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1850s-1870s : Waterbury Clock made timekeeping affordable for working class Americans. Its inexpensive yet reliable shelf and mantel clocks, with cases designed to imitate expensive imported models, contained simple, mass-produced stamped brass movements. Waterbury Clock's products grew out of a long tradition of innovative clockmaking that developed in Connecticut's Naugatuck Valley, known during the nineteenth century as the "Switzerland of America."
1880s : Waterbury Watch, a sister company, manufactured the first inexpensive mechanical pocket watch in 1880 and quickly sold more than any other firm in the world. The "Waterbury," known for its extraordinarily long, nine-foot mainspring, was assembled by a predominantly female workforce whose dexterous fingers were prized for the close and exacting work. Waterbury pocket watches sold throughout North America and Europe, and could be found in Africa, where they were presented as gifts to native chieftains, and as far away as Japan.
1900s : By the turn of the twentieth century, the watch industry's first and most successful mass marketer, Robert H. Ingersoll, worked with Waterbury Clock to distribute the company's "Yankee" pocket watch, the first to cost just one dollar. Twenty years later, with nearly forty million sold, the "Yankee" became the world's largest seller and "the watch that made the dollar famous." Everyone carried the Yankee: from Mark Twain to miners, from farmers to factory workers, from office clerks to sales clerks.
1917 : During World War I, the U.S. Army required Waterbury Clock to re-tool the Yankee pocket watch into a convenient new "wristwatch" for soldiers; after the war, returning veterans continued to wear the handy timepiece, and civilians took them up in huge numbers during the 1920s.
1930s : The popularity of a brand new cartoon character led Waterbury Clock to produce the very first Mickey Mouse clocks and watches in 1933, under an exclusive license from Walt Disney. Despite the deep shadow cast by the Great Depression, within just a few years, parents bought two million Mickey Mouse watches for their children. Originally priced at $1.50, these same watches are collector's items that today command higher and higher prices.
1940s : During World War II, the newly renamed U.S. Time Company completely converted its factories to wartime manufacturing. Over the course of the war, it turned an eighty-four year tradition of reliable mechanical timekeeping to the record-breaking production of more high-quality mechanically-timed artillery and anti-aircraft fuses than any other Allied source.
1950s : U.S. Time's wartime expertise in research and development and advanced mass production techniques led to the creation of the world's first inexpensive yet utterly reliable mechanical watch movement. The new wristwatch, called the Timex, debuted in 1950. Print advertisements featured the new watch strapped to Mickey Mantle's bat, frozen in an ice cube tray, spun for seven days in a vacuum cleaner, taped to a giant lobster's claw, or wrapped around a turtle in a tank. Despite these and other extensive live torture tests, the Timex kept ticking. When John Cameron Swayze, the most authoritative newsman of his time, began extolling the Timex watch in live "torture test" commercials of the late 1950s, sales took off. Taped to the propeller of an outboard motor, tumbling over the Grand Coulee Dam, or held fist first by a diver leaping eighty-seven feet from the Acapulco cliffs, the plucky watch that "takes a licking and keeps on ticking®" quickly caught the American imagination. Viewers by the thousands wrote in with their suggestions for future torture tests, like the Air Force sergeant who offered to crash a plane while wearing a Timex. By the end of the 1950s, one out of every three watches bought in the U.S. was a Timex.
1960s : The Timex brand name became a household word during the 1960s. Having completely conquered the low-priced market, the company upgraded and diversified its product line. It introduced the "Cavatina," its first women's brand in 1959 and with it, a revolutionary merchandising concept: the watch as an impulse item. For the price of one expensive watch, women could buy several Timex watches to match different occasions or ensembles. Technological advances allowed the company to offer a wide range of products, including the first low-priced electric watches for men and women, as well as several other, inexpensive jeweled models. Still another improved watch movement, introduced in 1961, served as the cornerstone for an extraordinary array of men's wristwatches.
| 1970s : By the mid-1970s, the renamed Timex Corporation had sold more than 500 million of these mechanical movements. |
| Timex embraces the new millenium with high brand confidence and a strong global workforce.Annual surveys consistently rank Timex as number one out of fifty fashion brands in jewelry and accessories |
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| Our civilization has been always trying to measure time fractions as a registration of a constant activity or as a silent calm. Since our origins, humans have been trying to measure time to organize their lives and destination. Ancient civilizations measure time according to the alternation between day and night, as well as Moon cicles. Little by little our ancenstros created instrument to divide time by shadows with increasing accuracy. Clocks were starting to operate. At first Sundials told the time thanks to the Sun movement on a flat surface with a clock type indicator. Arqueologists have discovered that Chinese used timepieces 3.000 years before Christ as well as Egypcians and Incas do. These first timepieces do not work during the night or in cloudy days or even in twilight or dawn. Also clock type indicators should be modified depending of the earth latitudes when the sun beams inclination was different. This was not a very secure way of measuring time owing to day duration was different period of the year. Clepsydras appeared at that time in Babylon ad Egypt first and later in Greece and Rome, they were a kind of a vessel of water, having a small hole in the bottom, so that the liquid dripped out drop by drope. As the level within the jar was lowered, it showed the time upon a scale. Romans used this kind of timepieces in the Judgements to control the development of the hearings. A similar system but with marked candles was using during the night. In the III century BC, sand timepieces appeared with two vessels connected by a narrow tube. Have you ever seen these small sand timepieces which were famous to measure minutes while talking by phone? Sure you have. In the past sand timepieces were bigger and could measure the time of one day. Anyway time passed until the machines started to be important in society. At the very begining of the VIII century the italian Pacífico created one timepiece which worked by means of counterweights and was given to the king Pepin the short by the Pope Paulo I. These were the first steps. In 1.300 these mechanisms were very common in some European churches. The oldest clock is in the Cathedral of Salisbury,England which was installed in 1386. These kind of timepieces became more efficient with the discovering of the Pendulum Law created by Galileo Galilei 1600. Thanks to this discovering, the Duch mathematician and phisycist Christiaan Huygens would create the first timepiece with pendulum in 1657 in a wall clock. Some time later, one hundred years before, in the German city of Nüremberg the first wound clocks were created, these timepieces were portable ones. Ginebra was very famous as timepiece-making center. The Calvinistic legislation in this city prevented the manufacturing of “crosses, chalices and other religious instruments”, so these craftsmen lost their French and natives of Savoy customers. So, they decided to create boxes for timepieces mechanism, working with timepiece-makers. At the beginning of the XVII century, the timepiece-making in Geneve was very important and it went beyond the frontiers to make exhibitions in Lyon and Francfort fairs. The advance in timepiece-making had been very important but it was necessary to solve problems such as pices wear and inaccuracy in time measurement. Nicolas Faccio could modify this aspect in 1704. He used rubies and aspires as pivots in the timepieces mechanism. This pieces harshness reduced the mistakes due to friction and wear. This meant an important improvement in the timepiece-making industry. Nowadays, we have a wide range of timepieces types and qualities: electrical, timers, alarm clocks, wrist timepieces, digital, atomic, etc.. Wrist timepieces were created in 1904 by the Suitzerland timepiecemaker Hans Wildsorf from Rolex.: Only six years later they created the first wrist timer. Atomic timepieces, started to be created in 1949 being one of the pacific application of the nuclear energy. Finally, we want to remark that the use of quartz in timepieces started in Beil Laboratories, from 1980 with a clock type indicador where the time could be seen through a display to see the time just with a look. From that moment a long way has been walked. |
| Baselworld is the world leading event for the watches and jewellery. More than 2000 exhibitors for luxury watches, jewellery, precious gems and related brands show their newest luxury products. Visitors can browse through a selected range of products in luxurious surroundings covering over 160,000 m2 of exhibition area on several floors. Many world-famous names in the watches and luxury goods industry choose to show their products exclusively at BASELWORLD. Basel is your only chance to see their very latest creations. The selection of luxury goods showcased at BASELWORLD is unique. |
| BASELWORLD is the only place where you can find such a broad cross-section of products from the entire industry all in one place. Goods sectors are clearly segmented and divided between the six exhibition halls. Watches brands, jewellery brands and related luxury brands have their own halls and there are also national pavilions. A show designed to give you a complete market overview and provide you with an ideal business platform. Every year in spring time, over 100,000 retailers and wholesalers from all over the world make the journey to Basel to visit this presentation of the latest trends and creations offered by the watch and jewellery industry. Don't miss the unique business and networking atmosphere at the world's leading luxury watches watch and jewellery show. Our timepieces are a timeless clasic. Everything is important and fascinating. This harmonious aspect will always have a technical Plus in every model. |
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