197-546: Timex Group USA, Inc. (formerly known as Timex Corporation ) is an American global watch manufacturing company founded in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company in Waterbury, Connecticut . In 1944, the company became insolvent but was reformed into Timex Corporation . In 2008, the company was acquired by Timex Group B.V.( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Group ) and was renamed Timex Group USA. Thomas Olsen purchased
394-400: A pocket , often attached to a chain. A stopwatch is a watch that measures intervals of time. Watches appeared in the 16th century. During most of its history, the watch was a mechanical device, driven by clockwork , powered by winding a mainspring , and keeping time with an oscillating balance wheel . These are called mechanical watches . In the 1960s the electronic quartz watch
591-582: A "Watch Wristlet" design in 1893, but probably produced similar designs from the 1880s. Officers in the British Army began using wristwatches during colonial military campaigns in the 1880s, such as during the Anglo-Burma War of 1885. During the First Boer War of 1880–1881, the importance of coordinating troop movements and synchronizing attacks against highly mobile Boer insurgents became paramount, and
788-452: A "friend in deed and [we] certainly have been in need." Floyd Norman , the studio's first black animator who worked closely with Disney during the 1950s and 1960s, said, "Not once did I observe a hint of the racist behavior Walt Disney was often accused of after his death. His treatment of people—and by this I mean all people—can only be called exemplary." Watts argues that many of Disney's post-World War II films "legislated
985-572: A blend of both. Most watches intended mainly for timekeeping today have electronic movements, with mechanical hands on the watch face indicating the time. Compared to electronic movements, mechanical watches are less accurate, often with errors of seconds per day; are sensitive to position, temperature, and magnetism; are costly to produce; require regular maintenance and adjustments; and are more prone to failures. Nevertheless, mechanical watches attract interest from consumers, particularly among watch collectors. Skeleton watches are designed to display
1182-512: A camera, he began experimenting at home. He came to the conclusion that cel animation was more promising than the cutout method. Unable to persuade Cauger to try cel animation at the company, Disney opened a new business with a co-worker from the Film Ad Co, Fred Harman . Their main client was the local Newman Theater, and the short cartoons they produced were sold as "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Disney studied Paul Terry's Aesop's Fables as
1379-642: A certain installment of the "Career Day" newsreel segments on The Mickey Mouse Club focusing on the bureau (which aired in January 1958), as well as an unmade 1961 educational short warning children about the dangers of child molestation . Disney's public persona was very different from his actual personality. Playwright Robert E. Sherwood described him as "almost painfully shy ... diffident" and self-deprecating. According to his biographer Richard Schickel , Disney hid his shy and insecure personality behind his public identity. Kimball argues that Disney "played
1576-617: A creator of entertainment for an almost unlimited public and as a highly ingenious merchandiser of his wares can rightly be compared to the most successful industrialists in history." Correspondent Alistair Cooke calls Disney a "folk-hero ... the Pied Piper of Hollywood", while Gabler considers Disney "reshaped the culture and the American consciousness". In the American Dictionary of National Biography , Langer writes: Disney remains
1773-414: A cynical manipulator of cultural and commercial formulas", while PBS records that critics have censured his work because of its "smooth façade of sentimentality and stubborn optimism, its feel-good re-write of American history". Disney has been accused of antisemitism for having given Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl a tour of his studio a month after Kristallnacht . Riefenstahl's invitation
1970-424: A decade – almost 100 years of dominance by the mechanical wristwatch legacy. Modern quartz movements are produced in very large quantities, and even the cheapest wristwatches typically have quartz movements. Whereas mechanical movements can typically be off by several seconds a day, an inexpensive quartz movement in a child's wristwatch may still be accurate to within half a second per day – ten times more accurate than
2167-473: A distributor. Following the 1927 sensation The Jazz Singer , Disney used synchronized sound on the third short, Steamboat Willie , to create the first post-produced sound cartoon . After the animation was complete, Disney signed a contract with the former executive of Universal Pictures, Pat Powers , to use the "Powers Cinephone" recording system; Cinephone became the new distributor for Disney's early sound cartoons, which soon became popular. To improve
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#17328920678742364-477: A dolphin, dishwashers, jackhammers, paint mixers, and the propeller of an outboard motor, each torturing a Timex watch. Consumer demand increased for the watches, despite resistance from jewelers because of the low 50% markup, and Timex opened new distribution channels including department stores, cigar stands, drug stores, and other mass-market outlets. By 1962, the Timex brand held the number one market share position in
2561-504: A downright feeling of animosity for our M. Mouse. Mr. A. Hitler, the Nazi old thing, says that Mickey's silly. Imagine that! Well, Mickey is going to save Mr. A Hitler from drowning or something some day. Just wait and see if he doesn't. Then won't Mr. A. Hitler be ashamed!" In late 1939, when Disney was discussing plans to move his staff to a newly built studio in Burbank , one employee asked him how
2758-525: A foreign language, not suppressed or sponsored or anything. Just Disney." Many of those with whom Disney worked commented that he gave his staff little encouragement due to his exceptionally high expectations. Norman recalls that when Disney said "That'll work", it was an indication of high praise. Instead of direct approval, Disney gave high-performing staff financial bonuses, or recommended certain individuals to others, expecting that his praise would be passed on. Views of Disney and his work have changed over
2955-712: A four-year agreement making Timex the first official timekeeper of the New York City Marathon . Meanwhile, parent company Timex Group B.V. launched Swiss-made luxury watch brands Salvatore Ferragamo Timepieces and Valentino Timeless under the Timex Group Luxury Watches business. That same year, they began construction on the second-largest ground-mounted solar array in the United States at Timex Group USA's headquarters in Middlebury, Connecticut. They inaugurated
3152-835: A functional city was replaced by a park more akin to a permanent world's fair . In 2009, the Walt Disney Family Museum, designed by Disney's daughter Diane and her son Walter E. D. Miller, opened in the Presidio of San Francisco . Thousands of artifacts from Disney's life and career are on display, including numerous awards that he received. In 2014, the Disney theme parks around the world hosted approximately 134 million visitors. Early in 1925, Disney hired an ink artist, Lillian Bounds . They married in July of that year, at her brother's house in her home town of Lewiston, Idaho . The marriage
3349-645: A generous donor to Thomas E. Dewey 's 1944 bid for the presidency . In 1946, he was a founding member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals , an organization who stated they "believ[ed] in, and like, the American Way of Life ... we find ourselves in sharp revolt against a rising tide of Communism, Fascism and kindred beliefs, that seek by subversive means to undermine and change this way of life". In 1947, during
3546-431: A goodwill trip to South America, ensuring he was absent during a resolution he knew would be unfavorable to the studio. Due to the strike—and the financial state of the company—several animators left the studio, and Disney's relationship with other members of staff was permanently strained as a result. The strike temporarily interrupted the studio's next production, Dumbo (1941), which Disney produced in
3743-523: A kind of cultural Marshall Plan . They nourished a genial cultural imperialism that magically overran the rest of the globe with the values, expectations, and goods of a prosperous middle-class United States." Film historian Jay P. Telotte acknowledges that many see Disney's studio as an "agent of manipulation and repression", although he observes that it has "labored throughout its history to link its name with notions of fun, family, and fantasy". John Tomlinson, in his study Cultural Imperialism , examines
3940-474: A larger fee for producing the Oswald series, but found Mintz wanting to reduce the payments. Mintz had also persuaded many of the artists involved to work directly for him, including Harman, Ising, Carman Maxwell and Friz Freleng . Disney also found out that Universal owned the intellectual property rights to Oswald. Mintz threatened to start his own studio and produce the series himself if Disney refused to accept
4137-722: A larger plot in Anaheim , 35 miles (56 km) south of the studio, was purchased. To distance the project from the studio—which might attract the criticism of shareholders—Disney formed WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering ) and used his own money to fund a group of designers and animators to work on the plans; those involved became known as "Imagineers". After obtaining bank funding he invited other stockholders, American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres —part of American Broadcasting Company (ABC)—and Western Printing and Lithographing Company . In mid-1954, Disney sent his Imagineers to every amusement park in
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#17328920678744334-424: A leather strap, but by the early 20th century, manufacturers began producing purpose-built wristwatches. The Swiss company Dimier Frères & Cie patented a wristwatch design with the now standard wire lugs in 1903. In 1904, Louis Cartier produced a wristwatch to allow his friend Alberto Santos-Dumont to check flight performance in his airship while keeping both hands on the controls as this proved difficult with
4531-471: A line of wristwatches. The impact of the First World War of 1914–1918 dramatically shifted public perceptions on the propriety of the man's wristwatch and opened up a mass market in the postwar era. The creeping barrage artillery tactic, developed during the war, required precise synchronization between the artillery gunners and the infantry advancing behind the barrage. Service watches produced during
4728-487: A manner analogous to the pendulum of a pendulum clock . The tourbillon , an optional part for mechanical movements, is a rotating frame for the escapement, used to cancel out or reduce gravitational bias. Due to the complexity of designing a tourbillon, they are expensive, and typically found in prestigious watches. The pin-lever escapement (called the Roskopf movement after its inventor, Georges Frederic Roskopf ), which
4925-463: A manufacturer for his cameras. A strong relationship was forged between the companies in 1950 resulting in United States Time becoming the exclusive manufacturer of all Polaroid cameras worldwide through the 1970s, totaling more than 44 million cameras. United States Time Corporation was renamed Timex Corporation on July 1, 1969. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the American watch and clock industry
5122-668: A mechanical movement. After a consolidation of the mechanical watch industry in Switzerland during the 1970s, mass production of quartz wristwatches took off under the leadership of the Swatch Group of companies, a Swiss conglomerate with vertical control of the production of Swiss watches and related products. For quartz wristwatches, subsidiaries of Swatch manufacture watch batteries ( Renata ), oscillators ( Oscilloquartz , now Micro Crystal AG) and integrated circuits (Ebauches Electronic SA, renamed EM Microelectronic-Marin ). The launch of
5319-603: A model, and the first six "Laugh-O-Grams" were modernized fairy tales. In May 1921, the success of the "Laugh-O-Grams" led to the establishment of Laugh-O-Gram Studio , for which he hired more animators, including Fred Harman's brother Hugh , Rudolf Ising and Iwerks. The Laugh-O-Grams cartoons did not provide enough income to keep the company solvent, so Disney started production of Alice's Wonderland —based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland —which combined live action with animation; he cast Virginia Davis in
5516-470: A month. In July 1924, Disney also hired Iwerks, persuading him to relocate to Hollywood from Kansas City. In 1926, the first official Walt Disney Studio was established at 2725 Hyperion Avenue; the building was demolished in 1940. By 1926, Winkler's role in the distribution of the Alice series had been handed over to her husband, the film producer Charles Mintz , although the relationship between him and Disney
5713-820: A nervous breakdown in October 1931—which he blamed on the machinations of Powers and his own overwork—so he and Lillian took an extended holiday to Cuba and a cruise to Panama to recover. With the loss of Powers as distributor, Disney studios signed a contract with Columbia Pictures to distribute the Mickey Mouse cartoons, which became increasingly popular, including internationally. Disney and his crew also introduced new cartoon stars like Pluto in 1930, Goofy in 1932 and Donald Duck in 1934. Always keen to embrace new technology and encouraged by his new contract with United Artists , Disney filmed Flowers and Trees (1932) in full-color three-strip Technicolor ; he
5910-479: A new home in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles. With the help of his friends Ward and Betty Kimball , who already had their own backyard railroad , Disney developed blueprints and immediately set to work on creating a miniature live steam railroad for his back yard. The name of the railroad, Carolwood Pacific Railroad , came from his home's location on Carolwood Drive. The miniature working steam locomotive
6107-466: A party through the plant. Leni was in the party. If we had known it in advance she wouldn't have got in." Animation historian Jim Korkis, theorizes that Disney may have also met with Riefenstahl for financial reasons: as an attempt by Disney to recover over 135,000 Reichsmarks owed from his German film distributor and to get the ban on Disney films lifted in Germany. Animator Art Babbitt , organizer behind
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6304-542: A period of time, to which her father raised no objections and even reportedly said, "Sharon, I think it's wonderful how these Jewish families have accepted you." Disney has also been accused of other forms of racism because some of his productions released between the 1930s and 1950s contain racially insensitive material. Gabler argues that "Walt Disney was no racist. He never, either publicly or privately, made disparaging remarks about blacks or asserted white superiority. Like most white Americans of his generation, however, he
6501-455: A pocket watch. Cartier still markets a line of Santos-Dumont watches and sunglasses. In 1905, Hans Wilsdorf moved to London, and set up his own business, Wilsdorf & Davis, with his brother-in-law Alfred Davis, providing quality timepieces at affordable prices; the company became Rolex in 1915. Wilsdorf was an early convert to the wristwatch, and contracted the Swiss firm Aegler to produce
6698-682: A replaceable battery . The first use of electrical power in watches was as a substitute for the mainspring, to remove the need for winding. The first electrically powered watch, the Hamilton Electric 500, was released in 1957 by the Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania . Watch batteries (strictly speaking cells, as a battery is composed of multiple cells) are specially designed for their purpose. They are very small and provide tiny amounts of power continuously for very long periods (several years or more). In most cases, replacing
6895-484: A self-winding system as a separate module that could be used with almost any 8.75 ligne (19.74 millimeter) watch movement. Glycine incorporated this module into its watches in October 1930, and began mass-producing automatic watches. The Elgin National Watch Company and the Hamilton Watch Company pioneered the first electric watch . The first electric movements used a battery as a power source to oscillate
7092-658: A separate business function for the Timex brand with its own president. Previous Timex Group CEOs had managed the Timex Group and brand, which had contributed to the brand's lower earnings in the previous five years. Timex Group's Sequel division houses the Guess collections and had grown tremendously to rival Timex as the firm's top earner, but the signature brand had been flat as of August 2008. Since this change, Timex has introduced GPS enabled watches, heart rate monitor exercise watches, and similar devices. In 2008, Timex Group USA signed
7289-525: A sequence in a computer monitor's light using software developed with Microsoft . They introduced the Timex Expedition brand in 1997, designed for rugged outdoor sports. Timex and Motorola introduced Beepwear in 1998, a watch with an integrated pager. The new millennium led to further growth of Timex Corporation and its parent Timex Group B.V., by way of brand acquisition, brand introduction, and licensing partnerships. In 2000, Timex Corporation purchased
7486-558: A series of popular live-action nature films, titled True-Life Adventures , with Seal Island the first; the film won the Academy Award in the Best Short Subject (Two-Reel) category. In early 1950, Disney produced Cinderella , his studio's first animated feature in eight years. It was popular with critics and theater audiences. Costing $ 2.2 million to produce, it earned nearly $ 8 million in its first year. Disney
7683-451: A showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise. During 1966, Disney cultivated businesses willing to sponsor EPCOT. He received a story credit in the 1966 film Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. as Retlaw Yensid, his name spelt backwards. He increased his involvement in the studio's films, and was heavily involved in the story development of The Jungle Book ,
7880-508: A simple and inexpensive manner; the film received a positive reaction from audiences and critics alike. Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. Disney formed the Walt Disney Training Films Unit within the company to produce instruction films for the military such as Four Methods of Flush Riveting and Aircraft Production Methods . Disney also met with Henry Morgenthau Jr. ,
8077-673: A simpler design than that of higher-priced Swiss watches. Durability was accomplished through a new hard alloy called Armalloy , developed through wartime research. Armalloy was used to produce longwearing bearings, replacing the expensive jewels traditionally used in a watch's movement. These innovations led to the debut of the Timex brand in 1950, though the name was first used on a small trial shipment of nurses' watches in 1945. US Time Corporation bought Lacher & Co. AG in Pforzheim , Germany (the Laco brand ), on February 1, 1959, in order to acquire
Timex Group USA - Misplaced Pages Continue
8274-400: A specific highly stable frequency, which is used to accurately pace a timekeeping mechanism. Most quartz movements are primarily electronic but are geared to drive mechanical hands on the face of the watch to provide a traditional analog display of the time, a feature most consumers still prefer. In 1959 Seiko placed an order with Epson (a subsidiary company of Seiko and the 'brain' behind
8471-656: A theme park. When he visited Griffith Park in Los Angeles with his daughters, he wanted to be in a clean, unspoiled park, where both children and their parents could have fun. He visited the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was heavily influenced by the cleanliness and layout of the park. In March 1952, he received zoning permission to build a theme park in Burbank, near the Disney studios. This site proved too small, and
8668-471: A variety of perspectives, ranging from views of him as a purveyor of homely patriotic values to being a representative of American cultural imperialism . Widely considered to be one of the most influential cultural figures of the 20th century, Disney remains an important presence in the history of animation and in the cultural history of the United States , where he is acknowledged as a national cultural icon . His film work continues to be shown and adapted,
8865-431: A winding, requiring winding daily, some run for several days; a few have 192-hour mainsprings, requiring once-weekly winding. A self-winding or automatic watch is one that rewinds the mainspring of a mechanical movement by the natural motions of the wearer's body. The first self-winding mechanism was invented for pocket watches in 1770 by Abraham-Louis Perrelet, but the first " self-winding ", or "automatic", wristwatch
9062-472: A workforce unable to keep up with the complexity of the new watches using several hundred parts. The company was finally reorganized as the New England Watch Company in 1898, as its London sales office was placed into liquidation. The company continued to focus on high-priced watch models and eventually fell into receivership, discontinuing business in July 1912. Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. bought
9259-400: A wrist. They generally incorporate timekeeping functions, but these are only a small subset of the smartwatch's facilities. In general, modern watches often display the day, date, month, and year. For mechanical watches, various extra features called " complications ", such as moon-phase displays and the different types of tourbillon , are sometimes included. Most electronic quartz watches, on
9456-402: A wristwatch, described as an "armed watch", from Robert Dudley . The oldest surviving wristwatch (then described as a "bracelet watch") is one made in 1806, and given to Joséphine de Beauharnais . From the beginning, wristwatches were almost exclusively worn by women – men used pocket watches up until the early 20th century. In 1810, the watch-maker Abraham-Louis Breguet made a wristwatch for
9653-440: Is a cheaper version of the fully levered movement, was manufactured in huge quantities by many Swiss manufacturers, as well as by Timex , until it was replaced by quartz movements. Introduced by Bulova in 1960, tuning-fork watches use a type of electromechanical movement with a precise frequency (most often 360 Hz ) to drive a mechanical watch. The task of converting electronically pulsed fork vibration into rotary movements
9850-419: Is a fusion between a regular mechanical watch and a smartwatch. The movement and case are the basic parts of a watch. A watch band or bracelet is added to form a wristwatch; alternatively, a watch chain is added to form a pocket watch. The case is the outer covering of the watch. The case back is the back portion of the watch's case. Accessing the movement (such as during battery replacement) depends on
10047-410: Is a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist , attached by a watch strap or other type of bracelet , including metal bands, leather straps, or any other kind of bracelet. A pocket watch is designed for a person to carry in
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#173289206787410244-617: Is claimed to be accurate to +/− 10 seconds a year and has a smooth sweeping second hand rather than one that jumps each second. Radio time signal watches are a type of electronic quartz watch that synchronizes ( time transfers ) its time with an external time source such as in atomic clocks , time signals from GPS navigation satellites, the German DCF77 signal in Europe, WWVB in the US, and others. Movements of this type may, among others, synchronize
10441-474: Is done via two tiny jeweled fingers, called pawls. Tuning-fork watches were rendered obsolete when electronic quartz watches were developed. Traditional mechanical watch movements use a spiral spring called a mainspring as its power source that must be rewound periodically by the user by turning the watch crown. Antique pocket watches were wound by inserting a key into the back of the watch and turning it. While most modern watches are designed to run 40 hours on
10638-521: Is the corporate parent of several watchmaking companies around the globe including Timex Group USA, Inc. Businesses and exclusive worldwide licenses include the Timex Business Unit (Timex, Timex Ironman , Opex, Nautica , Marc Eckō ), Sequel ( Guess , Gc), Timex Group Luxury Division ( Versace , Versus , Salvatore Ferragamo , Vincent Bérard, CT Scuderia and Teslar) and Giorgio Galli Design Lab. Today, Timex Group B.V.'s products are manufactured in
10835-522: The 1941 strike at the studio and who held a well-known grudge against Disney, claimed in his later years that he saw Disney and his lawyer attend meetings of the German American Bund , a pro-Nazi organization, during the late 1930s. However, according to Disney biographer Neal Gabler: "...that was highly unlikely, not only because Walt had little enough time for his family, much less political meetings, but because he had no real political leanings at
11032-499: The Chouinard Art Institute ; he brought animals into the studio and hired actors so that the animators could study realistic movement. To portray the changing perspective of the background as a camera moved through a scene, Disney's animators developed a multiplane camera which allowed drawings on pieces of glass to be set at various distances from the camera, creating an illusion of depth. The glass could be moved to create
11229-643: The Disneyland series, which was made in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun . Disney also oversaw aspects of the full-length features Lady and the Tramp (the first animated film in CinemaScope ) in 1955, Sleeping Beauty (the first animated film in Technirama 70 mm film ) in 1959, One Hundred and One Dalmatians (the first animated feature film to use Xerox cels ) in 1961, and The Sword in
11426-485: The Ingersoll Yankee , a dollar pocket watch supplied by Waterbury Clock Company. These watches gained such great popularity that they became known as "the watch that made the dollar famous." In 1877, a new prototype was introduced to Benedict and Burnham for an inexpensive pocket watch made of 58 parts, mostly punched sheet brass. They immediately set aside an unused portion of their machine shop and began producing
11623-516: The Long Wind at a rate of 200 per day by 1878. The department quickly outgrew its space in the plant, so Benedict & Burnham incorporated Waterbury Clock's sister company Waterbury Watch Company in 1880 with a capital of $ 400,000 to manufacture and sell inexpensive watches and other timepieces. Waterbury Watch started out very successfully in its early days, employing hundreds of women for their "slender fingers" and "delicate manipulation", and it became
11820-777: The National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the greatest films ever by the American Film Institute . Born in Chicago in 1901, Disney developed an early interest in drawing. He took art classes as a boy and took a job as a commercial illustrator at the age of 18. He moved to California in the early 1920s and set up the Disney Brothers Studio (now The Walt Disney Company ) with his brother Roy . With Ub Iwerks , he developed
12017-618: The Observatory of Neuchâtel in 1967. In 1970, 18 manufacturers exhibited production versions of the beta 21 wristwatch, including the Omega Electroquartz as well as Patek Philippe , Rolex Oysterquartz and Piaget . The first quartz watch to enter production was the Seiko 35 SQ Astron , which hit the shelves on 25 December 1969, swiftly followed by the Swiss Beta 21, and then a year later
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#173289206787412214-756: The Second Red Scare , Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he branded Herbert Sorrell , David Hilberman and William Pomerance , former animators and labor union organizers, as communist agitators; Disney stated that the 1941 strike led by them was part of an organized communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood. The New York Times reported in 1993 that Disney had been an FBI informant passing secret information to J. Edgar Hoover about communist activities in Hollywood. However, while Walt Disney
12411-682: The Secretary of the Treasury , and agreed to produce short Donald Duck cartoons to promote war bonds . Disney also produced several propaganda productions , including shorts such as Der Fuehrer's Face —which won an Academy Award—and the 1943 feature film Victory Through Air Power . The military films generated only enough revenue to cover costs, and the feature film Bambi —which had been in production since 1937—underperformed on its release in August 1942, and lost $ 200,000 at
12608-536: The Times before school and repeated the round for the evening Star after school. The schedule was exhausting, and Disney often received poor grades after falling asleep in class, but he continued his paper route for more than six years. He attended Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute and also took a correspondence course in cartooning. In 1917, Elias bought stock in a Chicago jelly producer,
12805-625: The Timex Group launched the TX Watch Company in late 2006. In 2007, Timex Group B.V. established Sequel AG as a separate company devoted to the design, manufacture, and distribution of the Guess and the Swiss-made Gc watch brands. Timex Group B.V. purchased the Italian design studio Giorgio Galli Design Lab in 2007. The company was restructured in early 2008, establishing the Timex Business Unit as
13002-865: The most expensive watch ever sold at auction was the Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication , the world's most complicated mechanical watch until 1989, fetching US$ 24 million ( CHF 23,237,000) in Geneva on 11 November 2014. As of December 2019, the most expensive watch ever sold at auction (and wristwatch) was the Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Ref. 6300A-010, fetching US$ 31.19 million (CHF 31,000,000) in Geneva on 9 November 2019. Watches evolved from portable spring-driven clocks, which first appeared in 15th-century Europe. The first timepieces to be worn, made in
13199-576: The opening, closing and medal ceremonies . He was one of twelve investors in the Celebrity Sports Center , which opened in 1960 in Glendale, Colorado ; he and Roy bought out the others in 1962, making the Disney company the sole owner. Despite the demands wrought by non-studio projects, Disney continued to work on film and television projects. In 1955, he was involved in " Man in Space ", an episode of
13396-643: The quartz watch in 1969 in the form of the Seiko Astron 35SQ , and in 1970 in the form of the Omega Beta 21 was a revolutionary improvement in watch technology. In place of a balance wheel, which oscillated at perhaps 5 or 6 beats per second, these devices used a quartz-crystal resonator , which vibrated at 8,192 Hz, driven by a battery-powered oscillator circuit . Most quartz-watch oscillators now operate at 32,768 Hz, though quartz movements have been designed with frequencies as high as 262 kHz. Since
13593-446: The "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow" ( EPCOT ), which he described as: an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be
13790-491: The 16th century beginning in the German cities of Nuremberg and Augsburg , were transitional in size between clocks and watches. Nuremberg clockmaker Peter Henlein (or Henle or Hele) (1485–1542) is often credited as the inventor of the watch. However, other German clockmakers were creating miniature timepieces during this period, and there is no evidence Henlein was the first. Watches were not widely worn in pockets until
13987-462: The 17th century. One account suggests that the word "watch" came from the Old English word woecce – which meant "watchman" – because town watchmen used the technology to keep track of their shifts at work. Another says that the term came from 17th-century sailors, who used the new mechanisms to time the length of their shipboard watches (duty shifts). A rise in accuracy occurred in 1657 with
14184-503: The 1930s and 1940s stated, "As far as I'm concerned, there was no evidence of antisemitism. I think the whole idea should be put to rest and buried deep. He was not antisemitic. Some of the most influential people at the studio were Jewish. It's much ado about nothing. I never once had a problem with him in that way." In addition songwriter Robert B. Sherman recalled that when one of Disney's lawyers made antisemitic remarks towards him and his brother Richard , Disney defended them and fired
14381-462: The 1980s, more quartz watches than mechanical ones have been marketed. The Timex Datalink wristwatch was introduced in 1994. The early Timex Datalink Smartwatches realized a wireless data transfer mode to receive data from a PC. Since then, many companies have released their own iterations of a smartwatch, such as the Apple Watch , Samsung Galaxy Watch , and Huawei Watch . A hybrid smartwatch
14578-479: The 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks . In 2001, the German author Peter Stephan Jungk published Der König von Amerika (trans: The King of America ), a fictional work of Disney's later years that re-imagines him as a power-hungry racist. The composer Philip Glass later adapted the book into the opera The Perfect American (2013). Several commentators have described Disney as a cultural icon . On Disney's death, journalism professor Ralph S. Izard comments that
14775-470: The 30,000 employee workforce to 6,000. New competitors were aggressively entering the business, including Japanese companies, low-cost Hong Kong producers, and large American companies such as Gillette, Texas Instruments, and National Semi-Conductor. The Disney license had expired and John Cameron Swayze retired from his role as spokesman. The sub-contracting business was rebuilt with new customers such as IBM, Hugin-Sweda, and General Electric. The company entered
14972-465: The 800-panel solar array on February 5, 2009, during a press event held at the headquarters. A few months later, Timex Group USA purchased the Marc Eckō watch trademark which it had licensed since 2002. The Callanen International business unit merged with the Timex Business Unit in 2009, bringing the Timex, Opex, TX, Nautica, and Marc Eckō brands under one company. Timex Group B.V., a Dutch holding company,
15169-588: The Arts (colloquially called CalArts), and had an architect draw up blueprints for a new building. Disney provided four exhibits for the 1964 New York World's Fair , for which he obtained funding from selected corporate sponsors. For PepsiCo , who planned a tribute to UNICEF , Disney developed It's a Small World , a boat ride with audio-animatronic dolls depicting children of the world; Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln contained an animatronic Abraham Lincoln giving excerpts from his speeches; Carousel of Progress promoted
15366-672: The CEH research laboratory in Neuchâtel , Switzerland. From 1965 through 1967 pioneering development work was done on a miniaturized 8192 Hz quartz oscillator, a thermo-compensation module, and an in-house-made, dedicated integrated circuit (unlike the hybrid circuits used in the later Seiko Astron wristwatch). As a result, the BETA 1 prototype set new timekeeping performance records at the International Chronometric Competition held at
15563-583: The Disney theme parks have grown in size and number around the world and his company has grown to become one of the world's largest mass media and entertainment conglomerates . Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 1249 Tripp Avenue, in Chicago's Hermosa neighborhood. He was the fourth son of Elias Disney —born in the Province of Canada , to Irish parents—and Flora ( née Call), an American of German and English descent. Aside from Walt, Elias and Flora's sons were Herbert, Raymond and Roy ; and
15760-669: The Disneys moved to Kansas City, Missouri . There, Disney attended the Benton Grammar School , where he met fellow-student Walter Pfeiffer, who came from a family of theatre fans and introduced him to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Before long, Disney was spending more time at the Pfeiffers' house than at home. Elias had purchased a newspaper delivery route for The Kansas City Star and Kansas City Times . Disney and his brother Roy woke up at 4:30 every morning to deliver
15957-743: The Far East, and in Switzerland, often based on technology that continues to be developed in the United States and in Germany. The group has operations in a number of countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Many Timex Far East operation wristwatches are manufactured by TMX Philippines Inc. in Lapu-Lapu, Philippines . Timex Group B.V.'s export from the factory in the Philippines is made through their own company. Tmx Limited N.V., based in Curaçao. Watch A watch
16154-539: The French fashion watch brand Opex. Under its Callanen subsidiary, Timex acquired the watch license for urban fashion designer Marc Eckō in 2002. The company entered the luxury market in 2005 when Timex's parent company acquired Swiss-based Vertime SA. Vertime is responsible for the design, manufacturing, and distribution of Swiss-made watches and jewelry for the Versace and Versus brands. Timex USA's international holding company
16351-626: The Great Depression, so they sold the London-based Ingersoll, Ltd. to its board of directors in 1930, making it a wholly British-owned enterprise. The Ingersoll brand name was continued in the United States by Waterbury Clock into the 1950s, while Ingersoll Ltd. produced the Ingersoll watch brand independently for the European and other markets. Waterbury Clock Company regained its identity in
16548-544: The Kansas City Film Ad Company, run by A. V. Cauger; the following month Iwerks, who was not able to run their business alone, also joined. The company produced commercials using the cutout animation technique. Disney became interested in animation, although he preferred drawn cartoons such as Mutt and Jeff and Max Fleischer 's Out of the Inkwell . With the assistance of a borrowed book on animation and
16745-628: The O-Zell Company, and moved back to the city with his family. Disney enrolled at McKinley High School and became the cartoonist of the school newspaper, drawing patriotic pictures about World War I; he also took night courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts . In mid-1918, he attempted to join the United States Army to fight the Germans , but he was rejected as too young. After forging
16942-558: The Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, where he drew commercial illustrations for advertising, theater programs and catalogs, and befriended fellow artist Ub Iwerks . In January 1920, as Pesmen-Rubin's revenue declined after Christmas, Disney, aged 18, and Iwerks were laid off. They started their own business, the short-lived Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. Failing to attract many customers, Disney and Iwerks agreed that Disney should leave temporarily to earn money at
17139-735: The Pooh and the Blustery Day was released in 1968, it earned Disney an Academy Award in the Short Subject (Cartoon) category, awarded posthumously. After Disney's death, his studios continued to produce live-action films prolifically while the quality of their animated films was allowed to languish. In the late 1980s, this trend was reversed in what The New York Times describes as the " Disney Renaissance " that began with The Little Mermaid (1989). Disney's studios continue to produce successful film, television and stage entertainment. Disney's plans for
17336-528: The Queen of Naples. The first Swiss wristwatch was made in the year 1868 by the Swiss watch-maker Patek Philippe for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary. Wristwatches were first worn by military men towards the end of the 19th century, having increasingly recognized the importance of synchronizing maneuvers during war without potentially revealing plans to the enemy through signaling. The Garstin Company of London patented
17533-497: The Seven Dwarfs , based on the fairy tale . When news leaked out about the project, many in the film industry predicted it would bankrupt the company; industry insiders nicknamed it "Disney's Folly". The film, which was the first animated feature made in full color and sound, cost $ 1.5 million to produce—three times over budget. To ensure the animation was as realistic as possible, Disney sent his animators on courses at
17730-521: The Stone in 1963. In 1964, Disney produced Mary Poppins , based on the book series by P. L. Travers ; he had been trying to acquire the rights to the story since the 1940s. It became the most successful Disney film of the 1960s, although Travers disliked the film intensely and regretted having sold the rights. The same year he also became involved in plans to expand the California Institute of
17927-587: The U.S. Government would have disqualified him from making these films. The Walt Disney Family Museum acknowledges that ethnic stereotypes common to films of the 1930s were included in some early cartoons but also points out that Disney donated regularly to Jewish charities and was named the 1955 "Man of the Year" by the B'nai B'rith chapter in Beverly Hills. The organization itself found no evidence of antisemitism on Disney's part. The plaque read: "For exemplifying
18124-473: The U.S. to analyze what worked and what pitfalls or problems there were in the various locations and incorporated their findings into his design. Construction work started in July 1954, and Disneyland opened in July 1955; the opening ceremony was broadcast on ABC, which reached 70 million viewers. The park was designed as a series of themed lands, linked by the central Main Street, U.S.A. —a replica of
18321-471: The United States, where one out of every three watches sold was a Timex. Foreign markets were added with company sales offices in Canada, Mexico, France, Great Britain, Germany, and Portugal, as well as distributors in about 20 other countries. Plants were built in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Edwin H. Land , co-founder of Polaroid Corporation , contacted United States Time Corporation in 1948 in search of
18518-539: The Waterbury Clock Company in New York in 1941 and renamed it Timex , a portmanteau of the names of Time magazine and Kleenex . Brass manufacturer Benedict & Burnham created Waterbury Clock Company in 1854 to manufacture clocks using brass wheels and gears. Waterbury Clock Company was legally incorporated on March 27, 1857, as an independent business with $ 60,000 in capital. The American clock industry
18715-462: The Waterbury plant and began manufacturing Ingersoll Watches there in 1914. World War I brought new demands for timepiece design; artillery gunners, for example, needed an easy way to calculate and read time while still being able to work the guns. The Waterbury Clock Company met this need by modifying their small Ingersoll ladies' Midget pocket watch. They added lugs for a canvas strap, repositioned
18912-542: The addition of the balance spring to the balance wheel, an invention disputed both at the time and ever since between Robert Hooke and Christiaan Huygens . This innovation increased watches' accuracy enormously, reducing error from perhaps several hours per day to perhaps 10 minutes per day, resulting in the addition of the minute hand to the face from around 1680 in Britain and around 1700 in France. The increased accuracy of
19109-453: The affluent ... [' Yankee '] lifestyle has a direct pedagogic effect". Disney has been portrayed numerous times in fictional works. H. G. Wells references Disney in his 1938 novel The Holy Terror , in which World Dictator Rud fears that Donald Duck is meant to lampoon the dictator. Disney was portrayed by Len Cariou in the 1995 made-for-TV film A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story , and by Tom Hanks in
19306-657: The application of duplicating tools and machinery in 1843. In the United States , Aaron Lufkin Dennison started a factory in 1851 in Massachusetts that used interchangeable parts , and by 1861 a successful enterprise operated, incorporated as the Waltham Watch Company . The concept of the wristwatch goes back to the production of the very earliest watches in the 16th century. In 1571, Elizabeth I of England received
19503-476: The attorney. Gabler, the first writer to gain unrestricted access to the Disney archives, concludes that the available evidence does not support accusations of antisemitism and that Disney largely got that reputation due to his association with Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals – an anti-Communist organization formed in 1944, that was rumored to have antisemitic undertones. Gabler concludes that "...though Walt himself, in my estimation,
19700-490: The balance assembly delivered the power to the balance wheel. Similar designs from many other watch companies followed. Another type of electric watch was developed by the Bulova company that used a tuning-fork resonator instead of a traditional balance wheel to increase timekeeping accuracy, moving from a typical 2.5–4 Hz with a traditional balance wheel to 360 Hz with the tuning-fork design. The commercial introduction of
19897-525: The balance wheel and the escapement for accuracy by laser . The low parts count and the fully automated assembly make it an inexpensive automatic Swiss watch. Electronic movements, also known as quartz movements, have few or no moving parts, except a quartz crystal which is made to vibrate by the piezoelectric effect . A varying electric voltage is applied to the crystal, which responds by changing its shape so, in combination with some electronic components, it functions as an oscillator . It resonates at
20094-409: The balance wheel focused attention on errors caused by other parts of the movement , igniting a two-century wave of watchmaking innovation. The first thing to be improved was the escapement . The verge escapement was replaced in quality watches by the cylinder escapement , invented by Thomas Tompion in 1695 and further developed by George Graham in the 1720s. Improvements in manufacturing – such as
20291-477: The balance wheel. During the 1950s, Elgin developed the model 725, while Hamilton released two models: the first, the Hamilton 500, released on 3 January 1957, was produced into 1959. This model had problems with the contact wires misaligning, and the watches returned to Hamilton for alignment. The Hamilton 505, an improvement on the 500, proved more reliable: the contact wires were removed and a non-adjustable contact on
20488-420: The battery requires a trip to a watch-repair shop or watch dealer; this is especially true for watches that are water-resistant, as special tools and procedures are required for the watch to remain water-resistant after battery replacement. Silver-oxide and lithium batteries are popular today; mercury batteries, formerly quite common, are no longer used, for environmental reasons. Cheap batteries may be alkaline, of
20685-438: The best tenets of American citizenship and inter-group understanding and interpreting into action the ideals of B'nai B'rith." Disney had numerous Jewish employees, many of whom were in influential positions. None of Disney's employees including animator Art Babbitt , who disliked Disney intensely – ever accused him of making antisemitic slurs or taunts. Jewish story man Joe Grant , who worked closely with Disney throughout
20882-465: The box office. On top of the low earnings from Pinocchio and Fantasia , the company had debts of $ 4 million with the Bank of America in 1944. At a meeting with Bank of America executives to discuss the future of the company, the bank's chairman and founder, Amadeo Giannini , told his executives, "I've been watching the Disneys' pictures quite closely because I knew we were lending them money far above
21079-437: The central figure in the history of animation. Through technological innovations and alliances with governments and corporations, he transformed a minor studio in a marginal form of communication into a multinational leisure industry giant. Despite his critics, his vision of a modern, corporate utopia as an extension of traditional American values has possibly gained greater currency in the years after his death. In December 2021,
21276-493: The character Mickey Mouse in 1928, his first highly popular success; he also provided the voice for his creation in the early years. As the studio grew, he became more adventurous, introducing synchronized sound , full-color three-strip Technicolor , feature-length cartoons and technical developments in cameras. The results, seen in features such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio , Fantasia (both 1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942), furthered
21473-467: The character easier to animate. Disney, who had begun to distance himself from the animation process, provided Mickey's voice until 1947. In the words of one Disney employee, "Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul." Mickey Mouse first appeared in May 1928 as a single test screening of the short Plane Crazy , but it, and the second feature, The Gallopin' Gaucho , failed to find
21670-527: The claim of being the " world's largest manufacturer of watches and mechanical time fuses ." The company also produced ammunition components, and repaired, installed, and reactivated government-owned production equipment. The height of the company's ordnance and ammunition business lasted through the Vietnam era in the 1960s and 1970s, during which it operated Joliet Army Ammunition Plant as well as privately owned plants and storage facilities. John Cameron Swayze
21867-549: The company became the largest producer of fuse timers for precision defense products in the United States under his direction. They built a new concrete plant in nearby Middlebury, Connecticut in 88 days in 1942 for the high-volume production of precision timers. In August 1943, the Under-Secretary of War awarded the Waterbury Clock Company the Army-Navy "E" Award for excellence for their "Anglo-American fuse", and shareholders voted
22064-616: The company's first public stock offering in 1940, and implemented heavy salary cuts. The latter measure, and Disney's sometimes high-handed and insensitive manner of dealing with staff, led to a 1941 animators' strike which lasted five weeks. While a federal mediator from the National Labor Relations Board negotiated with the two sides, Disney accepted an offer from the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to make
22261-687: The construction of Disneyland, Disney worked on other projects away from the studio. He was consultant to the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow; Disney Studios' contribution was America the Beautiful , a 19-minute film in the 360-degree Circarama theater that was one of the most popular attractions. The following year he acted as the chairman of the Pageantry Committee for the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California , where he designed
22458-540: The consumer market after the Great Depression and a period of hardship. They reached a license agreement with Walt Disney in 1930 to produce the famous Mickey Mouse watches and clocks under the Ingersoll brand name. They introduced the Mickey Mouse timepieces to the public at the Chicago World's Fair in June 1933, and they quickly became the company's first million-dollar line, saving it from financial disaster. Thomas Olsen
22655-562: The couple had a fifth child, Ruth, in December 1903. In 1906, when Disney was four, the family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri , where his uncle Robert had just purchased land. In Marceline, Disney developed his interest in drawing when he was paid to draw the horse of a retired neighborhood doctor. Elias was a subscriber to the Appeal to Reason newspaper, and Disney practiced drawing by copying
22852-412: The creation of Mickey Mouse". In 1933, Disney produced The Three Little Pigs , a film described by the media historian Adrian Danks as "the most successful short animation of all time". The film won Disney another Academy Award in the Short Subject (Cartoon) category. The film's success led to a further increase in the studio's staff, which numbered nearly 200 by the end of the year. Disney realized
23049-471: The crown to 3 o'clock, and made the hands and numbers luminescent for nighttime readability, thus producing one of the first wristwatches. In 1922, Waterbury Clock Company purchased the Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. company for $ 1.5 million. The firm had gone bankrupt the previous year due to the post-war recession. However, Waterbury Clock was unable to deliver on Ingersoll's guarantee of quality in Europe due to
23246-570: The date of birth on his birth certificate, he joined the Red Cross in September 1918 as an ambulance driver. He was shipped to France but arrived in November, after the armistice . He drew cartoons on the side of his ambulance for decoration and had some of his work published in the army newspaper Stars and Stripes . He returned to Kansas City in October 1919, where he worked as an apprentice artist at
23443-590: The decades progressed and the efficiency of the solar cells increased while the power requirements of the movement and display decreased, solar watches began to be designed to look like other conventional watches. A rarely used power source is the temperature difference between the wearer's arm and the surrounding environment (as applied in the Citizen Eco-Drive Thermo). Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney ( / ˈ d ɪ z n i / DIZ -nee ; December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966)
23640-408: The decades, and there have been polarized opinions. Mark Langer, in the American Dictionary of National Biography , writes that "Earlier evaluations of Disney hailed him as a patriot, folk artist, and popularizer of culture. More recently, Disney has been regarded as a paradigm of American imperialism and intolerance, as well as a debaser of culture." Steven Watts wrote that some denounce Disney "as
23837-527: The design of sports watches for specific sports, which led to the introduction of the Ironman Triathlon in 1986 which was named for the Hawaiian triathlon that the company had sponsored since 1984, and it became the most successful Timex watch in the post-mechanical watch era. Within its first year, Timex Ironman became the best-selling watch in the United States, and the world's largest selling sport watch for
24034-400: The development of animated film. New animated and live-action films followed after World War II, including the critically successful Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Mary Poppins (1964), the last of which received five Academy Awards. In the 1950s, Disney expanded into the theme park industry, and in July 1955 he opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California . To fund
24231-529: The early to mid-1950s, Disney began to devote less attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, the Nine Old Men , although he was always present at story meetings. Instead, he started concentrating on other ventures. Around the same time, Disney established his own film distribution division Buena Vista , replacing his most recent distributor RKO Pictures . For several years Disney had been considering building
24428-541: The electric watch technology which that company had developed. They also purchased the DUROWE (Deutsche Uhrenrohwerke) brand. Timex sold Durowe to the Swiss movement manufacturer ETA SA on September 1, 1965. The company manufactured mechanical components for missiles during the boom of American missile development in the late 1950s, including fuses, gyroscope, accelerometers , guidance sub-system, and various other miniature precision items. The company promoted its products under
24625-476: The family , neither Disney nor his wife hid the fact Sharon had been adopted, although they became annoyed if people outside the family raised the point. The Disneys were careful to keep their daughters out of the public eye as much as possible, particularly in the light of the Lindbergh kidnapping ; Disney took steps to ensure his daughters were not photographed by the press. In 1949, Disney and his family moved to
24822-411: The film's production, with Walt even sending him gifts. When Baskett was in failing health, Disney not only began financially supporting him and his family, but also campaigned successfully for an Honorary Academy Award for his performance, making Baskett the first black actor so honored. Baskett died shortly afterward, and his widow wrote Disney a letter of gratitude for his support claiming he had been
25019-482: The financial risk. ... They're good this year, they're good next year, and they're good the year after. ... You have to relax and give them time to market their product." Disney's production of short films decreased in the late 1940s, coinciding with increasing competition in the animation market from Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . Roy Disney, for financial reasons, suggested more combined animation and live-action productions. In 1948, Disney initiated
25216-513: The following December to rename the company United States Time Corporation. Sales declined after the Korean War in the 1950s because of diminishing defense orders, and United States Time president Lehmkuhl was convinced that an inexpensive watch would be a market success if it was both accurate and durable. He felt that low cost could be accomplished through the combination of automation, the precision tooling techniques used in making fuse timers, and
25413-560: The front-page cartoons of Ryan Walker . He also began to develop an ability to work with watercolors and crayons. He lived near the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway line and became enamored with trains. He and his younger sister Ruth started school at the same time at the Park School in Marceline in late 1909. The Disney family were active members of a Congregational church . In 1911,
25610-403: The futuristic city of EPCOT did not come to fruition. After Disney's death, his brother Roy deferred his retirement to take full control of the Disney companies. He changed the focus of the project from a town to an attraction. At the inauguration in 1971, Roy dedicated Walt Disney World to his brother. Walt Disney World expanded with the opening of Epcot Center in 1982; Walt Disney's vision of
25807-656: The home computer business in a joint venture with Sinclair Research Ltd. named Timex Sinclair , selling computers as the Timex Sinclair 1000 and succeeding machines, modeled on the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum . They faced declining sales amid a price war with Commodore Business Machines in 1984 and decided not to compete in that market any longer. In the mid-1980s, Timex abandoned its development of various consumer products and refocused efforts specifically on timepieces. Product quality and fashionable design became essential to success in
26004-617: The importance of electricity; and Ford's Magic Skyway portrayed the progress of mankind. Elements of all four exhibits—principally concepts and technology—were re-installed in Disneyland, although It's a Small World is the ride that most closely resembles the original. During the early to mid-1960s, Disney developed plans for a ski resort in Mineral King , a glacial valley in California's Sierra Nevada . He hired experts such as
26201-432: The importance of telling emotionally gripping stories that would interest the audience, and he invested in a "story department" separate from the animators, with storyboard artists who would detail the plots of Disney's films. By 1934, Disney had become dissatisfied with producing cartoon shorts, and believed a feature-length cartoon would be more profitable. The studio began the four-year production of Snow White and
26398-509: The impression of a camera passing through the scene. The first work created on the camera—a Silly Symphony called The Old Mill (1937)—won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film because of its impressive visual power. Although Snow White had been largely finished by the time the multiplane camera had been completed, Disney ordered some scenes be re-drawn to use the new effects. Snow White premiered in December 1937 to high praise from critics and audiences. The film became
26595-404: The land, but the deal later collapsed over funding. In late 1965, he announced plans to develop another theme park to be called "Disney World" (now Walt Disney World ), a few miles southwest of Orlando, Florida . Disney World was to include the "Magic Kingdom"—a larger and more elaborate version of Disneyland—plus golf courses and resort hotels. The heart of Disney World was to be
26792-560: The large Jumbo pocket watch, invented by Archibald Bannatyne and named after the famous P. T. Barnum elephant. The Jumbo was put on the market in New York City on a trial basis, catching the attention of Robert H. Ingersoll, a salesman and eventual marketing pioneer. During the turn of the century, Waterbury Clock Company produced millions of pocket watches for the Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. watch company, in which Robert partnered with his brother Charles. In 1896, Ingersoll introduced
26989-450: The largest-volume producer of watches in the world by 1888. Waterbury Watch quickly fell into bankruptcy, however, due to poor sales techniques where jobbers and salesmen gave away much of the product as loss leaders with little regard to the company's future, thereby cheapening the products' perceived value. In a last attempt to salvage the company, Waterbury Watch began to produce higher-end watch models which only created more demand on
27186-417: The live-action musical feature The Happiest Millionaire (both 1967) and the animated short Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968). Disney had been a heavy smoker since World War I. He did not use cigarettes with filters and had smoked a pipe as a young man. In early November 1966, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was treated with cobalt therapy . On November 30, he felt unwell and
27383-482: The main street in his hometown of Marceline. The connected themed areas were Adventureland , Frontierland , Fantasyland and Tomorrowland . The park also contained the narrow gauge Disneyland Railroad that linked the lands; around the outside of the park was a high berm to separate the park from the outside world. An editorial in The New York Times considered that Disney had "tastefully combined some of
27580-509: The making of Alice in Wonderland . Roy believed the program added millions to the box office takings. In a March 1951 letter to shareholders, he wrote that "television can be a most powerful selling aid for us, as well as a source of revenue. It will probably be on this premise that we enter television when we do". In 1954, after the Disneyland funding had been agreed, ABC broadcast Walt Disney's Disneyland , an anthology consisting of animated cartoons, live-action features and other material from
27777-423: The mass market. Timex had a solid reputation for durable products, and the company put increased efforts behind quality improvement. Longer battery life, more durable gold plating, greater accuracy, and more water-resistant styles were some of the many improvements that they implemented. They created new quartz analog movements using fewer components, reducing overall production time and costs. Top athletes assisted in
27974-405: The mechanism for aesthetic purposes. A mechanical movement uses an escapement mechanism to control and limit the unwinding and winding parts of a spring, converting what would otherwise be a simple unwinding into a controlled and periodic energy release. The movement also uses a balance wheel , together with the balance spring (also known as a hairspring), to control the gear system's motion in
28171-488: The most successful motion picture of 1938 and by May 1939 its total gross of $ 6.5 million made it the most successful sound film made to that date. Disney won another Honorary Academy Award, which consisted of one full-sized and seven miniature Oscar statuettes. The success of Snow White heralded one of the most productive eras for the studio; the Walt Disney Family Museum calls the following years "the 'Golden Age of Animation ' ". With work on Snow White finished,
28368-599: The new SWATCH brand in 1983 was marked by bold new styling, design, and marketing. Today, the Swatch Group maintains its position as the world's largest watch company. Seiko 's efforts to combine the quartz and mechanical movements bore fruit after 20 years of research, leading to the introduction of the Seiko Spring Drive , first in a limited domestic market production in 1999 and to the world in September 2005. The Spring Drive keeps time within quartz standards without
28565-654: The next decade. Timex introduced the Indiglo night light during the Christmas shopping season in 1992. Indiglo made headlines as a result of the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing , in which an office worker wearing a Timex with an Indiglo night light used its light to guide a group of evacuees down 40 dark flights of stairs. This caused sales to immediately take off and led to an increase in Timex's American market share. Timex Corporation acquired Callanen International in 1991,
28762-718: The other hand, include time-related features such as timers , chronographs , and alarm functions. Furthermore, some modern watches (like smart watches) even incorporate calculators , GPS and Bluetooth technology or have heart-rate monitoring capabilities, and some of them use radio clock technology to regularly correct the time. Most watches that are used mainly for timekeeping have quartz movements. However, expensive collectible watches, valued more for their elaborate craftsmanship, aesthetic appeal, and glamorous design than for simple timekeeping, often have traditional mechanical movements, despite being less accurate and more expensive than their electronic counterparts. As of 2018,
28959-458: The pleasant things of yesterday with fantasy and dreams of tomorrow". Although there were early minor problems with the park, it was a success, and after a month's operation, Disneyland was receiving over 20,000 visitors a day; by the end of its first year, it attracted 3.6 million guests. The money from ABC was contingent on Disney television programs. The studio had been involved in a successful television special on Christmas Day 1950 about
29156-486: The process by urging Iwerks to abandon the practice of drawing every frame individually in favor of the more efficient technique of drawing key poses and letting assistants sketch the inbetween poses . Disney asked Powers for an increase in payments for the cartoons. Powers refused and signed Iwerks to work for him; Stalling resigned shortly afterwards, thinking that without Iwerks, the Disney Studio would close. Disney had
29353-615: The producer of Guess Watches, as part of its "multi-brand strategy". Timex and Disney reunited in 1993 to produce a new line of character watches called Disney Classics Collection . Also in 1993, the Timex Factory at Dundee in the UK, was the site of a major industrial strike . In 1994, Timex acquired the Nautica Watches license and introduced Timex Data Link . The Data Link PDA-type watch could receive contact and scheduling information from
29550-430: The project he diversified into television programs, such as Walt Disney's Disneyland and The Mickey Mouse Club . He was also involved in planning the 1959 Moscow Fair , the 1960 Winter Olympics , and the 1964 New York World's Fair . In 1965, he began development of another theme park, Disney World , the heart of which was to be a new type of city, the " Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow " (EPCOT). Disney
29747-469: The prototype of one of the world's most accurate wristwatches to date: the Omega Marine Chronometer . Since the technology having been developed by contributions from Japanese, American and Swiss, nobody could patent the whole movement of the quartz wristwatch, thus allowing other manufacturers to participate in the rapid growth and development of the quartz watch market. This ended – in less than
29944-590: The quality of the music, Disney hired the professional composer and arranger Carl Stalling , on whose suggestion the Silly Symphony series was developed, providing stories through the use of music; the first in the series, The Skeleton Dance (1929), was drawn and animated entirely by Iwerks. Also hired at this time were several artists, both local and from New York. Both the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series were successful, but Disney and his brother felt they were not receiving their rightful share of profits from Powers. In 1930, Disney tried to trim costs from
30141-424: The quartz revolution) to start developing a quartz wristwatch. The project was codenamed 59A. By the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics , Seiko had a working prototype of a portable quartz watch which was used as the time measurements throughout the event. The first prototypes of an electronic quartz wristwatch (not just portable quartz watches as the Seiko timekeeping devices at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964) were made by
30338-459: The recently begun War in Europe would affect its construction - to which Disney responded by asking: "What war?" During World War II , Disney was actively involved in making propaganda films against the Nazis, both for the general public (such as Der Fuehrer's Face and Education for Death ), as well as educational and training films exclusively for the United States Government . As early as March 1941 (several months before America's entry into
30535-501: The rechargeable battery or capacitor. As long as the watch is regularly exposed to fairly strong light (such as sunlight), it never needs a battery replacement. Some models need only a few minutes of sunlight to provide weeks of energy (as in the Citizen Eco-Drive ). Some of the early solar watches of the 1970s had innovative and unique designs to accommodate the array of solar cells needed to power them (Synchronar, Nepro, Sicura, and some models by Cristalonic, Alba , Seiko, and Citizen). As
30732-537: The reductions. Disney declined Mintz's ultimatum and lost most of his animation staff, except Iwerks, who chose to remain with him. To replace Oswald, Disney and Iwerks developed Mickey Mouse , possibly inspired by a pet mouse that Disney had adopted while working in his Laugh-O-Gram studio, although the origins of the character are unclear. Disney's original choice of name was Mortimer Mouse, but his wife Lillian thought it too pompous, and suggested Mickey instead. Iwerks revised Disney's provisional sketches to make
30929-409: The renowned Olympic ski coach and ski-area designer Willy Schaeffler . With income from Disneyland accounting for an increasing proportion of the studio's income, Disney continued to look for venues for other attractions. In 1963, he presented a project to create a theme park in downtown St. Louis , Missouri; he initially reached an agreement with the Civic Center Redevelopment Corp, which controlled
31126-413: The role of a bashful tycoon who was embarrassed in public" and knew that he was doing so. Disney acknowledged the façade and told a friend that "I'm not Walt Disney. I do a lot of things Walt Disney would not do. Walt Disney does not smoke. I smoke. Walt Disney does not drink. I drink." Critic Otis Ferguson , in The New Republic , called the private Disney: "common and everyday, not inaccessible, not in
31323-405: The same size as silver-oxide cells but providing shorter life. Rechargeable batteries are used in some solar-powered watches . Some electronic watches are powered by the movement of the wearer. For instance, Seiko's kinetic-powered quartz watches use the motion of the wearer's arm: turning a rotating weight which causes a tiny generator to supply power to charge a rechargeable battery that runs
31520-429: The show). One of the segments of Disneyland consisted of the five-part miniseries Davy Crockett which, according to Disney biographer Neal Gabler , "became an overnight sensation". The show's theme song, " The Ballad of Davy Crockett ", became internationally popular and ten million records were sold. As a result, Disney formed his own record production and distribution entity, Disneyland Records . As well as
31717-492: The single most important technological breakthrough, though invented by Thomas Mudge in 1754 and improved by Josiah Emery in 1785, only gradually came into use from about 1800 onwards, chiefly in Britain. The British predominated in watch manufacture for much of the 17th and 18th centuries, but maintained a system of production that was geared towards high-quality products for the élite. The British Watch Company modernized clock manufacture with mass-production techniques and
31914-454: The studio began producing Pinocchio in early 1938 and Fantasia in November of the same year. Both films were released in 1940, and neither performed well at the box office—partly because revenues from Europe had dropped following the start of World War II in 1939. The studio incurred a loss on both pictures and was deeply in debt by the end of February 1941. In response to the financial crisis, Disney and his brother Roy started
32111-564: The studio's library. The show was successful in terms of ratings and profits, earning an audience share of over 50%. In April 1955, Newsweek called the series an "American institution". ABC was pleased with the ratings, leading to Disney's first daily television program, The Mickey Mouse Club , a variety show catering specifically to children. The program was accompanied by merchandising through various companies (Western Printing, for example, had been producing coloring books and comics for over 20 years, and produced several items connected to
32308-406: The time of day and the date, the leap-year status and the state of daylight saving time (on or off). However, other than the radio receiver, these watches are normal quartz watches in all other aspects. Electronic watches require electricity as a power source, and some mechanical movements and hybrid electronic-mechanical movements also require electricity. Usually, the electricity is provided by
32505-601: The time." Disney's office appointment book makes no mention of him attending Bund rallies, and no other employee ever claimed he attended such meetings. According to Gabler, Disney was apolitical and "something of a political naïf" during the 1930s and he had previously told one reporter – as tensions in Europe were brewing – that America should "let 'em fight their own wars" claiming he had "learned my lesson" from World War I . Disney also demonstrated his political naivete in an October 1933 article for Overland Monthly claiming: "Of course there must be millions of people who have
32702-551: The title role . The result, a 12½-minute, one-reel film, was completed too late to save Laugh-O-Gram Studio, which went into bankruptcy in 1923. Disney moved to Hollywood in July 1923 at 21 years old. Although New York was the center of the cartoon industry, he was attracted to Los Angeles because his brother Roy was convalescing from tuberculosis there, and he hoped to become a live-action film director. Disney's efforts to sell Alice's Wonderland were in vain until he heard from New York film distributor Margaret J. Winkler . She
32899-515: The tooth-cutting machine devised by Robert Hooke – allowed some increase in the volume of watch production, although finishing and assembling was still done by hand until well into the 19th century. A major cause of error in balance-wheel timepieces, caused by changes in elasticity of the balance spring from temperature changes, was solved by the bimetallic temperature-compensated balance wheel invented in 1765 by Pierre Le Roy and improved by Thomas Earnshaw (1749–1829). The lever escapement ,
33096-416: The type of case back, which are generally categorized into four types: The crystal, also called the window or watch glass, is the transparent part of the case that allows viewing the hands and the dial of the movement. Modern wristwatches almost always use one of 4 materials: The bezel is the ring holding the crystal in place. The lugs are small metal projections at both ends of the wristwatch case where
33293-426: The use of a battery, using a traditional mechanical gear train powered by a spring, without the need for a balance wheel either. In 2010, Miyota ( Citizen Watch ) of Japan introduced a newly developed movement that uses a 3-pronged quartz crystal that was exclusively produced for Bulova to be used in the Precisionist or Accutron II line, a new type of quartz watch with ultra-high frequency (262.144 kHz) which
33490-517: The use of wristwatches subsequently became widespread among the officer class. The company Mappin & Webb began production of their successful "campaign watch" for soldiers during the campaign in the Sudan in 1898 and accelerated production for the Second Boer War of 1899–1902 a few years later. In continental Europe, Girard-Perregaux and other Swiss watchmakers began supplying German naval officers with wristwatches in about 1880. Early models were essentially standard pocket-watches fitted to
33687-411: The values in Disney's films are those "considered valuable in American Christian society", which include "individualism, decency, ... love for our fellow man, fair play and toleration". Disney's obituary in The Times calls the films "wholesome, warm-hearted and entertaining ... of incomparable artistry and of touching beauty". Journalist Bosley Crowther argues that Disney's "achievement as
33884-402: The war were specially designed for the rigors of trench warfare , with luminous dials and unbreakable glass. The UK War Office began issuing wristwatches to combatants from 1917. By the end of the war, almost all enlisted men wore a wristwatch (or wristlet ), and after they were demobilized, the fashion soon caught on: the British Horological Journal wrote in 1917, that "the wristlet watch
34081-473: The war) Disney began offering his services to various branches of the United States Armed Forces to make training films "...for national defence industries at cost and without profit. In making this offer, I am motivated solely by a desire to help as best I can in the present emergency." These training films contained highly classified information and required the highest level of security clearance to be viewed. If Disney had any previous sympathies toward Nazism,
34278-412: The watch band attaches to the watch case. The case and the lugs are often machined from one solid piece of stainless steel. The movement of a watch is the mechanism that measures the passage of time and displays the current time (and possibly other information including date, month, and day). Movements may be entirely mechanical, entirely electronic (potentially with no moving parts), or they might be
34475-402: The watch. The concept is similar to that of self-winding spring movements, except that electrical power is generated instead of mechanical spring tension. Solar powered watches are powered by light. A photovoltaic cell on the face ( dial ) of the watch converts light to electricity, which is used to charge a rechargeable battery or capacitor . The movement of the watch draws its power from
34672-449: The wearer's wrist motions are inadequate to keep the watch wound. In April 2013, the Swatch Group launched the sistem51 wristwatch. It has a mechanical movement consisting of only 51 parts, including 19 jewels and a novel self-winding mechanism with a transparent oscillating weight. Ten years after its introduction, it is still the only mechanical movement manufactured entirely on a fully automated assembly line, including adjustment of
34869-515: The work of Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart , whose 1971 book Para leer al Pato Donald ( transl. How to Read Donald Duck ) identifies that there are "imperialist ... values 'concealed' behind the innocent, wholesome façade of the world of Walt Disney"; this, they argue, is a powerful tool as "it presents itself as harmless fun for consumption by children." Tomlinson views their argument as flawed, as "they simply assume that reading American comics, seeing adverts, watching pictures of
35066-478: Was a heavy smoker throughout his life and died of lung cancer in 1966 before either the park or the EPCOT project were completed. Disney was a shy, self-deprecating and insecure man in private but adopted a warm and outgoing public persona. He had high standards and high expectations of those with whom he worked. Although there have been accusations that he was racist or antisemitic , they have been contradicted by many who knew him. Historiography of Disney has taken
35263-437: Was also able to negotiate a deal giving him the sole right to use the three-strip process until August 31, 1935. All subsequent Silly Symphony cartoons were in color. Flowers and Trees was popular with audiences and won the inaugural Academy Award for best Short Subject (Cartoon) at the 1932 ceremony . Disney had been nominated for another film in that category, Mickey's Orphans , and received an Honorary Award "for
35460-450: Was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry , he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons . As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards earned (22) and nominations (59) by an individual. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award , among other honors. Several of his films are included in
35657-408: Was built by Disney Studios engineer Roger E. Broggie , and Disney named it Lilly Belle after his wife; after three years Disney ordered it into storage due to a series of accidents involving his guests. Disney grew more politically conservative as he got older. A Democratic Party supporter until the 1940 presidential election , when he switched allegiance to the Republican Party , he became
35854-545: Was devastated by the arrival of cheap mechanical watches from the Far East, as well as the development of digital quartz watches pioneered by Japanese companies. Lehmkuhl retired in 1973 with no clear successor, and Polaroid ended its contract with Timex in 1975, resulting in a layoff of 2,000 employees. New technology was developing rapidly in the form of electronic digital watches and quartz analog watches, making Timex's mechanical watchmaking production facilities obsolete. Timex closed and consolidated worldwide operations, cutting
36051-592: Was generally happy, according to Lillian, although according to Disney's biographer Neal Gabler she did not "accept Walt's decisions meekly or his status unquestionably, and she admitted that he was always telling people 'how henpecked he is'." Lillian had little interest in films or the Hollywood social scene and she was, in the words of the historian Steven Watts, "content with household management and providing support for her husband". Their marriage produced two daughters, Diane (born December 1933) and Sharon (adopted in December 1936, born six weeks previously). Within
36248-423: Was invented, which was powered by a battery and kept time with a vibrating quartz crystal . By the 1980s the quartz watch had taken over most of the market from the mechanical watch. Historically, this is called the quartz revolution (also known as the quartz crisis in Switzerland ). Developments in the 2010s include smart watches , which are elaborate computer-like electronic devices designed to be worn on
36445-455: Was less involved than he had been with previous pictures because of his involvement in his first entirely live-action feature, Treasure Island (1950), which was shot in Britain, as was The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952). Other all-live-action features followed, many of which had patriotic themes. He continued to produce full-length animated features too, including Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). From
36642-463: Was little used by the sterner sex before the war, but now is seen on the wrist of nearly every man in uniform and of many men in civilian attire." By 1930, the wristwatch vastly exceeded the pocket watch in market share by a decisive ratio of 50:1. John Harwood invented the first successful self-winding system in 1923. In anticipation of Harwood's patent for self-winding mechanisms expiry in 1930, Glycine founder Eugène Meylan started development on
36839-500: Was losing the rights to both the Out of the Inkwell and Felix the Cat cartoons, and needed a new series. In October, they signed a contract for six Alice comedies , with an option for two further series of six episodes each. Disney and his brother Roy formed the Disney Brothers Studio—which later became The Walt Disney Company —to produce the films; they persuaded Davis and her family to relocate to Hollywood to continue production, with Davis on contract at $ 100
37036-415: Was made a "Special Agent in Charge Contact" in 1954, FBI officials claim this was largely an honorary title regularly awarded to members of a community who might be of use to the bureau. The FBI declassified and released Walt Disney's file on their website, and revealed that much of Disney's correspondence with the bureau (via studio personnel) was in relation to the production of educational films ; such as
37233-404: Was not antisemitic, nevertheless, he willingly allied himself with people who were antisemitic, and that reputation stuck. He was never really able to expunge it throughout his life." Disney distanced himself from the Motion Picture Alliance, and had no involvement with the organization after 1947. According to Disney's daughter Diane Disney-Miller , her sister Sharon dated a Jewish boyfriend for
37430-432: Was producing millions of clocks with scores of companies located in Connecticut's Naugatuck River Valley , earning the region the nickname "Switzerland of America". The Waterbury Clock Company was one of the largest producers for both domestic sales and export, primarily to Europe. The company originally produced clocks as less expensive alternatives to the high-end European counterparts of the time. In 1887, they introduced
37627-414: Was racially insensitive." The feature film Song of the South was criticized by contemporary film critics, the NAACP , and others for its perpetuation of black stereotypes , but during filming Disney became close friends with its star, James Baskett , describing him in a letter to his sister Ruth as "the best actor, I believe, to be discovered in years." Disney and Baskett stayed in contact long after
37824-426: Was solicited to Disney by painter and ballet dancer Hurbert "Jay" Stowitts , a close friend of Riefenstahl, and a former colleague of Leopold Stokowski who at the time was collaborating with Disney on Fantasia . A month later a spokesperson for Disney told the New York Daily News : "Miss Refiensthal got into the studio, but she crashed the gate. A Los Angeles man who is known to Disney obtained permission to take
38021-451: Was sometimes strained. The series ran until July 1927, by which time Disney had begun to tire of it and wanted to move away from the mixed format to all animation. After Mintz requested new material to distribute through Universal Pictures , Disney and Iwerks created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit , a character Disney wanted to be "peppy, alert, saucy and venturesome, keeping him also neat and trim". In February 1928, Disney hoped to negotiate
38218-452: Was taken by ambulance from his home to St. Joseph Hospital where, on December 15, at age 65, he died of circulatory collapse caused by the cancer. His remains were cremated two days later and his ashes interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California . The release of The Jungle Book and The Happiest Millionaire in 1967 raised the total number of feature films that Disney had been involved in to 81. When Winnie
38415-472: Was the invention of a British watch repairer named John Harwood in 1923. This type of watch winds itself without requiring any special action by the wearer. It uses an eccentric weight, called a winding rotor, which rotates with the movement of the wearer's wrist. The back-and-forth motion of the winding rotor couples to a ratchet to wind the mainspring automatically. Self-winding watches usually can also be wound manually to keep them running when not worn or if
38612-457: Was the owner of Fred. Olsen Shipping Co. , and he fled Norway in 1940 together with Joakim Lehmkuhl and their families because of the Nazi invasion. They eventually came to the United States seeking investments to assist in the war effort. Olsen and Lehmkuhl purchased controlling interest in Waterbury Clock Company in 1941, and Olsen became chairman. Olson appointed Lehmkuhl president, who had studied business and engineering at Harvard and MIT, and
38809-414: Was widely viewed as the most credible newsman in the United States, so Lehmkuhl decided to hire him as a company spokesman for live "torture tests" on television using Russ Alben 's slogan "Timex – Takes a Licking and keeps on Ticking". Hirshon Garfield developed these commercials as elaborations on tests suggested by United States Time Corporation salesmen. The commercials included high-divers, water skiers,
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