In March 1957, at a special ceremony at Disneyland, Walt Disney was presented with the
25th million Mickey Mouse watch produced!
Ingersoll became U.S. Time, which later became Timex.
DISNEY & THE
INGERSOLL-WATERBURY CLOCK COMPANY
To handle the many requests from various businesses to put Mickey Mouse on Disney products, Herman "Kay" Kamen was hired as full-time manager and promotional salesperson in 1932. Under Kamen's leadership, sales of Mickey Mouse merchandise skyrocketed to several million dollars in just 4 years. The master salesman single-handedly changed Disney's merchandising. The idea for a Mickey Mouse watch was developed by Kamen, who sold the concept to the Ingersoll-Waterbury Clock Company of Connecticut. (The company later announced that Mickey Mouse saved the company from sure bankruptcy.)
THIS SITE MADE IN THE USA
On the first day of their release, 11,000 sold at Macy's New York department store. After eight weeks of production, Ingersoll added 2,700 people to its 300-employee workforce.
At the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago in 1933, Ingersoll established a mini-factory where visitors to the World's Fair could
order a watch, see it created and receive it right away. The Mickey Mouse watch became the thing to wear at the World's Fair and all
across the United States. By 1935 Ingersoll happily paid Disney
a quarter of a million dollars in licensing fees as some 2.5 million
Mickey Mouse watches had been sold!
In 1949, the 5-millionth Mickey Mouse watch was sold ...
unfortunatley the same year Kamen was killed in an airplane crash.
