly fell into bankruptcy, however, due to poor sales techniques where jobbers and salesmen gave away much of the product as loss leaders with little regard to the company's future, thereby cheapening the products' perceived value.[9] In a last attempt to salvage the company, Waterbury Watch began to produce higher-end watch models which only created more demand on a workforce unable to keep up with the complexity of the new watches using several hundred parts. The company was finally reorganized as the New England Watch Company in 1898, as its London sales office was placed into liquidation.[8] The company continued to focus on high-priced watch models and eventually fell into receivership, discontinuing business in July 1912. Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. bought the Waterbury plant and began manufacturing Ingersoll Watches there in 1914."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Group_USA0
Advertisement