Wristwatch

“ The functional appearance of the watch is further softened in an attractive new style, which combines the watch with a gold fringe bracelet. The fringe draws the eye artfully away from the timepiece.
Jewelled Hours
During social hours, however, one should be more regardless of time. It seems almost an affront, by wearing a clearly functional wrist watch, to let your hostess know you are measuring the time you grant her. At theatre, at evening parties, a woman should at least seem not to care how the time flits by. Indeed, there is on such occasions no need for her to wear a watch at all. ”

“ Common sense is demanded here as elsewhere. To put a watch in beat, too, is a very important item, which I do by placing sharp pointed tweezers, first on one side of the arm of balance and then on the other, and so pin my hairspring in the stud, that it will let off as readily on one side as the other. I had forgotten to say that every watch should have a little oil on the face of the pallet stones. I know full well that some workmen will say that there should be none, but I can tell of scores of watches that have failed and indeed stopped simply for want of oil on the pallets. ”

“ If a watch is needed, it is most conveniently carried in a leather wristlet made for the purpose, as it can then be consulted at any moment, by merely raising the hand, without having to fumble for a watch-pocket. ”

“ And while the watch bracelet may look attractive alone, the presence of other jewels makes its utilitarian function over-prominent. The wrist watch should be serviceable, but beautiful.
In any case, a watch is at best an interloper, if not a downright intruder, in moments of feminine finery. Permitting a woman to espy the hour when she should not be so concerned, the watch—like all spies—should be as much as possible unnoticed and unknown. If it be worn, it should not be as a watch but as an integral part of a jewel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The works are all of iron; the case was made, probably, before glass was used for such instruments, and it is not unlikely that this watch is of as old a shape as even the Nuremberg eggs. A more ornamental time-piece, of perhaps a somewhat later date, is the curious little instrument which is portrayed in our next illustration; the works of which are also of iron. It possesses the advantage of serving either as a clock or a watch, or as both, being of a portable size, and yet when set on a stand would serve as a pretty ornament to a drawing-room table. ”

“ To one who has never studied the mechanism of a watch, its main-spring or the balance-wheel is a mere piece of metal. He may have looked at the face of the watch, and, while he admires the motion of its hands, and the time it keeps, or the tune it plays, he may have wondered in idle amazement as to the character of the machinery which is concealed within. ”

“ No woman should wear a leather strap for a wrist watch with an evening gown. It would completely break the spell of elegance. If no watch with matched strap of bejewelled metal is in the treasure chest, the watch should be kept at home or—for sheer utility—in the purse. The watch for evening wear has its functional aspects concealed. Its face is almost hidden in precious stones, or may be so encased that the jewel must be opened. It is worn less as a timepiece than as a bracelet, or perhaps a brooch. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What the workman needs is to know from examination when the jewel pin is in the proper position to perform its functions correctly, and he can only arrive at this knowledge by careful study and thought on the matter. If we make up our minds on examining a watch that a jewel pin is "set too wide," that is, so it carries the fork over too far and increases the lock to an undue degree, take out the balance, remove the hairspring, warm the roller with a small alcohol lamp, and then with the tweezers move the jewel pin in toward the staff. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not only are there the watch-bracelets which have been so extensively worn of late years, but minute ornamental watches have been set in finger-rings, where they can be consulted with even greater ease than when worn on the wrist. The watch-face is surrounded by a bordering of small jewels. Apart from their practical value, the “watch-rings” are pretty and dainty objects in themselves, and lend a new element of variety to the long list of ring forms. ”

“ In all soundly-constructed lever escapements the safety action is only called into use in exceptional cases, and if the watch was lying still would theoretically never be required. Where fork and pallets are poised on their arbor, pocket motion (except torsional) should but very little affect the fork and pallet action of a watch, and torsional motion is something seldom brought to act on a watch to an extent to make it worthy of much consideration. In the double-roller action which we shall consider, we shall adopt three-fifths of the pitch diameter of the jewel-pin action as the proper size. ”

“ The pliers for cutting watch-guards are very strong, and do their work in an instant; but these instruments are not generally used. Most thieves break the watch from the guard by the following quick and easy method:—The watch is tightly grasped in the left hand, the powerful and fleshy part of the thumb resting on the part of the watch where the stud and ring are attached. ”

“ Dale Conway paused, and glanced at his wrist-watch. In England men wear wrist-watches as a matter of masculine custom, and despise watch-chains as effeminate: in America the converse holds good. A wrist-watch upon an American man is—or was in those days—a target for rugged mirth. But the audience in The Breakers Ballroom gave no sign. ”

“ When all the pieces of the watch-movement are thus prepared, they are gathered in sets, and carried to the putting-up room, where each part is thoroughly tested and regulated. The pieces move in processions of boxes, each part by itself; and each watch, when put together, is as good as every other. In an old English lever-watch there are between eight and nine hundred pieces. In the American there are but about a hundred and twenty parts. My friend the director says, that, if you put a single American against a single European watch, the foreign may vary a second less in a certain time ”

“ 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 first watches, about 1500, had the foliot and verge escapement, and in some early attempts to govern the foliot a hog's bristle was used as a spring. By putting a ring around the ends of the foliot and adding the hair spring of Dr. Hooke, about 1640, we have the verge watches of our grandfathers. This balance wheel and hair spring stand today, but the “lever” escapement has taken the place of the verge. It is a modification of the dead beat, Fig. 29, by adding a lever to the anchor, and this lever is acted on by the balance, hence the name “lever watch.” ”

“ For a pocket watch it will be necessary to employ a small balance, with a nut attached to its axis and communicating with the fusee, the continued vibration of which will, by winding the watch, give it nearly all the advantages of a perpetual prime mover. Should the time-piece be placed in a fixed case it will require a communication between the joint of the door and the fusee, and this may likewise be readily applied to the case of a hunting watch. ”

“ A century of experimenting resulted in a clock without a weight (Fig. 9) . In this timekeeper you recognize the beginnings of the modern watch. The uncoiling of a spring drove the machinery. Instead of the balancing beam with its weights as in De Vick's clock, a balance wheel is used. The escapement is the same as in the first weight-clock. The busy and delicately-hung little balance wheel in your watch is a growth from De Vick's clumsy balance beam. The spring-clock would run in any position. ”

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“ The Jewelling of a watch is an important part of its manufacture, inasmuch as it is by means of jewels that durability is chiefly secured. Watch pivots would rapidly wear out the metal in those parts in which there is continual friction, and jewelling has [ 88] therefore become general. The watch-maker uses for his best watches a peculiarly hard kind of ruby, which has been known to withstand the wear and tear of the best part of a century without showing symptoms of yielding, whereas inferior jewels are perhaps scarcely so hard as the best tempered metal. ”

“ The device consists of an ordinary cheap watch, a standard, or support, for an adjusting screw, a small coil, a movable armature, a knife switch, and a trip arrangement. A neat box or case, about 5 in. square and 3 in. high, is first constructed. A round recess, 1/8 in. deep, is cut in the center of the top, to admit the watch. The standard A is made of brass, 1/8 in. thick and 1/2 in. wide, bent as shown, and a 3/16-in. hole is drilled in the end of the long arm where it will exactly center over the pivot holding the watch hands. ”

“ When the spring is wound up its force is of course greatest, for the chain is then acting on the smallest end of the fusee. The proportions of the barrel to the centre wheel, and the size of the teeth in that wheel, have all to be carefully planned, and adjusted to one another, and these all again to the moving of the hands upon the dial.
The Escapement is one of the most important parts of the mechanism of a watch. ”

“ A long-tailed coat; a chimney-pot hat; a watch; a mild promise of whiskers; a good constitution; and a fair chance of being five feet eight, or so. No wonder that I began to push out my shins as I went about the streets. For some weeks after I became possessed of my watch, I took great pleasure in polishing the case, looking into the works, winding it up, and setting it right by public clocks, and by other people's watches. ”

“ The balance should be removed from the watch in either instance and the coil circled with the over-coiling tweezer, although experienced workmen can frequently make excellent corrections with a fine pointed tweezer without removing the balance.
Finely adjusted watches will always be found to have springs as nearly perfectly centered as it is possible for expert workmen to get them and it is quite interesting and instructive to observe the vibration of a perfect spring by any one interested in the work. ”