Robert H. Ingersoll

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Robert H. Ingersoll was a late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century American businessman who produced the "Dollar Watch," the first mass-produced inexpensive pocket watch. Born to a farming family in Michigan, Ingersoll moved to New York City in 1879 and became an inventor while operating a mail-order bicycle parts business. He established his first watch factory at Waterbury, Connecticut in 1891, and the first Ingersoll "Dollar Watch" was produced in 1892.

Ingersoll later bought the bankrupt New England Watch Company in 1914 and renamed it the Ingersoll Watch Company. The company went bankrupt in 1921 following its over-expansion during World War I. Its assets were sold to the Waterbury Clock Company, the predecessor of the modern day Timex Group USA.

Sources

James W. Neilson, The American Pocket Watch, June 1964
INGERSOLL WATCH MAKERS BANKRUPT, The New York Times, December 28, 1921

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