The Apple Watch seems to be selling pretty well. Kelly and Chris have them and I’ve seen a few on people’s wrists lately. I haven’t worn a watch since I retired — before then I had quite a collection of watches — not sure why, I just always seemed to like watches. I bought Claire a watch for Christmas every year for a long, long time…. Since I always have my phone with me, I just don’t see the point in wearing a watch anymore. Not sure why….
When small portable clocks, called watches, first appeared in public they immediately caught on. Before watches, all mechanical clocks were big and sat on a table or hung on a wall. They were slow to manufacture, expensive, and not very accurate. It was during the 16th century that engineers and manufacturers finally were able to create devices on such a small scale that people could carry them with them. The first models were still too big and heavy to carry in a pocket or wear on the wrist. The first portable watches were worn as neck pendants.
The first watch that I owned was a Mickey Mouse watch — I was about 6 or 7 years old. And I think the watch cost about 6 or 7 dollars. My watch was made by Ingersoll. The Ingersoll company was owned and run by the Ingersoll brothers, Robert and Charles. The company was established in 1893 and was the first to mass produce wrist and pocket watches. Before Robert and Charles came along, watches required a lot more handcrafting and were relatively expensive. Ingersoll managed to produce fairly high quality watches at the reasonable price of $1.00. The “Dollar Watch,” often referred to as the “Yankee” was a hit and lots of people that thought they’d never own a watch jumped on board. In 1933, Ingersoll and the Walt Disney Company teamed up to produce the first “character” watch — a Mickey Mouse Watch. On May 22, 1933, an application for a U.S. patent was submitted and the first watches went into production. In the first couple of years more than 2.5 million Mickey Mouse watches had been sold. In 1957 the 25 millionth watch was presented to Walt Disney himself. In 1971, after 38 years, the partnership came to an end between Mickey Mouse and what had by then become the Ingersoll/Timex company.
Over the years, a lot of these blog entries have been about time — all kinds of time. Check the archives if you don’t believe me. Time is one of those things we never seem to have enough of and everything depends on it. Sometimes it seems to move too slow, but more often, it moves too fast. We should all use our time wisely — all that really belongs to us is time; even if you have nothing else, you have time…..
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