Timex

Timex descends from the Waterbury Clock Company, founded in 1854 in Waterbury, Connecticut, in the Naugatuck Valley that was then the centre of American brass and clock manufacturing. Waterbury made the movements for the Ingersoll Yankee of 1896, a pocket watch sold for one dollar, and in 1933 produced the Mickey Mouse watch under the Ingersoll name, which sold in enormous numbers and carried the firm through the Depression. Norwegian shipowner Thomas Olsen bought the company in 1941; it was renamed United States Time Corporation during the war, the Timex brand appeared in 1950 and the company itself took the Timex name in 1969.

Post-war Timex built inexpensive, robust mechanical watches with Armalloy hard-alloy bearings instead of jewels, promoted by John Cameron Swayze's televised torture tests, and by the early 1960s it held the largest share of the watch market in the United States. The Ironman digital of 1986 and Indiglo electroluminescent backlighting of 1992 followed. Current lines include reissues such as the Marlin, Q Timex and Waterbury. Timex Group is headquartered in Middlebury, Connecticut, and Hoofddorp, the Netherlands, and has been owned by Baupost Group since 2020.