Time Telling through the Ages

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 nineteen, and went to New York to seek his fortune. He was entirely without technical training save in farming, but 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 One Hundred and Sixty Dollars, 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 embryo 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 editions 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 none the less effective preparation for watch-making 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 traveling 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 worth while 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 worth while, something which filled a real human need on a large scale and 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 "Bee" 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 into the future. Its 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 an especial 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, one thousand clock-watches at eighty-five cents each, and afterward contracting for ten thousand 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 upon 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 gilt cases than in nickel, and still faster when a five-cent gilt 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 to-day. 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 Ingersolls 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. There passed 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 the goods according to the specifications and under the name, trade-mark, and patents of the Ingersolls. 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. To-day the three plants produce an aggregate of about twenty thousand 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 Dennison – the problem of producing the extremely minute separate watch-parts in large quantities by machinery, and yet with such exquisite precision that all parts of one kind should be absolutely interchangeable. By dint of unwearied patience and much scientific research, this problem was finally solved, and it is said that Henry Ford got his idea of quantity-production from the manufacture of the Ingersoll watch. Incidentally, it was demonstrated that low production-costs carry with them high wages. In the field of watchmaking, no element was more necessary than the skill of well-paid workers.

In the meantime, the public was waiting, but it did not know that it was waiting. It was going about its business quite unaware that mechanical and manufacturing problems were being solved in its behalf. There were no eager millions standing about demanding watches in order that their lives might be run more closely upon an efficient schedule. Therefore, simultaneously with the consideration of mechanical and manufacturing problems came those of sale, which will be discussed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service

If this were purely a story of the development of timepieces as mechanisms, there would be little to add to the preceding chapter, save to detail the refinements and improvements by which a cheap, clumsy, but reliable watch gradually discarded its defects, while retaining its virtues, and the manner in which it developed into a variety of styles and sizes. Essentially, however, this is a story of Man and Time, of human needs as served by timepieces. The most perfect piece of mechanism in a showcase is like a stove without a fire; it is a mere possibility of service, whose value does not begin until it is set to work.

We have arrived, then, at a time when a small percentage of the total population carried accurate timepieces and was able to profit by the more efficient adjustment of its actions thus secured. We have seen how the promising experiment of the Waterbury Watch Company failed in an attempt to equip the masses with watches, principally through defects in its system of distribution, and we have noted the appearance of another low-priced watch dedicated to a similar experiment.

It is obvious, therefore, that if the Ingersoll firm has already been able to place fifty million separate watches in the service of humanity, something unprecedented must have taken place in the all-important field of distribution. It is significant that Robert H. Ingersoll first called his watch the "Universal;" indeed, his chief contribution to the development of the watch is the idea of universality, a word that makes us think more of people than of manufacturers' methods. Having, then, a watch that was universal in its possibilities as well as in name, and being keenly aware, through his own tastes and experiences, of the needs of the vast mass of the public, his greatest problem became that of universal distribution; in short, it was a selling-problem. At first, there could be no definitely formulated plan; various methods must first be tried out. From these experiences there gradually arose an adequate system of reaching the millions of people who needed watches.

In this, Mr. Ingersoll had effective cooperation. He was the pioneer, the salesman, the promoter, the one who knew men in the widest sense and had the faculty of getting results. His brother, Charles H., was the internal administrator and constant counselor. Later, there was added to the firm a nephew, William H., who was both a student and an analyst. He scrutinized trade-tendencies, deduced theories from what he saw, and gave them wide application in actual tests. Together the members of the firm worked out sales-principles of equal opportunity and equal treatment – words that had long constituted a slogan in politics but were something of a novelty as applied to business. In other words, they based their plans upon the consumer rather than upon the factory, and upon the idea of goods sold through the trade rather than to the trade. It took some time, however, to perfect their system of distribution but, when finally developed, it was the outgrowth of wide and varied experience.

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 jobber 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 it 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 with those of their 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, however, 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. Whereupon 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 the even greater difficulty of price-cutting. The better known became the price, the greater became the temptation to 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, as 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 a 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, a 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 come 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, as in the works of a watch, each part must be geared to every other to insure 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-in-the-dark watch.

Do you recall a soldier in the "foreword" waiting in the darkness for the 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 "Radiolite." 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 timetelling, 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 twenty-four hours. This equal service at any moment was finally made possible in a somewhat extraordinary manner.

In the year 1896, Monsieur and Madame Curie startled 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 three thousand 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 phosphorous in order to give off a glow in the darkness which would 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 Ingersolls applied to the hands and figures of their "Radiolite" 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 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 a 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 twenty thousand accurate watches a day; distribution facilities including the cooperation of a voluntary "chain-store system" of more than one hundred thousand independent retailers, all operating upon a common plan and under common prices; a product that has come into the most wide-spread 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 formerly 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 fifty million timepieces into service. It is altogether an Aladdin tale of modern business.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The End of the Journey

Did you ever, at the end of a journey – perhaps across water, or up to the top of some high hill – look backward to the place from whence you came, and wonder that it seemed so far away?

Now as we have completed our journey together through the history of man's struggle to gain knowledge and control over time, we are impressed with the great contrast between Time as it was to mankind in the beginning, and Time as it is to us to-day.