Word: lehmkuhl
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...watches. They take the watches off their wrists and calmly throw them on customers' floors to show how shock-resistant the watches are. The toughness comes partly from bearings of Armalloy, an extremely hard alloy that U.S. Time uses in place of jewels. Says President Joakim Lehmkuhl: "A jeweled watch can be a piece of junk just as a non-jeweled watch can. With the modern metal alloys available, the role of jewels is much overemphasized...
...competition. Starting with an output of 1,500 a day, U.S. Time will enter a field shunned by almost all U.S. manufacturers. Up till now the Swiss, whose low labor costs let them make jeweled movements more cheaply than American producers can, have dominated the U.S. self-winder market. Lehmkuhl hopes to capture one-third of it by selling his watches for $14.95, roughly half the price of comparable Swiss watches...
Having thus sounded U.S. Time's alarm bell abroad, Lehmkuhl also tossed a challenge at General Electric Co., now the leading U.S. producer of electric clocks. U.S. Time started turning out its first electric clocks last week, aiming at a total of 3,500 a day by the end of this month...
...April 30, 1955, will swell production to well over 4,000,000 wrist watches this year, including Timex and Ingersoll brands, Davy Crockett and Mickey Mouse watches, all Sears, Roebuck's Tower brand and all Boy Scout watches. U.S. Time watches sell for $22.95 or under because, says Lehmkuhl, "since there are more Chevvies and Fords on the road than Cadillacs and Lincolns, the well-made, low-priced watch will be dominating the market for some years...
...Ingersoll Man. It has been dominating Lehmkuhl's company for about 60 years. Founded in the mid-19th century as the Waterbury Clock Co., it tick-tocked along comfortably in Connecticut's Naugatuck River Valley until 1892. Then a mail-order promoter named Robert H. Ingersoll picked up a doughnut-sized (1 in. thick) Waterbury pocket watch, decided that it could be mass-marketed for a dollar. It was so gigantic a success that Theodore Roosevelt, hunting in Africa, found himself identified not as U.S. President but as "the man from the land where Ingersolls are made...