Ingersoll

his father until he was twenty and then followed
the example of his oldest brother and went east.
After a few profitless months of farming in Con-
necticut, he joined his brother, Howard S. In-
gersoll, in New York City. By the end of a year
he had saved $j6o which he used to establish
himself in the manufacture and sale of rubber
stamps. The business prospered and he was able
to send to Michigan for his younger brother,
Charles H. Ingersoll. Together the brothers de-
vised a toy typewriter employing rubber type
which had a successful sale and became the first
of a long line of novelties that they began to man-
ufacture and sell. These notions included patent
pencils, a dollar sewing machine, a patent key
ring, and many other articles. When the sales of
the business outgrew the capacity of their small
factory in Brooklyn, the Ingersolls added the
products of other manufacturers to their selling
list Robert became the director of the sales and
promotion of the business, while Charles man-
aged the manufacturing. The business grew from
a wholesale and jobbing concern to a mail-order
enterprise and finally into a chain-store system.
In both of these fields the Ingersolls were pio-
neers. After establishing his business upon nov-
elties Robert Ingersoll was wise enough to see
the desirability of introducing into his lists a
staple article of universal and steady demand,
upon which to concentrate his powers of produc-
tion and marketing and to focus the buying power
of the public. A cheap timepiece had the quali-
ties of the article needed and he purchased 1,000
"clock-watches" from the Waterbury Clock Com-
pany, makers of a small cheap watch. These
were introduced in 1892 to sell for one dollar.
The experiment was successful, the watches sold
rapidly, and Ingersoll adopted the watch. He en-
tered into a contract with the Waterbury Com-
pany to supply the watches according to his
specifications under the name "Universal." He
then developed the famous selling plan of com-
mon terms, common prices, and the well-known
guarantee. To combat unscrupulous competition
it was necessary to put the Ingersoll name on the
watch, and thus he established "the watch that
made the dollar famous." As the sales of the
watch increased the contract with the Waterbury
Company was continued and the factories of the
Trenton (N. J.) Watch Company and the New
England Watch Company (Waterbury, Conn.)
were purchased by the Ingersolls. It is estimated
that by 1919 over 70,000,000 watches had been
sold. In December 1921 the firm of Robert H.
Ingersoll & Brother went into the hands of re-
ceivers and in March 1922 the assets of the firm
were sold to the Waterbury Clock Company. In

Ingersoll

an attempt to regain his place in business Inger-
soll introduced in 1924 the Ingersoll Dollar
Razor Strop, which, though successful as a busi-
ness enterprise, did not attain the proportions of
the watch manufacture. As a hobby he collected
modern works of art. He was married to Rob-
erta Maria Bannister on June 22, 1904, at Mus-
kegon, Mich. She committed suicide on Dec. 19,
1926. At the time of his death in Denver, Colo.,
Ingersoll had not been actively engaged in busi-
ness for some time.

[Who's Who in America, 1920-21 ; H. C. Brearley,
Time Telling Through the Ages^ (1919) ; L. 0. Avery, A
GeneaL of the Ingersoll Family in America (1926);
the Jewelers' Circular (N. Y.), Sept. 13, 1928 ; the Am.
Jeweler {Chicago), Sept. 1928; Watchman, Jeweler,
Silversmith and Optician (London), Oct. 1928; N. Y.
Times, Dec. 20, 1926, Sept 6, 1928.] jr.

INGERSOLL, ROYAL RODNEY (Dec. 4,
i847-Apr. 21, 1931), naval officer, was born at
Niles, Mich., son of Rebecca A. (Deniston) and
Harmon Wadsworth Ingersoll and a descendant
of John Ingersoll who came to Salem, Mass., in
1629. His father was a wagon maker, at one time
superintendent of the Studebaker Wagon Works,
South Bend, Ind. The son was appointed mid-
shipman in 1864, graduated from the Naval (Acad-
emy in 1868, and subsequently spent five years
chiefly in the European Squadron and two years
on the China station, 1875-76. From then until
the Spanish- American War his naval service in-
cluded the usual sea duty in many parts of the
world and shore duty principally at the Naval
Academy, where he was instructor in mathe-
matics, 1876-79, ordnance instructor, 1883-87,
and head of the ordnance department, 1890-93,
1897-98, 1899-1901. He was author of three
works on ordnance : Text-book of Ordnance and
Gunnery (1884), written in collaboration with
Lieut. J. F. Meigs; Exterior Ballistics (1891),
and The Elastic Strength of Guns (1891). After
promotion to lieutenant-commander, 1893, *&&
service as executive officer of the flagship Phila-
delphia of the Asiatic Squadron, 1894-97, he
commanded the refrigerator ship Supply during
the war with Spain, and, with the rank of com-
mander, 1899, the gunboat Helena and later the
cruiser New Orleans on the Asiatic station, 1901-
03. The Helena was Robley D. Evans' flagship
on a cruise 1,100 miles up the Yangtse River to
Ichang, September-October, 1902. In An Ad-
miral's Log (1910, p. 180), Evans said of In-
gersoll that he was "an officer of marked ability"
who had spent much time on the river and knew
the conditions better than any other officer under
his command. Regarding him also as "firm, of
excellent judgment, and, above all, well versed
in treaty rights and obligations" (Ibid., p. 191),

471