Hodinkee has an interesting posting today, regarding the stopwatch that is used at the beginning of the show and before the commercial breaks.

Here is the Hodinkee posting -- https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/stopwatch-from-60-minutes

In the posting, the author suggests that there were four different stopwatches used for the various seasons and episodes, specifically a Minerva (for the first few episodes), then a Heuer, and then an Aristo (with the name removed from the dial). After the Aristo was retired, circa 1998, the CBS began using computer generated images ("CGI"), which continue to this day.

You can also see postings on the subject by The Smithsonian -- https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1211921

and in The Daily Press -- https://web.archive.org/web/20170428121230/http://articles.dailypress.com/2003-03-16/features/0303160224_1_aristo-stopwatch-cbs-television-show

When time permits, I'll share some information about the Heuer and Aristo models. In the meanwhile, shown below are four of the Heuer and Aristo models.

The "no name" stopwatch (shown in the third and fourth images, below), said to be an "Aristo", is the Heuer TrackStar, Reference 652.301, as shown in Heuer's 1978 catalog. Heuer made this model for Aristo, on a private label basis, with the watch being the same as the Heuer model. CBS digitally removed the Aristo (or Heuer) name, and with that, the free advertising to a huge audience ended.

Thanks to our good friend, Jonathan Krovitz, for alerting me to the Hodinkee posting.

Jeff