First-person YouTube monologue by Bill Gallagher describing how he and collaborators bought and reverse-engineered antique American pocket watches, salvaged their internal movements (often left after cases were scrapped for gold/silver), and manufactured new cases and crowns in the U.S. to create a 100% American-made wristwatch. The idea was launched on Kickstarter in 2014; the resulting product/company is called Vortic.
2014
Vortic
We basically just started buying all these pocket watches to see if we could reverse engineer them and figure out how they work and figure out how we could make them ourselves and why aren't they made in us. And one of these guys that we walked into a pawn shop and he said most pocket watches today are scrapped for the gold and silver, the case, the outside of the pocket watch leaving the inside just, you know, homeless and, and scrapped. Right. And light bulb went off and we're like what if we use the inside of the pocket watch that was made in America 100 years ago and then we make the outside, the case and the crown, all the bigger stuff in America that's easier to make we'd have 100% American made wristwatch and that was the idea we put on Kickstarter back in 2014 was 100% made in America wristwatch using an antique American pocket watch inside. So a pocket watch turned into a wristwatch and we call it a vortic.
