Watch (work)

“ The daily winding is his work, not the watchmaker’s. The chemical and mechanical 295work that is going on within you is as complicated as anything in a watch or anything that you could see in a laboratory or factory. ”

“ In this way a watchmaker makes a watch which goes afterwards without him, because the watchmaker only sets to work forces which have an independent existence, and which continue to act when he has ceased his labor. ”

“ And because men of sense very soon found that such were the effects of meddling with very complicated machinery they did not understand, I suppose the first thing, as being the easiest, was to study the nature of the works of the human watch, and the next thing was to study the way the parts worked together, and the way the watch worked. ”

“ As, for example, in the making of a watch, if one man shall make the wheels, another the spring, another shall engrave the dial-plate, and another shall make the cases, then the watch will be better and cheaper than if the whole work be put upon any one man. ”

“ Undoubtedly, a complete collection of all the escapements invented would constitute a most instructive work for the progressive watchmaker, and while we are waiting for a competent author to take such an exhaustive work upon his hands, we shall endeavor to open the way and trust that a number of voluntary collaborators will come forward and assist us to the extent of their ability in filling up the chinks. ”

“ The workman's whole time is each day taken in actually doing the work with his hands, so that, even if he had the necessary education and habits of generalizing in his thought, he lacks the time and the opportunity for developing these laws, because the study of even a simple law involving say time study requires the cooperation of two men, the one doing the work while the other times him with a stop-watch. ”

“ But I was too restless to watch long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours—that is another matter. ”

“ By habit we walk, eat, dress ourselves, and perform many other common acts. Just think how long it would take a novice to put the various parts of a watch together; but the watchmaker, being habituated to the task, can do it in an hour. ”

“ The devotion of your whole four years to anatomy and physiology alone would be totally insufficient to attain that end. What I mean is, the sort of practical, familiar, finger-end knowledge which a watchmaker has of a watch, and which you expect that craftsman, as an honest man, to have, when you intrust a watch, that goes badly, to him. It is a kind of knowledge which is to be acquired, not in the lecture-room, nor in the study, but in the dissecting-room and the laboratory. ”

“ The fact is, I am, and have been, any time these thirty years, a man who works with his hands—a handicraftsman. I do not say this in the broadly metaphorical sense in which fine gentlemen, with all the delicacy of Agag about them, trip to the hustings about election time, and protest that they too are working men. I really mean my words to be taken in their direct, literal, and straightforward sense. In fact, if the most nimble-fingered watchmaker among you will come to my workshop, he may set me to put a watch together, and I will set him to dissect, say, a blackbeetle’s nerves. ”

“ SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs—putting in his oar, so to speak—with some pat word or sentence. The conversation, the other evening, had turned on the subject of watches, when one of the gentlemen present, the manager of a large watch-making establishment, told us a rather interesting fact. The component parts of a watch are produced by different workmen, who have no concern with the complex piece of mechanism as a whole, and possibly, as a rule, understand it imperfectly. Each worker needs to be expert in only his own special branch. ”

“ How is it that the mind invents a watch which, being made by the hand, records the hour to a second, ninety-nine times in a hundred, but fails ninety-three to ninety-seven times in a hundred to devise and carry into execution a mercantile venture? ”

“ I should like to know, too, by what mysterious law of nature it is that, before you have left your watch "to be repaired" half-an-hour, some one is sure to stop you in the street and conspicuously ask you the time. Nobody even feels the slightest curiosity on the subject when you've got it on. ”

“ I believe you are perfectly right there; and the truth of what you say is in nothing so conspicuous, as it is in watch-making, which is come to a higher degree of perfection, than it would have been arrived at yet, if the whole had always remained the employment of one person; and I am persuaded, that even the plenty we have of clocks and watches, as well as the exactness and beauty they may be made of, are chiefly owing to the division that has been made of that art into many branches. ”

“ Thus, by degrees, we have had growing up our body of anatomists, or knowers of the construction of the human watch, and our physiologists, who know how the machine works. And just as any sensible man, who has a valuable watch, does not meddle with it himself, but goes to some one who has studied watchmaking, and understands what the effect of doing this or that may be ”

“ It is to be hoped that this rebuke, with the good advice given with it to this thoughtless girl, was a lesson in good manners which she and her companions never forgot.
To take out one's watch or to turn the head to look at the clock is like saying we are impatient to go, and must be disturbing to the speaker. If it is necessary for us to look at a watch, we should do so without its being seen, and should stifle in our pockets the click of shutting it. ”

“ If we carry a watch to a watch-maker, and undertake to show him how to regulate the machinery, he laughs and goes on his own way; but if a brother-machinist makes suggestions, he listens respectfully. ”

“ A watch proves not only a maker, an artificer, but also a designer; a watch is made for a purpose. This is evident in its structure. A thoughtful, designing mind was back of the watch. So is it with the world in which we live. ”

“ PIETY, AS THE SPRING OF ACTION, AND REGULATOR OF THE SOUL.
A watch, to one who had never seen such a piece of mechanism before, would be a great wonder. It is an object of much curiosity to the natives of savage and barbarous tribes, visited by the missionaries. It seems to speak and move, as though instinct with life. I have read, somewhere, of a poor savage, who, seeing a white man’s watch lying on the ground, and hearing it tick, supposed it to be some venomous reptile, and, with a stone, dashed it in pieces. A watch is an object of no less wonder to a child. ”

“ A man who makes, year after year, but one small wheel in a modern watch factory, may, if his education has properly prepared him, have a fuller life than did the old watchmaker who made a watch from beginning to end. ”

“ But let him view these several parts put together, or consider them as to be put together in the manner of a watch—let him form a notion of the relation which these several parts have to each other, all conducive in their several ways to this purpose, showing the hour of the day,—and then he has the idea of a watch. Thus it is with the inward nature of man. ”

“ Or if some watch should be discovered that was not put together by human hand, but formed by another watch, not quite so perfect as itself, and this by another watch, further back, would the wonder, the demand for a superior intelligence as the origin of the process be any the less? ”

“ One chap may be looking in another direction when his mate sings out. Is that going to stand for a sign that his sight’s poor?’
‘What do the men think?’ said I, anxious to get behind the forecastle, so to speak, for I was never to know how far knowledge of this kind might be serviceable to us later on.
‘Why, the watch has been a-grumbling and a-quarrelling over the rewards. They say ’tain’t fair. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suppose a skillful artisan, to whom we give a watch to examine. In vain will he look through his lens at the springs, the wheels, the cogs, the jewels, and the whole machinery, so long as the watch is not wound up ”

“ The more I reflect, the more exact and close appears to me the analogy between a watch and watches, and the conscience and consciences of men, on the one hand, and that between the sun and motion of the heavenly bodies in general and the reason and goodness of the Supreme on the other. Never goes quite right any one, no two go exactly the same ”

“ In some other respects, likewise, keeping watch possesses its advantages. Nothing else produces such punctual habits, or contributes more directly, to cast both mind and [Pg 69] body, into those trains of thought and of action which lead to certainty of purpose, by teaching us how much we may accomplish when we set about things regularly. ”

“ The jewellers who deal in expensive watches will advise winding the watch at exactly the same hour each night. Does not the human body mean as much to the soul that dwells in it as a watch or a furnace? ”

“ Thus, what occurs when we come across a particular example of type setting is that we compare our present experience with other experiences and recognise it as belonging to a particular class. So with the watch. The only reason we have for believing that a watch is made is that of our previous knowledge that such things are made. ”

“ I never leave my house without ascertaining the exact number of minutes in the day, and take care that my watch is exact to the time, for a minute more or less would make all the difference in the world. ”

“ Now, just the same as the works of a watch can keep good time without being in the case, so the soul can exist apart from the body. If you were to take the watch-case and bury it in the ground, that fact would not affect either the existence or the accuracy of the works of the watch in measuring time. ”

“ Habits of Attention Formed by Scientific Management. — The good habits which result from teaching standard methods result in habits of attention. The standards aid the mind in holding a "selective attitude," 27 by presenting events in an orderly sequence. The conditions under which the work is done, and the incentives for doing it, provide that the attention shall be "lively and prolonged." ”

“ This sort of practice makes the pupil think and study and he will acquire a knowledge which will never be forgotten, but always be present to aid him in the puzzles to which the practical watchmaker is every day subject. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Employers derive their knowledge of how much of a given class of work can be done in a day from either their own experience, which has frequently grown hazy with age, from casual and unsystematic observation of their men, or at best from records which are kept, showing the quickest time in which each job has been done. ”

“ But, as when an authentic watch is shown,
Each man winds up and rectifies his own;
So in our very judgments. ”

“ The watchmaker not only stamped his design on the face of the watch, but he teaches how to wind it up when run down; how to repair the machinery when out of order; and how to put a new spring in when the old one is broken, and leave the watch as good as ever. Does the great Watchmaker, as he is called, show the same in­telligence and power in keeping, or teaching oth­ers to keep, this contemplated mechanism—Man—always in good order? ”

“ The comparison between the human frame and a watch is correct in some respects, but it is particularly unhappy in relation to the present subject. The works of a watch are hard and unyielding, and not being possessed of life and power of growing, cannot adapt themselves to their outer case. ”

“ A man, wanting to know the hour, sometimes calls his "boy"; the servant takes the watch from his master's pocket, holds the timepiece level with his employer's eyes, replaces the watch in his master's pocket, and leaves the room. ”

“ A watch-case is, comparatively speaking, a simple article to make, whilst on the other hand, some of the parts on which the accuracy of a chronometer depends, must be so delicately adjusted that only very few workmen ever acquire the refined skill which is needed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To glance is to look casually or momentarily. To stare is to look with a fixed intensity such as is the effect of surprise, alarm, or rudeness. To scan is to look at minutely, to note every visible feature. To inspect is to go below the surface, uncover, study item by item. View and survey are comprehensive, survey expressing the greater exactness of measurement or estimate. Watch brings in the element of time and often of wariness; we watch for a movement or change, a signal, the approach of an enemy, etc. ”

“ This is a legitimate and reasonable curiosity; for every man hath a right to open and examine the mechanism of his own watch, put together for his proper use, although he is not permitted to pry into the interior of the timepiece which, for general information, is displayed on the town steeple. ”