Horace Weston, World's Greatest Banjo Player

During the 1880s, Horace Weston was the world's greatest banjo player. He toured the U.S. and Europe, wrote music, endorsed a line of banjos, and influenced countless musicians. Weston spent a formative portion of his childhood in Waterbury, and it was here that he first learned to play musical instruments, setting him on the path to stardom.

Horace Weston, c. 1880
Harvard Theater Collection, HTC Photographs 1.1073

Waterbury Clock Company Complex

As announced in the Rep-Am on June 26, the former Waterbury Clock office building will soon be demolished, along with portions of the factory complex. The buildings have been crumbling apart for decades. The factory complex is listed on the National Register of Historic Properties.

The former Waterbury Clock Company office building in 2007

Aerial View of the former Waterbury Clock Company factory complex, 2020

The Waterbury Clock Company was formed in 1857, a spin-off of the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company. It became a highly successful company, selling its products all over the world.

Although the name of the company specified clocks, they also produced watches, most notably the "dollar watch" starting in the 1890s. The watch was an oversize pocket watch with a mechanism based on alarm clocks. The company teamed up with Robert H. Ingersoll, a retailer in New York City, to improve and market the watch under the Ingersoll name. By 1910, Waterbury Clock was producing 3,500,000 dollar watches each year for Ingersoll. The watches were so ubiquitous, Ingersoll declared the product to be "the watch that made the dollar famous."

Despite the popularity of the dollar watch, Ingersoll went into bankruptcy in 1922. Waterbury Clock bought out their holdings, continuing the use of the Ingersoll name for a line of cheap watches. They later added a line of Disney character watches, including a highly collectible Mickey Mouse watch.

Waterbury Clock is also known for the devastating effects of radium on its employees. Radium was used in the early 1900s by several companies to highlight the dials on clocks and watches, making them visible in the dark. The radiation that made the dials glow in the dark also sickened and killed many of the young women hired to paint the radium onto the dials. All of the buildings in the North Elm Street complex have been tested for radiation hazards.

Waterbury Clock Company was purchased by Norwegian investors in 1942 and was renamed United States Time Corporation in 1944. The name was changed again in 1969, to Timex.