Ball - see References, below) quotes the title as being " The Man Who Holds A Watch On 125,000 Miles Of Railroad" and states that the copy he had described James B. The interview, being syndicated, was published, under different titles, on Januin at least 13 newspapers in major cities across the country. Eventually, these services were performed in Canada as well, as noted in the letterhead of a 1925 document regarding Montgomery dials. However, this should be taken with a grain of salt as other 'facts' Ball cited in the interview are known to be inaccurate. In a 1910 interview, Ball claimed that his inspection services covered about half the railroads in the U.S. The watch inspection business was apparently run successfully, winning contracts away from other railroad inspection contractors like J.W. dealers and the same ones to whom Ball was distributing watches and jewelry. The actual inspectors were the same jewelers who were the Ball Watch Co. By 1890 Ball was the Official Watch Inspector for a number of railroads. Contrary to popular belief (that Ball "invented" railroad watch inspection after the 1891 LS&MS Kipton wreck), this business was in operation at the end of the 1880s, along with competitors, such as Giles, Bro. This business performed time inspection services under contract to the railroads. Yet another branch of the Ball businesses was the Ball Railroad Time Service (which operated under a number of different, official sounding names over the years). Further below is a brief, limited, overview of the most common railroad grade pocket watches Ball offered prior to the introduction of wrist watches in the late 1950s. The Ball Official RR Standard grade watches were considered a cut above the run-of-the-mill railroad grade watches (all of which were of a relatively high grade) and are considered to be quite collectable, although the Swiss-built Ball watches of the 1950s are only first beginning to be collected as avidly as the U.S.-built ones. After lying dormant for about twenty years at the end of the twentieth century, the Ball family sold the enterprise to new owners who are producing Ball watches today and marketing them in the U.S. In the general discussion below, the different companies will be collectively referred to as the Ball Watch Co., or simply as Ball. Also, there was one branch of Ball operations in Winnipeg the Canadian Ball Watch Company, Ltd. Nevertheless, Jeffrey Hess, CEO of Ball Watch USA, has described a portion of it in a 1-May-09 NAWCC Message Board Post. There have been such a number of Ball companies, under different names, sometimes functioning simultaneously, that (by Ball's design) it is very difficult to follow their evolution. A succession of Ball firms, eventually funded by Rockefeller capital, marketed Railroad Grade Watches (the last being Wrist Watches), and other, non-railroad, watches over a period of about seventy to eighty years. Ball had been involved in the American watch business by the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but it wasn't until the early-1890s that the first of the Ball watch companies appeared.
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