The most famous of all wristwatch brands is Timex, the brand that "takes a licking and keeps on ticking." When the U.S. Time Company, whose roots date from the 1850s, introduced the Timex in 1950, it revolutionized the time-keeping industry. The wristwatches allowed people to easily tell the time. They were also simply designed, inexpensive, and durable. These improvements played into what was to become one of the most celebrated TV advertising campaigns of all time.

Timex wristwatches first were promoted in print. Such ads depicted the timepieces attached to the bat of baseball (see entry under 1900s—Sports and Games in volume 1) legend Mickey Mantle (1931–1995), affixed to a turtle and to a lobster's claw, frozen in an ice cube, and twirling inside a vacuum cleaner. Then in the mid-1950s, John Cameron Swayze (1906–1995), a veteran newscaster, began presiding over a series of television (see entry...