State Senator Thomas A. Colapietro
July 12, 2007
Colapietro Offers Piece of Bristol History to Local Museum
Ingraham pocket watch still ticking after sixty-six years
Senator Thomas Colapietro holds a six-decades-old pocket watch crafted by Bristol’s own Ingraham company and rescued from the Internet auction Web site e-Bay. Senator Colapietro offerered the piece of local history to the American Clock & Watch Museum, located at 100 Maple Street in Bristol. (July 12, 2007)
A six-decades-old pocket watch crafted by Bristol's own Ingraham company and rescued from the Internet auction Web site e-Bay by state Senator Thomas Colapietro (D-Bristol) will soon find its way to the halls of the American Clock & Watch Museum, located at 100 Maple Street in Bristol.
Engravings inside the watch's case indicate that the timepiece was made in February 1941 in Ingraham's North Main Street factory. Senator Colapietro, who donated the pocket watch to the museum, has close ties to the company, which manufactured more than a half billion watches that were sold worldwide; his first job was as a watch-winder for the Ingraham Company.
"As watch-winders, we'd try to turn the dials as quickly as possible; the faster you wound, the more you'd get paid," Senator Colapietro joked.
"When I found the pocket watch on e-Bay, I thought it'd be nice to bring it home to Bristol," added Senator Colapietro. "The really remarkable thing is that it still works. Sixty-six years later, you wind it up and it still keeps time."
Chris H. Bailey, who has served as curator for the clock and watch museum for the past thirty years, said that Ingraham's watches were the inexpensive "working man's watch" and were often thrown away when they stopped ticking.
"These were really watches for working people," said Bailey. "They were affordable to a group that couldn't otherwise afford them. It's amazing to think that this watch still works and it's over 50 years old."
The Ingraham Company stopped making pocket watches in 1965.
The American Clock & Watch Museum has been in operation as a charitable organization in Bristol for the past 55 years.?
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Listing of Senator Colapietro’s recent press releases and a Press Kit with official head shots and bio. |
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