Time on your side? Buying a watch for Christmas? Here’s a little Timex history

Watches are a big deal during the holiday season. While growing up, the only watch I ever heard of was Timex. They were displayed in every store and you couldn’t miss their TV commercials for the watch “that takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

The Timex story started back in the 19th century with Waterbury Clock, a company that made inexpensive shelf and mantel clocks in Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley, then known as the “Switzerland of America.”

Waterbury Watch, a sister company, manufactured the first inexpensive mechanical pocket watch in 1880 that quickly turned into a best-seller.

During World War I, the U.S. Army had Waterbury Clock re-tool their pocket watch into a convenient new “wrist watch” for soldiers. The general public picked up on the watch idea during the 1920s.

Then, in 1933, came Waterbury’s Mickey Mouse clocks and watches. Two million Mickey Mouse watches were sold during the Great Depression. Originally priced at $1.50, the watches are collector’s items today.

A new Waterbury wrist watch, called the Timex, debuted in 1950. ”It takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” raved newsman John Cameron Swayze, the company’s pitchman of the day. The company routinely punished their watches in one TV spot after another to play up the brand’s durability.

By the end of the 1950s, one out of every three watches bought in the U.S. was a Timex. By the end of the 1960’s, one out of every two watches sold in this country was a Timex.

But a time change was coming. The U.S. watch industry saw a big shakeout brought on by new digital watch technology and competition from Asia. Among U.S. watchmakers, only Timex survived.

While Timex still employs 7,500 employees around the world, the brand no longer monopolizes the watch scene. Instead, the big players are brands like Rolex, Citizen, Omega and Fossil. But I still remember the way they slammed that old Timex around.

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