In the meantime, the public was waiting, but it did not know that it was waiting. It was going about its business quite unaware that mechanical and manufacturing problems were being solved in its behalf. There were no eager millions standing about demanding watches in order that their lives might be run more closely upon an efficient schedule. Therefore, simultaneously with the consideration of mechanical and manufacturing problems came those of sale, which will be discussed in the next chapter.
_Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service_
If this were purely a story of the development of timepieces as mechanisms, there would be little to add to the preceding chapter, save to detail the refinements and improvements by which a cheap, clumsy, but reliable watch gradually discarded its defects, while retaining its virtues, and the manner in which it developed into a variety of styles and sizes. Essentially, however, this is a story of _Man_ and _Time_, of human needs as served by timepieces. The most perfect piece of mechanism in a showcase is like a stove without a fire; it is a mere possibility of service, whose value does not begin until it is set to work.
We have arrived, then, at a time when a small percentage of the total population carried accurate timepieces and was able to profit by the more efficient adjustment of its actions thus secured. We have seen how the promising experiment of the Waterbury Watch Company failed in an attempt to equip the masses with watches, principally through defects in its system of distribution, and we have noted the appearance of another low-priced watch dedicated to a similar experiment.
It is obvious, therefore, that if the Ingersoll firm has already been able to place fifty million separate watches in the service of humanity, something unprecedented must have taken place in the all-important field of distribution. It is significant that Robert H. Ingersoll first called his watch the "Universal;" indeed, his chief contribution to the development of the watch is the idea of _universality_, a word that makes us think more of people than of manufacturers' methods. Having, then, a watch that was universal in its possibilities as well as in name, and being keenly aware, through his own tastes and experiences, of the needs of the vast mass of the public, his greatest problem became that of universal distribution; in short, it was a selling-problem. At first, there could be no definitely formulated plan; various methods must first be tried out. From these experiences there gradually arose an adequate system of reaching the millions of people who needed watches.