1940s Swiss "Timex?"
This was a "Timex before there was TIMEX."
A Swiss watch called Timex on the dial well before US TIME came out with their watch called TIMEX
Then how did the US TIME TIMEX get its name?
This is pretty wild. Not my watch, but an ebay auction watch that was very interesting. Without question, this is NOT a watch manufactured by US TIME, the company that was to come out the with TIMEX watch, and later become the TIMEX CORPORATION.
(April 2020 update: Came across ANOTHER of these, scroll to bottom to see!)
Then, what is it. Well, firstly, why isn't it a US TIME TIMEX? Short answer, every single thing about it.
end/
This watch is / has everything that a US TIME TIMEX did not have.
It is a 1940s era watch with a 15 jewel Swiss movement (cal. 984,) and having a subsidiary seconds hand, gold case, Swiss caseback.
What it is is a "generic Swiss watch" with a kind of meaningless name. What I mean by this is that in addition to the well known watch names from that era made by proper watch houses, there were many watches made by assemblers. They bought movements from movement makers, along with the other parts needed to assemble a watch, from parts suppliers. Then they assembled a watch. But they had to call it something. "Joseph and Sons Imports Ltd" wasn't a great name to put on the dial, so it seems that names were just invented. There were probably hundreds of these "fake" names. Some real words, like HERO, or AERONAUT, or BASIS, or TRU-BLUE, etc, and others names were not real words, but created names to sound good. Someone must have thought TIMEX sounded good
We know that US TIME introduced the "TIMEX Watch" to the world in 1950. In coming up with the name, X was added to the word TIME, because the X lent a feeling of "technological expertise and innovation" that US TIME clearly wanted to associate with their new, revolutionary watches.
It's impossible to know, now, if when Joakim Lehmkuhl, the head of US TIME chose the name TIMEX for their new watches, he was aware of this Swiss Timex. It is possible that he didn't. Meaning that his choosing a name for their new watches that had already been stamped on a totally different type of watch years earlier was entirely a coincidence. It does have the word TIME in it, and the X was not an uncommon ending for created brand names, so for someone to have come up with Timex independently years before is possible.
But we will never know, will we? We will never know if Mr Lehmkuhl might have seen one of these Swiss Timex, made by some assembler firm that was no longer in business, with the Timex name up for grabs for anyone to trademark! We will never know whether or not he had seen such a "Timex watch" before he decided to call their new line the TIMEX watch!
I think it will be forever a mystery, one of the many mysteries about TIMEX that keeps things interesting.
These watches are so not US TIME TIMEX!
Thanks for reading
I hope you will like it
Alan
Contact
Website: Alan's Vintage Watches
Above and below, another of these non US TIME "Timex," a 1940s jeweled Swiss watch. This is from this Instagram page. I have seen maybe two other non US TIME "Timex." This one is probably the most attractive. Not known if the maker/assembler of this Timex is the same as the other Timex shown on this page. The lettering for Timex differs between the two, not sure if that means anything though.
