Self-Winder

Salesmen of U.S. Time Corp. use a surprising trick to sell the company's 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."

Last week U.S. Time, the world's biggest producer of watches, announced a new line of self-winding, Armalloy-bearing watches that can be thrown not only on floors but also against Swiss 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.

With its new line, U.S. Time, which grossed about $60 million for the year ended 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."

The 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."

When Promoter Ingersoll overwound and broke his financial mainspring in the early '20s, Waterbury bought his name and took over marketing of the Ingersoll watch. Waterbury fell on hard times itself during the Depression, but pulled itself out largely by making the Mickey Mouse watch.

Ski Flight. World War II pushed the company into military work and brought it President Lehmkuhl, a Norwegian with degrees from Harvard and MIT, who had returned to Norway to set up a thriving export-import business, later headed the board of an anti-Nazi newspaper. When Hitler invaded Norway in 1940, Lehmkuhl and his family fled. They skied some 100 miles from Oslo, over the mountains to the sea, got aboard a fishing smack and later a tramp steamer, which took them to England. Lehmkuhl found that Britain, whose watch industry had been crippled by cheap German imports, was badly in need of mechanical timing fuses for antiaircraft and artillery shells. The British gave him big orders, which he took overseas to the Waterbury Clock Co. With the backing of Norwegian capital he invested in the company, organized its switch to war production, including gyroscopes and other precision instruments.

In 1942 Lehmkuhl became the company's president, and two years later changed its name to U.S. Time Corp. U.S. Time now has five plants, including one in Dundee, Scotland, to take advantage of cheaper European labor for competition in European markets. But Lehmkuhl, now 60, has not forgotten Ingersoll's lesson on mass-marketing. Says he: "How happy we all would be if everything we needed could be bought for one-third the price we have become used to."

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