1947 Ingraham Biltmore Pocket Watch

1947 Ingraham Biltmore Pocket Watch

The E. Ingraham Company
Bristol, Conn. U.S.A.
9 - 47 (September 1947)

Picked this watch up a few days ago. I was buying some glass items for our etsy store and the seller had this listed. The ad said it didn't work and I picked it up for $4. When I got home I figured out how to wind and set the watch. It works perfectly and keeps very accurate time. It's missing the bow(wire piece that protects the winder). I'm working on sourcing one.

WHAT CAN I GET FOR A DOLLAR?
My watch is what's called a dollar pocket watch. So what is that?
"Attempts to make a watch that could be sold for as little as a dollar began in the 1870s." By 1880, one company had achieved the price of $3.50. And in 1890 another company got the price down to $1.50.

FINALLY A DOLLAR!
"The one dollar price was reached in 1896 when Ingersoll introduced a watch called the Yankee, setting its price at $1. This made it the cheapest watch available at the time, and the first watch to be priced at one dollar."

"In 1899, Western Clock (Westclox) and the E. Ingraham Company also began manufacturing them. Dollar watches were practical, mass-produced timepieces intended to be as inexpensive as possible.

NO JEWELS HERE.
"Dollar watches had a simple, rugged design, movement (usually with a pin-pallet escapement, although sometimes with duplex escapements) which has either no jewels or just one jewel." Many companies made them with hundreds of names on them. The sale price of a dollar lasted from 1892 until the mid-1950s.

E. INGRAHAM
"The company was founded in 1831 by Elias Ingraham (1805-1885), who opened his own shop in Bristol as a cabinetmaker and designer of clock cases. After several mergers with other companies and name changes the company was known as E. Ingraham and Company by 1884. From 1884 to 1958, the period during which most of the surviving company records were created, the firm was known as E. Ingraham Company."

THIS COMPANY IS NOT DEPRESSING!
"The depression of the 1930s did not affect E. Ingraham Company as severely as it did many other businesses. Employment never dropped more than 15% and wage and salaries were not cut. By the beginning of the Second World War, the company was producing clocks and watches at maximum capacity."

WAR SAYS NO MORE WATCHES!
"In 1942 the War Production Board ordered E. Ingraham Company to cease manufacture of all clocks and watches. By August 1942 the company had entirely re-tooled for production of items of critical war use, such as mechanical time-fuse parts for Army and Navy anti-aircraft and artillery. Full production of clocks and watches was not resumed until 1946, but the years 1946 to 1948 were boom years for company sales."

So my watch was made a year after they restarted making watches.