FTS
industry. When Rosie the Riveter went to work in the 40s, it could easily
have been in a facility once used to build watch movements and watch-
es that had then become a munitions factory or something similar. This
could be said of almost all manufacturing industries at the time.
Many went back to their previous incarnations and revived their
dormant industries after the smoke cleared. But watches had lost too
much ground to rivals that didn’t face the same conflict the US did,
most notably Switzerland. Then, ironically enough, efforts along the
lines of the Marshall Plan – which was Europe only – implemented to
rebuild Japan ushered in their dominance in the mass-market watch
trade.
Once the quartz revolution began in earnest there just wasn’t an
economic incentive to try and compete with the vast production in
Japan and their low costs of construction. It was easier to just buy their
movements. Then we all know what happened when China blossomed
over the past quarter century.
38 | AboutTime Magazine