[GreenKeys] OT: telegraph operators and watches OT

[Don Robert House]

  Cheap watches, cool story (Interesting bit of trivia)


If you were in the market for a watch in 1880, would you know where to  
get one? You would go to a store, right? Well, of course you could do  
that, but if you wanted one that was cheaper and a bit better than  
most of the store watches, you went to the train station! Sound a bit  
funny? Well, for about 500 towns across the northern United States ,  
that's where the best watches were found.

Why were the best watches found at the train station? The railroad  
company wasn't selling the watches, not at all The telegraph operator  
was. Most of the time the telegraph operator was located in the  
railroad station because the telegraph lines followed the railroad  
tracks from town to town. It was usually the shortest distance and the  
right-of-ways had already been secured for the rail line.

Most of the station agents were also skilled telegraph operators and  
that was the primary way that they communicated with the railroad.  
They would know when trains left the previous station and when they  
were due at their next station. And it was the telegraph operator who  
had the watches. As a matter of fact they sold more of them than  
almost all the stores combined for a period of about 9 years.

This was all arranged by "Richard", who was a telegraph operator  
himself. He was on duty in the North Redwood, Minnesota train station  
one day when a load of watches arrived from the East. It was a huge  
crate of pocket watches. No one ever came to claim them.
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So Richard sent a telegram to the manufacturer and asked them what  
they wanted to do with the watches. The manufacturer didn't want to  
pay the freight back, so they wired Richard to see if he could sell  
them. So Richard did. He sent a wire to every agent in the system  
asking them if they wanted a cheap, but good, pocket watch. He sold  
the entire case in less than two days and at a handsome profit.

That started it all. He ordered more watches from the watch company  
and encouraged the telegraph operators to set up a display case in the  
station offering high quality watches for a cheap price to all the  
travelers. It worked! It didn't take long for the word to spread and,  
before long, people other than travelers came to the train station to  
buy watches.

Richard became so busy that he had to hire a professional watch maker  
to help him with the orders. That was Alvah. And the rest is history  
as they say.The business took off and soon expanded to many other  
lines of dry goods.

Richard and Alvah left the train station and moved their company to  
Chicago -- and it's still there.

YES, IT'S A LITTLE KNOWN FACT that for a while in the 1880's, the  
biggest watch retailer in the country was at the train station. It all  
started with a telegraph operator: Richard Searsand his partner Alvah  
Roebuck!
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Bet You Didn't Know that




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