The Ingersoll Yankee

The Deutsches Uhrenmuseum in Furtwangen holds a Yankee pocket watch of R. H. Ingersoll & Bro., which it dates to about 1900: movement No. 5220258, 5.3 centimetres across, still with its watch paper.⁴

Its dial is lettered Yankee, R. H. Ingersoll & Bro., New York, U.S.A., and the paper in its case back is a printed guarantee from Ingersoll, “makers”, of Washington Street, New York: the watch would keep good time for a year, or be repaired free for five cents’ return postage.⁴

Wikipedia’s account says it was mass-produced cheaply from stamped parts and without jewels, so that anyone could afford it.¹

The Ingersolls did not make it. The Waterbury Clock Company of Waterbury, Connecticut, made their watches, and the Ingersoll firm became the sole distributor of its watches and clocks.^1, 3

A cheap watch had been tried before. The Waterbury Watch Company could sell its long-wind watch for $3.50 by 1880, and Abbott wrote in 1888 that it was designed to reach the millions who could not afford even a cheap Waltham or Elgin.^2, 9, 10

The Waterbury Clock Company brought out the “Jumbo” in 1889, a clock movement in a watch case small enough for an overcoat pocket, at $1.50; Robert H. Ingersoll, a New York novelty merchant, ordered 180,000 improved Jumbos in 1893 and 300,000 the next year.^3, 11

The sources date Ingersoll’s start in watches differently: Wikipedia’s account gives the Universal of 1892, a small clock in a watch case, while the National Register nomination puts the opening order in 1893.^1, 3

Wikipedia’s accounts say the Yankee of 1896 set the price at one dollar, the cheapest watch then available, and call it the first watch priced at a dollar.^1, 2

Bill Briska notes that the makers of jewelled watches never entered the dollar-watch market and could not foresee that its sales would grow for six decades until they dwarfed their own.¹²

An Ingersoll advertisement of December 1903 sells it as the Ingersoll Dollar Watch and draws a dial marked Yankee.⁵

Wikipedia’s account says the Waterbury Clock Company was making 8,000 a day for Ingersoll by 1899, that Ingersoll advertised 10,000 dealers, and that output reached 3.5 million dollar watches a year by 1910.¹

In 1901 Ingersoll sold a million of the watches to Symonds’ stores in London, and in 1917 the clock company turned out about 12,000 Ingersoll dollar watches a day among 23,000 clocks, watches and other items.³

Wikipedia’s account credits Ingersoll with the slogan “The watch that made the dollar famous” and counts nearly 40 million dollar watches sold in twenty years. Other makers followed, Westclox from 1899 among them.^1, 2

When Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro. failed in 1922, the Waterbury Clock Company took over its business; in 1944 the company became the United States Time Corporation, later the maker of the Timex.^{3, 11, 13}

Examples survive in museum collections: the Furtwangen watch was catalogued in 2004.⁴