Watch (timekeeping)

“ One day I’d feel very fine and I’d go dashing ahead, trying to make up for lost time. That, of course, a poor watch can never do. It has never been expected of a watch and so a watch shouldn’t try to do it.
“Time goes right on no matter what we may do. ”

“ The watch, with a punctuality worthy to be imitated by all of us, not only at the appointed hour, but at the very minute itself, commenced such a whirring noise, that the sleeper was immediately awakened, arose at once, and prepared herself for the duties of the day. ”

“ What if we do lie half a day at this bank, in the sun, waiting for a lazy breeze? There certainly is time enough, for we seem to have lived a cosmic hour since we landed in Egypt.
One sees here what an exaggerated importance we are accustomed to attach to the exact measurement of time. We constantly compare our watches, and are anxious that they should not gain or lose a second. A person feels his own importance somehow increased if he owns an accurate watch. There is nothing that a man resents more than the disparagement of his watch. ”

“ The mystic solemnity of time is that it is made up of 'seasons.' We shall walk heedfully in the degree in which we are awake to the moment's meaning, and grasp opportunity by the forelock, or, as Paul says, 'buy up the opportunity.' But wise heed to our walk is not enough, unless we have a sure standard by which to regulate it. A man may take great care of his watch, but unless he can compare it with a chronometer, or, as they do in Edinburgh, pull out their watches when the one o'clock gun is fired on a signal from Greenwich, he may be far out and not know it. ”

“ The Man Animal and Nature's Timepieces The story of the watch that you hold in your hand to-day began countless centuries ago, and is as long as the history of the human race. When our earliest ancestors, living in caves, noted the regular succession of day and night, and saw how the shadows changed regularly in length and direction as day grew on toward night, then was the first, faint, feeble germ of the beginning of time-reckoning and time-measurement. ”

“ Complicated Watches are so called because besides the ordinary watch movement they possess other mechanism more or less complicated, by means of which they can indicate special portions of time,—as for instance the Chronograph, which marks on its dial the fifth of a second; the Quarter, and Half-Quarter, and Minute Repeaters, which furnish the time in the dark to within a minute, and are invaluable to invalids and blind persons; the Clock-Watch, which strikes the hours even in the pocket ”

“ Seconds seemed hours; minutes seemed days; hours seemed infinite. Still I was perfectly conscious during the intermissions between the paroxysms. I would look at my watch, and then, after an hour or two, as I thought, would look again, and find that scarcely five minutes had elapsed. ”

“ For if we suppose the time marked to be an hour, the space passed over by the minute hand, that is, the circumference of the dial, has no relation with the hour except what the artificer gave it by so constructing the watch that the minute hand would make one revolution every hour. ”

“ I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numb'ring clock: My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, Whereto my finger, like a dial's point, Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. ”

“ And so the hair-spring was slowly adopted by English watchmakers with a number of minor improvements.
Other inventors, of whom presently we shall hear more, worked out better methods of escapement, and the watch movement developed slowly toward its present form. It became possible to tell time more accurately and to make arrangements and plans more closely as the watch became a better time-keeper. The pace of life was speeding up, and people were realizing the value of minutes—even of seconds. ”

“ The sense of responsibility, of importance, which such a wonderful little piece of mechanism gives to them, the alacrity with which they thenceforth note the flight of time and compare the working of all other time-pieces, is remarkable. One of the first things usually done by the juvenile with his or her watch is, curiously enough, to challenge thereby the performance of the old-established time-pieces in the house,—even the infallible old Hall Clock, a very Nestor among clocks, does not escape scrutiny. ”

“ I admire the skill of the watch-maker who produces an accurate timepiece; but how much more would I admire his skill if he so made one watch that it was capable not only of keeping time, but also of evolving a series of watches, each keeping better time than that which produced it, so that from the plainest, simplest form of a watch there should be eventually evolved a magnificent chronometer, with jeweled holes, whose time would not vary from the true time a second in a million of years! ”

“ But how can we test a time-piece whose motions32 we select to regulate every other time-piece? If a man sets his watch every morning by the clock at Westminster, it is clearly impossible for him to test the accuracy of that clock by the motions of his watch. ”

“ While I am walking with Michael some one often comes to me to ask the time of day. Few of the people, however, are sufficiently used to modern time to understand in more than a vague way the convention of the hours, and when I tell them what o'clock it is by my watch they are not satisfied, and ask how long is left them before the twilight. ”

“ From the doctor's fifty-guinea chronometer, by Benson, to the silver turnip from the wide buff waistcoat of the farmer, everybody's watch is out, and nobody will believe but that his particular time is the right time, and every other watch, and the station clock into the bargain, wrong. ”

“ Again, the medium asks a gentleman to put the hands of a watch to any hour he chooses, and, when again the lights are lowered, he calls out the exact time to the exact minute. This all seems very mysterious and unaccountable, but I shall again show that we do not require spirit aid to perform these marvels. ”

“ From the hour when such a gift comes into his possession until the latest day of his life a watch remains his indispensable mentor, and, literally, his bosom-friend. There are few, perhaps none, who can look upon the face of an old watch, their day and night companion for many years, without associating it with the bygone times when it reckoned off for them their moments of pain or anxiety, their joys and sorrows. ”

“ The Several Branches of a Great Art.—The timekeeper—whether it be the scientific astronomical clock, or the chronometer used by mariners, or the modern watch, minute in size but recording time with accuracy, or the bracket or table clock, or the long-case clock—has proceeded on parallel lines of development. ”

“ The Winding and keeping in order is, as we have said, a less laborious task as respects modern clocks than those which were made fifty years ago, inasmuch as, although it is the duty of a clock-winder to watch daily the action of the time-piece under his charge, he need not perform his winding duties oftener than once a week. ”

“ My watch says it's one o'clock in the morning, and my watch is always right, because I made it myself. We've had a pretty good rest, enough to go on, and what we find may be worth finding. A needle in a haystack may be well hid, but you'll find it if you look long enough. ”

“ Calendar work on watches is, of course, fatal to great accuracy of time-keeping, and is very complicated. A watch is made to record days of the week and month, and to take account of leap years usually by the aid of star-wheels with suitable pauls and stops. The type of this mechanism is to be found in the calendar motion of an ordinary grandfather's clock. ”

“ The improvement of the balance-watch upon the clepsydra or the hour-glass and other early time-keepers caused the change to be made from apparent to mean time, and the increasing requirements of a complex civilization demand more and more attention to the keeping of accurate standard time. ”

“ Passe-partout drew out his great watch. "Twelve o'clock," said he.
"Nonsense. It is fifty-two minutes past nine."
"Your watch is slow," replied Fix.
"Slow, my watch slow; why this watch has come to me from my grandfather. It is an heirloom, and does not vary five minutes in a year. It is a regular chronometer."
"I see how it is," replied Fix; "you have got London time, which is about two hours slower than Suez time. You must take care to set your watch at twelve o'clock in every country you visit." ”

“ I tried to stop him—tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. ”

“ The real usefulness of a watch is best learnt by being without one for a day or two. There are plenty of clocks about, but not always in sight; and one gradually experiences a mild irritation at having to step round the corner to find out what the hands are doing. ”

“ The labour formerly employed in turning the hour-glass, or in running to look at the church clock, is transferred to the making of watches. The user of the watch obtains an accurate register of time, which teaches him to know the value of that most precious possession, and to economize it; and the producers of the watch have abundant employment in the universal demand for this valuable machine.
A watch or clock is an instrument for assisting an operation of the mind. ”

“ How a Mechanical Toy Became a Scientific Timepiece Now, since we are at last well into the story of the watch, let us glance back over the road we have traveled. We have seen man first beginning to think of time by noting the positions of shadows or the motions of the stars. Next, we have seen him making his plans for days ahead by means of the changes in the moon, then by making such division in the flow of time as the month, the season, and the year. ”

“ The motions of the hour and minute hands of a watch may serve to give some idea of the periodical and synodical revolutions of the moon; for when the minute hand has performed a complete revolution, it has yet some distance to go to obtain a coincidence with the hour hand, similar to that which it had the preceding hour. ”

“ I do not mind telling you, however, that I knew your watch was stolen by your anxious glance at my clock, which showed that you wished to know the time. Now most rich Americans have watches for that purpose, and have no hesitation about showing them. ”

“ The rapidity of filling, and consequent duration of time, is regulated by increasing or diminishing the size of the orifice. Thus a man may be set to keep a two-shell watch or a four-shell watch, and so on. ”

“ A Glimpse of a Giant Industry
This picture shows one corner of the huge plants which produce twenty thousand Ingersoll watches a day.
"Everyone wishes to tell time," it said. "There is not one of the millions who crowd the cities, travel the highways, or spread over the country districts, who does not wish repeatedly during his waking-hours to know what time it is. Sometimes he is in sight of a clock, but more often he is not. Here and there is a man with a watch in his [201] pocket. That man has a chance to be efficient; but good watches cost money, and most people cannot afford them. ”

“ A good many people wish to tell time in the darkness as well as in the light, and if these people could afford to, they bought expensive repeaters. Such watches, however, cost hundreds of dollars, so that while telling time in the light had come within the reach of everyone, telling time in the darkness was still possible for very few. Therefore, the watch could not yet be held to be of equal service to all humanity in every one of the twenty-four hours. ”

“ In making entries on the rate cards and in figuring the variations the sign + is used as denoting that the watch is running faster than the standard time and the sign - is used as denoting that it is running slower than standard time. ”

“ But since then many improvements have been made in it, so that makers are now enabled to produce a pocket watch, with the short angle lever escapement, which marks time at a steady rate of within four or five seconds weekly,—a rate which approaches so near to the time-keeping of a pocket chronometer, that unless the minutest exactness for some specific purpose is required, the last-named watch is all that can be wished for. ”

“ A watch can not tell the time unless it is combined and united together, every wheel and pivot in its place, with the mainspring in good order. It takes the whole machine to tell the time of day, and when a man says—'I have got the watch,' and he has only got a wheel, a pivot, or a pin, the face, mainspring, or case, he does not tell the truth, whether he knows it or not. ”

“ In all this journey, covering thousands of years, one thing has made itself clear to us—the story of timepieces is not a mere mechanical story; it is a human story. Men did not put together certain pieces of wood or metal in order merely to make mechanism, but to meet a vital need. One might almost say that the story of the watch is in the watch itself. The works run and the hands move because of [108] the mainspring, which by pressing steadily forces them into motion. ”

“ In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end; on the ground, that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that end. ”

“ The face of the clock. The hands, like black daggers, had pointed to ten minutes of one. Ten minutes of life! Ten minutes to live! Or—less?
Silence, broken only by the reluctant click-clack, click-clack of the rosewood clock. ”