The appearance of an article dedicated to Timex in this Special Report may well cause sneers among the horological elite. But how could we fail to acknowledge the 150th anniversary of the company which virtually invented the wristwatch? Most people regard Timex simply as being the name they associate with the reliable and inexpensive watches which many of us, as children, learnt to tell the time with. However, behind this stereotypical image is a story just as interesting as that of any high-end Swiss watch manufacturer.
The Timex Corporation, as it is today, began in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company of Waterbury, Connecticut. It made its name by manufacturing shelf and mantle clocks contained in cases which imitated the designs of more expensive imported models.
Within 30 years, the Waterbury company had brought the luxury of personalised timekeeping to everyone with the introduction of the first mass-market pocket watch which sold in its millions and quickly became America's most popular timepiece.
Later, under the management of entrepreneur Robert H. Ingersoll the watch industry's first marketeer, the famous "Yankee" dollar watch was introduced; by 1920, it had sold 40m units worldwide.
With the onset of the; world war, the company had supplied the US Army with the first mass-produced wristwatches by soldering lugs on to the cases of Ingersoll branded ladies' pocket watches, moving the crown from the 12 o'clock to the three o'clock position and painting the numerals with a (highly poisonous) compound of radium and zinc so they would glow in the dark.
The stock market crash of 1929, however, saw the Waterbury Clock Company sink into decline, forcing it to file for receivership in 1932. But Thomas Ewing Jr, "a man of unquestionable financial resources" stepped in to pull the company from the brink of oblivion.
A year later, following the first merchandising agreement in the history of commerce, Waterbury launched the Mickey Mouse watch under the Ingersoll brand at the Chicago World Fair, Customers could buy the $1.50 watches as they came off a miniature assembly line and workers reported that "thousands and thousands" were sold,
It might have been a Mickey Mouse watch in every sense of the word, but it provided the fillip that the Waterbury company needed, It also inspired the company to introduce other radical pieces, such as the Rist Arch of 1937, a square-dialled watch with a wrist-curved case, the "Kelton" line of luxurious-looking yet affordable wristwatches and a tonneau-shaped sweep seconds hand model.
However, as war was once again brewing in Europe, the company took another nosedive but it managed to survive by winning a contract to make bomb fuses for the British government.
The next bizarre turn in the Waterbury's fortunes came with the arrival in America of a pair of Norwegian refugees, Joakim Lehmkuhl, a politician, and Thomas Olsen, a shipping magnate.
Mr Olsen bought a majority stake in the Waterbury company because he supported its assistance of the Allied war effort and, with Mr Lehmkuhl installed as executive chairman, the company succeeded in petitioning the US government to build a brand new plant specifically designed for the high-volume production of precision bomb timers and fuses.
It was one of the most advanced factories in the world and boasted the unique feature of being able to be completely flooded and immersed in water to camouflage it from enemy spotter planes.
At the end of 1943, after more than a year of non-stop timer and fuse production, during which no civilian items were made, the company changed its name to the United States Time Corporation. A year later, the Timex brand was launched on a trial shipment of nurses’ watches.
By the onset of the 1950’s, Timex products had revolutionised the industry: they were inexpensive, imaginatively designed, good looking and famously robust. They were, said the advertisements, the watches that "take a licking and keep on ticking".
To promote them, the company introduced a series of "torture test" advertisements showing watches which functioned perfectly after being tied to anchors in New York harbour, left inside running vacuum cleaners for a week and frozen in ice trays.
By 1955, US Time Corporation was not only the largest watch manufacturer in the US, but in Europe, too, with total sales of 12milion pieces.
The 1960s saw Timex conclusively conquer the low-price market, leading the way with the first low-priced, ultra-thin watches -as well as water resistant and electric models.
By the start of the following decade, more than 500 million Timex watches were in circulation. Then, following dramatic advances in quartz technology in Japan, the company was caught on the hop and, once again, it was faced with extinction.
Only by taking the radical step of closing down its massive mechanical watch making empire and attempting to catch up with the fast-moving technology of quartz could it hope to survive.
After several false starts with failed digital display models, Timex eventually opted, in 1984, to focus on making quartz analogue watches and produced its saviour in the form of the Ironman Triathlon watch, which remains America's most popular timepiece. Then came the hugely successful dial illumination system it calls Indiglo and the Data Link, the world's first personal organiser watch.
In 2000, Timex led the way with the first watches to incorporate GPS systems and heart rate and performance measuring features. At this month's (2004) Baselworld exhibition, it will unveil a perpetual calendar model, a watch with an entirely new-crystal design and a new indiglo chronograph.
Timex now sells watches under the Timex, Timberland, Nautica and Guess brand names
Globally, Timex now sells watches under the Timex, Timberland Nautica and Guess brand names, mostly at price tags of between £20 and £75 each. Its premium model is the sophisticated GPS watch which retails at about £300.
Keith Agnew, managing director of Timex in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, says: "True wristwatch aficionados can still be very snooty about the Timex brand, but we are aiming at a totally different market to that of the high end manufacturers. For an awful lot of people, a Timex was their first watch, but, although we have a very good youth product line, the majority of our sales are to the adult market with men's and women's models selling in roughly equal numbers."
Mr Agnew adds: "The number of moving parts and the complexity of a watch mechanism are often regarded as a mark of excellence, but what we aim to do is use the minimum number of working parts because that ensures reliability and a long life. Theoretically, as long as a Timex watch has a good battery in it, it should run forever."
To the watch aficionados, of course, Timex remains a Mickey Mouse brand, but when you make it to 150 years old and sell 30 million watches a year, well, you're doing something right.
The above article is by Simon de Burton, which appeared in the Financial Times on Saturday 17th April 2004.