Watchmaking

“ The whole of the working parts of the watches, the wheels, pinions, axles, screws, and jewels were made by women, by means of the most perfect automatic machinery I have ever seen.' Some of the watchmaking machines were exhibited at Philadelphia. 'But fine as those few machines were, they gave one no idea of the spacious works, the airy, comfortable workrooms, and the perfect sets of machinery, executing in the most exquisite way the numberless details involved in the manufacture of a watch, every one of their pieces duplicates of one another, save and except the holes in the jewels. ”

“ For man can much more properly be compared with, and has much more affinity to, a perfect watch in full activity than to a mere piece of metal, or drop of oil. But the watch is even more in the right still, for its maker, man, virtually has the cogged wheels, springs, escapements, oil, &c., which the watch's conception has been supposed to attribute to him; inasmuch as all these parts must have existed as distinct ideas in the human watchmaker's mind before he could actually construct the clock formed by him. Nor is even this all, for, by the hypothesis, the watch thinks. ”

“ 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! ”

“ That watch had been given him by his father when watches were watches long ago. It had given the law to house-clocks, stable-clocks, kitchen-clocks—nay, even to Hamley Church clock in its day; and was it now, in its respectable old age, to be looked down upon by a little whipper-snapper of a French watch which could go into a man's waistcoat pocket, instead of having to be extricated, with due effort, like a respectable watch of size and position, from a fob in the waistband? No! Not if the whipper-snapper were backed by all the Horse Guards that ever were, with the Life Guards to boot. ”

“ And then along came Madame Curie, the brilliant French scientist, and discovered radium, the merest shadow of which makes the dial of your watch luminous for as long as it lasts.
“There is a very famous clock in Strasbourg which not only tells the time of day, but also the day of week, the month, and the position of the moon and the planets. At various times processions of tiny figures cross a stage, including a cock that crows. The day of week is indicated by a separate little figure which takes its place on a tiny platform.
“A watch is perhaps the most wonderful little machine in the world. ”

“ 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? ”

“ On the other hand, your thorough-bred growlers are apt to say, it is a grievous task to keep the First watch, after having gone through all the toil of the day, and, in particular, after having kept the Afternoon [Pg 224] watch (noon to 4 o’clock,) which, in hot climates, is always a severe trial upon the strength. Generally speaking, however, I think the First watch is the least unpopular; for, I suppose, no mortal, whatever he might think, was ever found so Quixotic as to profess openly that he really liked keeping watch. Such a paradox would be famously ridiculed on board ship! ”

“ It is a great thing for the inventor to construct a watch. But what if genius were given some jeweler to construct a watch carrying the power to regulate itself, and when worn out to reproduce itself in another watch of a new and higher form, endowing it at the same time with power for handing [84] forward this capacity for self-improvement? Is not the wisdom and skill required for making a watch that is self-adjusting, self-improving, and self-succeeding vastly more than the wisdom required to construct a simple timepiece? ”

“ When watches were comparative novelties it was not at all an uncommon desire on the part of their possessors to watch the operations of a mechanism which was regarded as wonderfully resembling life itself. Watch cases were consequently made of crystal, and were found strong and serviceable. In skeleton clocks the escapement is sometimes made a peculiarly interesting feature to the non-professional eye delighting in noting the amazing accuracy with which each piece of the mechanism works and combines to produce the result required. ”

“ In the last decade of the nineteenth century, watch-making seemed ready for such an impulse. As we have already seen, it had long been developing from within along technical and professional lines. Excellent and costly timepieces that were marvels of accurate mechanism had been produced. That part of its work had been well done, but the industry was in danger of losing its human touch. Watches were being viewed more as articles of manufacture and merchandise than as of wide-spread human service in meeting a general public need. ”

“ No, no, for nothing in the world will I move that clock. But I take out my watch. I face the mirror. I hold my watch facing the mirror, I open the glass and I move the hands until in the mirror they seem to mark half-past ten. Then I look at my watch itself. It is half-past one. So now I know! Do I want more proof? Monsieur, I get it. For as I unlock the door and open it again, there is Mademoiselle Betty face to face with me! That young girl! Even though already I suspect her I get a shock, I can tell you. The good God knows that I am hardened enough against surprises. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But if the watch had the power to grow small to fit a small pocket, or large to fit a large one, to become luminous by night, and to correct its own time by the sun instead of being regulated by outside interference, what should we have said—that it was proof there was no watchmaker? ”

“ Who shall narrate the characteristics of the various fashions in watches, and the trinkets that were worn along with them, the manners of the fine gentlemen who carried two at a time soon after swords were exchanged for walking-canes, and when pantaloons anticipated the easier but less graceful trowsers? Snuff-boxes, bag-wigs, pig-tails, high cravats, shoe-buckles, have all gone more or less out of fashion, but the watch is a perennial, which may indeed change its outer-casing and its decorations, like man himself, but knows no period of absolute disuse since first it started into being. ”

“ The secret of it is that you have a second basin, with a pudding in it, concealed in the palm of your right hand. At the critical moment, when the handkerchief flares up, you take advantage of the excitement produced to substitute the one basin for the other. The watch from which you extract the works is not the borrowed one, but one which you have had concealed between the third and fourth fingers of the left hand. You show the empty case of this watch to the company, before wrapping the watch in the handkerchief and handing it back to its owner. ”

“ Hundreds of generations have toiled to raise the vast structure for us, like the little coral "polyps" which build their own lives into the mass, yet we take it all as a matter [37] of course and rarely give a thought to the marvelous ways by which it has come about. You may have just glanced at your watch. To you, perhaps, a watch has always seemed merely a small mechanism which was bought in a store. That is true, and yet—remember this—the first manufacturer who had a hand in producing that watch for you, may have been a caveman. ”

“ The watch on the wrist of Queen Elizabeth I of England dangled from a bracelet; the watch in the bracelet is a distinctive development of our own time. Railroad men and some others still prefer the larger pocket watch, but the accuracy of the good wrist watch suffices for all save the finest scientific measurements of time. That the timepiece, nevertheless, remains partly a fad and a fashion is made clear by the many less practical ways in which it is mounted. Watches have been designed in rings, on cuff links, buttons, heads of canes ”

“ In Fig. 85 is a typical example of a brass engraved watch clock face and dial, which has a perforated hinged cover and is exceptionally well engraved.
Old Watches.
Watches were costly in the days when so much [340] time was expended on their manufacture. Those were the days of good workmanship in which watchmakers excelled. They put much labour into the ornamentation of the works, "watch-clocks," and dial plates, so many of which were beautifully engraved, tooled with great skill, and cleverly perforated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has what they call their extra thin movement. Nothing in the way of a watch could be more tasteful.
The watch-chain should always be small and the pattern plain. If the links are chased, the chasing must not be elaborate. Nothing does more toward vulgarizing a man’s appearance than a big, elaborately chased watch-chain. Indeed, the young man that wears such a chain and attaches it in one of the lower button-holes of his vest has taken a long stride toward making himself look like a barber’s apprentice. Watch-chains that go around the neck are no longer worn. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The old idea of regarding the watch as a trinket rather than as a timepiece, as an expensive toy rather than as an accurate and necessary mechanism, has come down to us from the days when a watch was ornamented outside, because it could not be really useful within. Even now, in spite of the modern demand for accurate timekeeping, that attitude has not entirely died away, as is shown by the expression "gold watch" and "silver watch." Of course, there are really no such things; there are merely gold and silver cases for steel, brass and nickel watches. ”

“ A watchmaker sends out very few defective watches: why? because he makes his watches on a preconceived plan. Even when an improvement in watch construction is introduced, he can draw up his plan beforehand, and at the worst, waste only time and paper, instead of metal and far more time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All watches testify to intelligence and design, but besides good watches there are bad ones, there are those which are made of cheap materials, rudely put together, with showy exteriors and unreliable works. Every watch, if examined by experts in mechanism, in art, and so forth, would reveal the characteristics of its designer and maker, and these characteristics would not always be admirable. ”

“ 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. ”