Elgin Announces 1941 Line

From The American Horologist magazine, July 1940

Elgin Announces 1941 Line

Jewelry and watch wholesalers from all over the country were guests of the Elgin National Watch Company for a day during their recent Chicago convention, at which time Elgin introduced its new 1941 models.

T. Albert Potter, president of the watch firm "has host to almost ninety wholesalers who visited the huge plant at Elgin, Illinois, the largest jeweled watch manufacturing factory in the world. The guests spent most of the day going through the factory to observe the technical advances achieved there for producing precision instruments such as watches and clocks on a typically American large scale production basis. In seventysix years before the 1941 line went into production, Elgin manufactured more than 39,000,000 watches. 

In addition to seeing the production methods for 1941 watches. the wholesalers were shown the Elgin Watch Observatory, the only astronomical observatory maintained by any watch firm for the observation, recording and broadcasting time from the stars. They were also entertained by Elgin officials at Mr. Potter's farm situated on the outskirts of Elgin.

Mr. Potter told the visiting wholesalers: "During 1939 we scored a forty-six per cent increase in unit sales over the preceeding year. To date, 1940 has been showing steady gains. 

"Under our plans for the coming year we feel that we will be able to better our previous record. From our experience, American industry seems to have pulled itself from the slump of the depression years. Ours is a thoroughly 100 per cent American organization-96 per cent of our employees are native born and the other 4 per cent are naturalized citizens." Prospects for the coming year were discussed by Mr. Potter and Howard D. Schaeffer, vice president in charge of sales, at a dinner meeting for the wholesalers at the Hotel Baker, in St. Charles, at which the new catalog of 1941 watch models was presented. Examples of each new watch were on display at the meeting.