Chronotriggered destroys watches… #9 - Guest editor edition with Aurelian

Absolutely huge thanks to @Aurelian for this instalment. There were more pictures, but the poll template doesn’t allow for them within the text body, nor any links or shouts… hence the need for this initial post of thanks, and an apology to @Aurelian if it looks like I ignored most of the images that were sent (it‘s not personal, it’s formatting 😬).

On a personal note, it’s fun putting these together, and sharing some of the more random and controversial parts of the history and hobby with you guys. Despite a user name change (for a laugh), the Chronotriggered brand is still causing discord, so I’ll keep playing up to this and maintain my role as the pantomime villain. I had planned to stop at around 3 or 4 with a small summary of my thoughts with regards to your responses, but it has taken on a small life of its own. The series has had two guest editors, with @Edge168n and @Aurelian contributing an instalment each, and there is a future instalment from another guest editor very soon. I also need to offer thanks to @Deeperblue for the catalyst that sparked instalment #8 out of the (deeper)blue; she was offered a co-editor role but as she has been incredibly busy with her inputs for the platform officially and unofficially, she humbly declined, but she deserves credit regardless. If you have an idea for a chapter, please send $… 😂 no, but please drop me a line if you would like to contribute.

Now… vote

I’m getting the impression that, given enough time, marketing transforms into “heritage”.  This makes me wonder if anybody’s heritage is actually impressive, or is it all a bunch of Wilsdorfian self promotion?

I vote Ball, since the store and the wreck site were/are about 40 miles from me.

BTW- it's Kipton, OH, not Kipnis...

• Ball capitalized on "public choice" (which is just a fancy term for "government corruption") to ensure itself massive profits through regulation: "Ball’s neat trick was that his company was the only one that could inspection, adjust, and repair the watches"  
• What makes it even worse is the fact that they solved nothing in terms of safeguarding lives, but profited by lying and pretending they were solving a real problem...  
• Hmmm...  Sort of like the recent nuclear fusion "breakthrough."  Every breathless news article keeps talking about "gain."  Really?  https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough

"If gain meant producing more output energy than input electricity, however, NIF fell far short. Its lasers are inefficient, requiring hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the 2 MJ of laser light and 3 MJ of fusion energy. Moreover, a power plant based on NIF would need to raise the repetition rate from one shot per day to about 10 per second. One million capsules a day would need to be made, filled, positioned, blasted, and cleared away—a huge engineering challenge."

• These clowns at NIF tout the fact that they produced 3.15MJ of fusion energy out of 2.05MJ of laser energy, without mentioning the fact that they wasted hundreds of MJ's to produce that tiny laser in the first place in order to secure billions of dollars of funding over the next several decades, to pursue something that will never happen.  But, they get paid a lot of money to do that nothing!  Deplorable in the same way that Ball is deplorable
• Meanwhile, Santa Fe rebranded good watches and sold them cheaply to people
• That's kinda like this...

• If you buy a bottle of Grey Goose, it's gonna cost ya north of $60 for a 1.75L bottle
• Meanwhile, Costco will sell you French Vodka for $20 that is made from the old plant in France that Grey Goose used to own but then sold to Costco as they needed a larger facility, using the same sources of water and alcohol as Grey Goose used to use, the factory manned by the former Grey Goose line workers!  So, Kirkland French Vodka is arguably more Grey Goose than Grey Goose!

What's wrong with selling a good product at a low price using a different brand?

Wow! Great history lesson, thank you.  

IMO, Both seem to be shady enough in origin to deserve the sledgehammer… but Ball had dozens of companies making their watches , of varying quality to be sure, while Santa Fe had but one supplier with known good quality making their watches.  
Also, Ball exists.  So Ball goes off to the visit a steamroller 

The Santa Fe railroad goes right through my backyard (figuratively). My great grandfather helped to build sections of it here in Kansas. I had no idea they sold watches!

Voting for Sante Fe since one could reasonably argue Ball is still using shady practices to sell its watches. I have to take time to get adjusted to this new porthole handle. 

Here is the Ball store in Cleveland:

Here is the Santa Fe store in Topeka:

It looks like Santa Fe did not make it out of the 1960's. They were not related to the railroad of the same name. I have one of their wristwatches.

The Ball of today is a Hong Kong based company who manufactures watches in Switzerland. They bought the name from the Ball family, but Ball was barely producing watches by then, their heyday was before the wrist watch era.

Great history lesson indeed!! Thank you!! Don't own one yet but I'm a Ball man!!! I was kinda torn between"Ball man" and "I like Balls". Either way I'm kinda f'ed.

Good word usage “ Willsdorfian “ PT Barnum ian would resonate also :)

More of the story unfolds!
So Ball was shady in its origin story. And today are China based but ‘Swiss Made‘ , like so many others.  With the whole value percentage formula determining the ‘Swiss Made’ title, I wonder if merely having a Swiss guy screw on the case back has a higher cost than manufacturing and assembling the entirety of the watch in china. 

If you buy an inexpensive Swiss movement and make and do everything else in china and it would still be ‘Swiss made’ because movement value exceeds rest of the watch.  ☹️
Kind of a thread hijack, I‘m just curious and thinking out loud .  

still voting for Ball to go into the kiln. 

I took the fusion thing as more of a proof of concept thing than an actual, viable way to make energy. I assumed the point to be that, given increased efficiency, it’s possible to make more energy that you use in this process. 
 

As for vodka, that’s a great comparison. So many watch companies have “heritage” based on a name they bought from the original company. 

Santa Fe sold working watches to those who had limited income but needed a good watch.

Ball sold a concept and let someone else solve the real life problems with railroad traffic.

The bought heritage aside; the funny thing is, the headquarters location in China, is also a manufacturer and service center for several brands. I truly question how Swiss the watches actually are. All that said, the Ball owners here really like their watches and most claim they are well made at a good price. I think they would have more love of they were more transparent and honest. They do not help the cause by blocking anyone on social media who ask any questions about it.

The entire western world has been ragging in just about anything that has "Made in China" label on it now matter how good of a quality said product maybe, while placing a high value of anything that are made from just about any European county or North America no matter how shoddy or mediocre.  Not specifically defending Ball HQ in Hong Kong, but can you blame them?

I can almost understand that, but still a shame; Either be ambiguous (or in some cases lie) about your products origin or risk alienating buyers who perceive it as a substandard product.

Most of us own many awesome Chinese products. I don’t see watches that far behind with a little more time. I’d rather give my money to the upfront brands, but I know not everyone is the same. 

votes both just for number 2 and giggles 

They're all bad, y'see? Off to the hydraulic press with them! 😛

Not exactly the correct assumption. I'm into brewing and I can tell you ingredients and technique make the difference.

Cheers CJ, that bugs me as well.  It’s the active effort to obscure or straight up lie that’s shady.  Way less offensive to just be upfront.    

Thanks for the pictures very interesting as was the sales leaflet 

Badge Engineering in the Automotive industry, why not the watch industry, we are all to an extent hypnotised by asceticism visa vi heart brain connection, heart winning . The rationale needs to be questioned! Huzzah

A wonderful and informative read, as always gents. 👍 @Aurelian @Porthole 

As jury, with the information available, I'd keep both. 

I don't see how better time regulation and standardisation can be a bad thing, unless the argument is that it gave false reassurance? 

"So, Ball didn’t make anything and didn’t improve anything."

I don't have a massive knowledge of American rail disasters, so I don't know if the subsequent accidents were due to problems that Balls regulations were supposed to eliminate? If so, then yes, Ball needs to be kicked into the pit.

If however, these accidents actually had other causative factors that Ball could not have impacted, then I don't see Ball at fault. 

In fact, if watch time keeping wasn't deemed a factor in the subsequent crashes, then surely that's a win for Ball?

Santa Fe were trying to bring something more affordable to the market, so unless it was peddling actual lies, again, I can't hate on them.

Judgement withheld pending further information.

Based on the information you have presented I say, Ball.  I dislike the idea of monopolizing the market due to government “standards”… 

The point here was not to heap opprobrium on modern Ball, who makes fine watches, even if not to everyone's tastes. It is just that the founding mythos, like many founding myths, does not bear much scrutiny.

Webb Ball made watches more accurate. By requiring a certain number of adjustments to the movement he made them SECONDS more accurate every DAY. Train tragedies were not avoided by seconds. It would be a dangerous world indeed if the difference between having two passenger trains on the same line was scheduled down the second. His regulations required watch service several times a year which was usually paid by the railroad. Imagine the economic activity created by having your most popular watch serviced three times this year. Ball also made watches more legible. He insisted on plain white dials with clear Arabic numerals and an outer chapter ring. Fancy handsets were replaced by spade hands.

Most watch makers fell in line with Ball and allowed Ball to insure their compliance to maintain access to the lucrative railroad market. The largest watch maker, Waltham, implemented Ball's regulations without giving Ball a cut. Waltham could produce railroad certified watches without Webb Ball's help.

In my research I found one train disaster where poorly maintained watches were a contributing factor. In that case the watch was 20 minutes slow. That crash occurred years after the regulations went into effect. In the Kipton crash, neither the conductor nor the engineer appeared to have consulted the time at all. In the deadliest crash the engineer, a holiday replacement, took a curve at five times the recommended speed. Human error caused all these crashes, none necessarily would have been helped by seconds of more accuracy.

Santa Fe just wanted to sell watches but not go through all of the bother of Ball's regulations. They followed the style of the dials. Santa Fe was never an accepted brand for any of the railroad companies. The consumers knew this and bought them anyway. Sometimes they were bought as "civilian" watches. But they were marketed directly at rail workers. These rail workers presumably knew that these unadjusted movements worked well enough. 100 years later they stack up pretty well. They were not Dollar Watches.

So ultimately Ball did make some small improvements of probably minor significance, but made a tidy sum for themselves in the process. 

In that case, out of the two, Ball would get my vote. 👍

Amazing information @Aurelian, thank you! 

I’m still waiting for a show hosted by you and @Porthole. 

As much as it pains me to say, in the context of this post, Ball should clearly head to the gallows. 

However, in the wider context of selling watches, I find it ironic that currently Ball seems to be closer to the Santa Fe of our times. Their Engineer line of watches are more affordable high end Swiss watches, many of them COSC certified even. In fact many of their specs are superior in some cases (e.g. magnetic resistance on some models). By no means would I call them affordable to most, but definitely affordable to more than other brands in a similar quality bracket.

This series really pushes us to look at the art and past the artist. I can't tell you how many times I've told the railroad crash story to people that don't know Ball and asked me about it. Now I can tell them more sobering facts that simply make me look more crazy than I already am for buying these things. Thank you for that.