Robert H. Ingersoll

Robert Hawley Ingersoll (December 26, 1859 — September 4, 1928) was an American businessman known for founding the Ingersoll Watch Company with his brother Charles and producing the "dollar watch", the first inexpensive, mass-produced pocket watch.

Biography Robert H. Ingersoll was born on December 26, 1859, in Delta, Michigan, to Orville Boudinot Ingersoll and Mary Elizabeth Beers.

The first Ingersoll watches, called "Universal" were introduced in 1892, supplied by the Waterbury Clock Company. In 1896 Ingersoll introduced a watch called the Yankee, setting its price at $1. This made it the cheapest watch available at the time, and the first watch to be priced at one dollar: the "dollar watch".

On June 22, 1904, in Muskegon, Michigan, he married Roberta Maria Bannister. Its assets were sold to the Waterbury Clock Company, the predecessor of the modern day Timex Group USA.

His wife was involved in an attempted murder-suicide in 1926 when she shot her lover and then took her own life with a gunshot to her breast.

Ingersoll died on September 4, 1928, in Denver, Colorado.