[SFDXA] [QCWA Everglades Chapter #69] Watches and Telegraphy?

[Mike Williams]

Good story Bill!


73 de W4DL   Mike


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Marx" <bmarx at bellsouth.net>
To: <sfdxa at mailman.qth.net>; <qcwa69 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2013 3:27 PM
Subject: [QCWA Everglades Chapter #69] Watches and Telegraphy?


>
>>> You may be familiar with the story, but I was not.
>>>
>>>
>>> I found this interesting...The Rest of The Story......
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> 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 Sears and his partner Alvah Roebuck!
>>>
>>>
>> =
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