Title: Time Telling through the Ages
Author: Brearley, Harry Chase
Language: English
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_TIME TELLING THROUGH THE AGES_



[Illustration: THE SPIRIT OF TIME

_Back of History, back of Civilization, back of the visible Universe
itself, we sense the unending sequence of all development which we know
as TIME._ ]



TIME TELLING
_through the Ages_

BY

_Harry C. Brearley_

[Illustration]

_Published by_
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
_for_ ROBERT H. INGERSOLL & BRO.

NEW YORK, 1919



PREPARED
_under the direction of_
The Brearley Service Organization

[Illustration: BSO

NY]

_Copyright 1919_
ROBT. H. INGERSOLL & BRO.
NEW YORK



_PREFACE_


_In the midst of the world war, when ordinary forms of celebration
seemed unsuitable, this book was conceived by_ ROBT. H. INGERSOLL _&_
BRO., _as a fitting memento of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of their
entrance into the watch industry, and is offered as a contribution to
horological art and science. Its publication was deferred until after
the signing of the peace covenant._

_The research work for fact material was performed with devoted
fidelity and discrimination by Mrs._ KATHERINE MORRISSEY DODGE, _who
consulted libraries, trade publications, horological schools and
authorities in leading watch companies. The following were helpfully
kind to her: New York Public Library, New York City; The Congressional
Library, Washington, D. C.; Newark Public Library, Newark, New
Jersey; The Jewelers' Circular, New York City; Keystone Publishing
Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Mr._ JOHN J. BOWMAN, _Lancaster,
Pennsylvania; Major_ PAUL M. CHAMBERLAIN, _Chicago, Illinois; Hamilton
Watch Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Mr._ HENRY G. ABBOTT, _of the
Calculagraph Company, New York City, and others_.

_Credit is also due to Mr._ WALTER D. TEAGUE, _the well-known artist of
New York City, who acted as art editor and supervised the preparation
of illustrations, typography and other art and mechanical features_.

_The photographic compositions are the result of the enthusiasm, the
understanding and the art of Mr. LEJAREN A' HILLER, of New York City.
In this connection the courtesy of Mr. HENRY W. KENT, Secretary of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, in permitting the use
of collections of the museum in the preparation of illustrations, is
appreciated._

  HARRY C. BREARLEY



CONTENTS


                                                            PAGE

Foreword                                                      11

Chapter I, _The Man Animal and Nature's Time Pieces_          15

Chapter II, _The Land Between the Rivers_                     21

Chapter III, _How Man Began to Model After Nature_            36

Chapter IV, _Telling Time by the "Water Thief"_               49

Chapter V, _How Father Time Got his Hour Glass_               59

Chapter VI, _The Clocks Which Named Themselves_               66

Chapter VII, _The Modern Clock and Its Creators_              77

Chapter VIII, _The Watch That Was Hatched From The
  Nuremburg Egg_                                              94

Chapter IX, _How a Mechanical Toy Became a Scientific
  Time Piece_                                                106

Chapter X, _The "Worshipful Company" and English
  Watchmaking_                                               118

Chapter XI, _What Happened in France and Switzerland_        131

Chapter XII, _How an American Industry Came on
  Horseback_                                                 147

Chapter XIII, _America Learns to Make Watches_               161

Chapter XIV, _Checkered History_                             176

Chapter XV, _"The Watch That Wound Forever"_                 184

Chapter XVI, _"The Watch That Made The Dollar
  Famous"_                                                   196

Chapter XVII, _Putting Fifty Million Watches Into
  Service_                                                   206

Chapter XVIII, _The End of the Journey_                      218

Appendix A, _How it Works_                                   230

Appendix B, _Bibliography_                                   235

Appendix C, _American Watch Manufacturers (Chronology)_      241

Appendix D, _Well Known Watch Collections_                   250

Appendix E, _Encyclopedic Dictionary_                        253



_ILLUSTRATIONS_

                                      TO FACE PAGE

The Spirit of Time

The Cave Man and the Moving Shadow                     16

Time Telling in the "Land Between the Rivers"          32

The First Recorded Sun Dial                            40

The Clepsydra, or Water Clock                          56

Types of the Earliest Time Tellers                     64

Galileo Discovering the Principle of the Pendulum      72

A Time Piece of the Middle Ages                        80

Ancestors of the Watch                                 88

The First Pocket Time Piece                            96

The "Nuremburg Egg," the First Real Watch             104

First Forms of the Watch                              112

Sixteenth Century Watches                             120

Late—In Spite of His Two Watches                      128

Seventeenth Century Watches                           136

The Swiss "Manufacturer" and a Craftsman              144

The First Yankee Clock Maker                          152

"Grandfather's Clocks"                                160

Eighteenth Century Watches                            168

"Quantity Production" in 1850                         176

A Glimpse of a Giant Industry                         200

Twentieth Century Watches                             208

Time Telling in the Dark                              216

Time Pieces Vital to Industry                         224



_FOREWORD_


It was a moonless night in No Man's Land. A man in khaki stood silently
waiting in a frontline trench. In the darkness, his eyes were drawn,
fascinated, to the luminous figures on the watch-dial at his wrist.
A splinter of pale light, which he knew to be the hour-hand, rested
upon the figure 11. A somewhat longer splinter crept steadily from the
figure 12.

"Past eleven," he whispered to himself. "Less than twenty minutes now."

To the right and to the left of him, he, now and then, could see his
waiting comrades in the blackness of the trench, their outlines vaguely
appearing and disappearing with the intermittent flares of distant
star-shells. He knew that they, too, were intent upon tiny figures in
small luminous circles and upon the steady, relentless progress of
other gleaming minute-hands which moved in absolute unison with the
one upon his own wrist. He knew, also, that far in the rear, clustered
about their guns, were other comrades tensely counting off the passing
minutes.

At twenty minutes past eleven, the artillery bombardment would begin
and would continue until exactly midnight. Then would come the
barrage—the protecting curtain of bursting shells behind which the
khaki-clad figure and his companions would advance upon the enemy's
trenches—perhaps also upon eternity.

How strangely silent it seemed after the crashing chaos of the last
few days! There were moments when the rumble of distant guns almost
died away, and he could hear the faint ticking of his timepiece or a
whispered word out of the darkness near at hand. He likened the silence
to the lull before a storm.

Five minutes thus went by!

In another fifteen minutes, the fury of the bombardment would begin; it
would doubtless draw an equally furious bombardment from the enemy's
guns.

At twelve-ten plus forty-five seconds, he and his platoon were to "go
over the top" and plunge into the inferno of No Man's Land. That was
the moment set for the advance—the moment when the barrage would lift
and move forward.

The slender hand on the glowing dial stole steadily onward. It was ten
minutes after now.

Ten minutes after eleven—just one hour plus forty-five seconds to wait!
His thoughts flew back to his home in the great city beyond the sea.

Ten minutes after eleven—why that would be only ten minutes after
six in New York! How plainly he could picture the familiar scenes of
rushing, bustling life back there! Crowds were now pouring into the
subways and surface cars or climbing to the level of the "L's." This
was the third—the latest homeward wave. The five o'clock people had,
for the most part, already reached their homes and were thinking about
their dinner; the five-thirties were well upon their way.

How the millions of his native city and of other cities and towns, and
even of the country districts, all moved upon schedule! Clocks and
watches told them when to get up, when to eat their breakfasts, when to
catch their trains, reach their work, eat their lunches, and return to
their homes. Newspapers came out at certain hours; mails were delivered
at definite moments; stores and mills and factories all began their
work at specified times.

What a tremendous activity there was, back there in America, and how
smoothly it all ran—smooth as clock-work! Why, you might almost say it
ran _by_ clock-work! The millions of watches in millions of pockets,
the millions of clocks on millions of walls, all running steadily
together—these were what kept the complicated machinery of modern life
from getting tangled and confused.

Yes; but what did people do before they had such timepieces? Back
in the very beginning, before they had invented or manufactured
anything—far back in the days of the caveman—even those people must
have had _some_ method of telling time.

A bright star drew above the shadowy outline of a hill. At first the
man in khaki thought that it might be a distant star-shell; but no, it
was too steady and too still. Ah yes, the _stars_ were there, even in
the very beginning—and the moon and the sun, they were as regular then
as now; perhaps these were the timepieces of his earliest ancestors.

A slight rustle of anticipation stirred through the waiting line and
his thoughts flashed back to the present. His eyes fixed themselves
again on the ghostly splinters of light at his wrist. The long hand had
almost reached the figure 4—the moment when the bombardment would begin.

He and his comrades braced themselves—and the night was shattered by
the crash of artillery.



CHAPTER ONE

_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. The world was very, very young, so far as man was
concerned, when there occurred some such scene as this:

It is early morning. The soft, red sandstone cliffs are bathed in the
golden glow of dawn. As the great sun climbs higher in the eastern
sky, the sharply outlined shadow of the opposite cliff descends slowly
along the western wall of the narrow canyon. A shaggy head appears from
an opening, half-way up the cliff, and is followed by the grotesque,
stooping figure of a long-armed man, hairy and nearly naked, save for a
girdle of skins. He grasps a short, thick stick, to one end of which a
sharpened stone has been bound by many crossing thongs, and, without a
word, he makes his way down among the bushes and stones toward the bed
of the creek.

Another head appears at the same opening in the cliff—that of a
brown-skinned woman with high cheek-bones, a flat nose, and tangled
hair. She shouts after the retreating form of the man, and he stops,
and turns abruptly. Then he points to the edge of the shadow far above
his, and, with a sweeping gesture, indicates a large angular rock lying
in the bed of the stream near by. Apparently understanding the woman
nods and the man soon disappears into the brush.

The forenoon wears along, and the line of shadow creeps down the face
of the canyon wall until it falls at last across the angular rock
against which the dashing waters of the stream are breaking. The
woman who has been moving about near the cave opening begins to look
expectant and to cast quick glances up and down the canyon. Presently
the rattle of stones caught her ear and she sees the long-armed man
picking his way down a steep trail. He still carries his stone-headed
club in one hand, while from the other there swings by the tail the
body of a small, furry animal. Her eyes flash hungrily, and she shows
her strong, white teeth in a grin of anticipation.

[Illustration: THE CAVE MAN AND THE MOVING SHADOW

_"I'll be back when the shadow touches that stone." It was by such
crude expedients that our primitive ancestors timed their engagements._]

Perhaps it has not been hard to follow the meaning of this little drama
of primitive human need. Our own needs are not so very different,
even in this day, although our manners and methods have somewhat
changed since the time of the caveman. Like ourselves, this savage pair
awoke with sharpened appetite, but, unlike ourselves, they had neither
pantry nor grocery store to supply them. Their meal-to-be, which was
looking for its own breakfast among the rocks and trees, must be found
and killed for the superior needs of mankind, and the hungry woman had
called after her mate in order to learn when he expected to return.

No timepieces were available, but that great timepiece of nature, the
sun, by which we still test the accuracy of our clocks and watches,
and a shadow falling upon a certain stone, served the need of this
primitive cave-dweller in making and keeping an appointment.

The sun has been, from the earliest days, the master of Time. He
answered the caveman's purpose very well. The rising of the sun meant
that it was time to get up; his setting brought darkness and the time
to go to sleep. It was a simple system, but, then, society in those
days _was_ simple—and strenuous.

For example, it was necessary to procure a new supply of food nearly
every day, as prehistoric man knew little of preserving methods.
Procuring food was not so easy as one might think. It meant long and
crafty hunts for game, and journeys in search of fruits and nuts. All
this required daylight. By night-time the caveman was ready enough to
crawl into his rock-home and sleep until the sun and his clamoring
appetite called him forth once more. In fact, his life was very like
that of the beasts and the birds.

But, of course, he was a man, after all. This means that a human brain
was slowly developing behind his sloping forehead, and he could not
stop progressing.

After a while—a long while, probably—we find him and his fellows
gathered together into tribes and fighting over the possession of
hunting-grounds or what not, after the amiable human fashion. Thus,
society was born, and with it, organization. Tribal warfare implied
working together; working together required planning ahead and making
appointments; making appointments demanded the making of them _by_
something—by some kind of a timepiece that could indicate _more than
a single day_, since the daily position of light and shadows was now
no longer sufficient. Man looked to the sky again and found such a
timepiece.

Next to the sun, the moon is the most conspicuous of the heavenly
objects. Its name means "the Measurer of Time." As our first ancestors
perceived, the moon seemed to have the strange property of changing
shape; sometimes it was a brilliant disk; sometimes a crescent;
sometimes it failed to appear at all. These changes occurred over
and over again—always in the same order, and the same number of days
apart. What, then, could be more convenient than for the men inhabiting
neighboring valleys to agree to meet at a certain spot, with arms
and with several days' provisions, at the time of the next full
moon?—moonlight being also propitious for a night attack.

For this and other reasons, the moon was added to the sun as a human
timepiece, and man began to show his mental resources—_he was able to
plan ahead_. Note, however, that he was not concerned with measuring
the passage of time, but merely with fixing upon a future date; it was
not a question of _how long_ but of _when_.

This presumptuous, two-legged fighting animal, from whom we are
descended, and many of whose instincts we still retain, began to
enlarge his warfare, and thereby to improve his organization. For the
sake of his own safety, he learned to combine with his fellows, finding
strength in numbers, like the wolves in the pack; or, like ants and
bees, finding in the combined efforts of many a means of gaining for
each individual more food and better shelter than he could win for
himself alone.

For example, it was possible that a neighboring tribe, instead of
waiting to be attacked, was planning an attack upon its own account. It
would not do to be surprised at night. Sentries must be established to
keep watch while others slept, and to waken their comrades in case of
need. Our very word "watch" is derived from the old Anglo-Saxon word
"waeccan," meaning "wake." And yet people who tried to watch for long
at a stretch would be apt to doze. They must be relieved at regular
times; it was a matter of necessity, but how could one measure time at
night?

Where man has been confronted with a pressing problem he has generally
found its solution. Probably in this case the stars gave him a clue. If
the sky were clear, their positions would help to divide the night into
"watches" of convenient length.

Thus did primitive man begin to study the skies. No longer a mere
animal, he was beginning, quite unconsciously, to give indications of
becoming a student.



CHAPTER TWO

_The Land Between the Rivers_


Now we must jump over ages so vast in duration that all of our recorded
history is by comparison, the merest fragment of time. During the
prehistoric period, known to us only by certain bones, drawings, and
traces of tombs and dwellings, and by a few rude implements, weapons,
and ornaments, we must think of the human family as developing very,
very slowly—groping in the dawn of civilization while it ate and slept,
hunted, and fought, and, gradually spread over various regions of the
earth.

It was in this interval, also, that man learned the use of fire and
the fashioning of various tools. His club gave place to the spear, the
knife, and the arrow-head weapons that were made at first by chipping
flakes of flint to a sharp edge. Then, as his knowledge and skill
slowly increased, he learned to work the softer metals and made his
weapons and his tools of bronze. Meanwhile, he was taught, by observing
in nature, to tame and to breed animals for his food and use, and to
plant near home what crops he wished to reap, instead of seeking them
where they grew in a wild state. Thus, he became a herdsman and farmer.


He no longer lived in caves or rude huts, but in a low, flat-roofed
house built of heavy, rough stone, and, later, of stones hewn into
shape or of bricks baked in the burning sunshine. Stone and clay carved
or molded into images, and the colored earth, smeared into designs
upon his walls, gave him the beginnings of art. And from drawing rude
pictures of simple objects, as a child begins to draw even before
knowing what it means to write, primitive man came at last to the
greatest power of all—the art of writing.

Through all this age man continued to regulate his expanding affairs by
the timepieces of the sky—the sun, the moon, and the stars. He divided
time roughly into days and parts of days, into nights and watches of
the night, into moons and seasons—determining the latter probably
by the migration of birds, the budding of trees and flowers, the
falling of leaves and other happenings in nature. But never guessing
how greatly interested future generations would be in the way he did
things, he has left only a few records of his activities and these
have been preserved by the merest accident. The historian and the
press-agent were the inventions of later days.

Thus we come down the ages to a date about 4000 B. C. at the very
beginning of recorded history, and to one of the most ancient
civilizations in the world—that of the region which we now call
Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia lies in southwestern Asia between the Tigris
and Euphrates Rivers and not far from the traditional site of the
Garden of Eden. The name by which we know it comes from the Greek, and
means, "The land between the rivers" but the people who dwelt there at
the time to which we refer called it the "Land of Shinar."

This is the region in which long afterward—so the Bible tells
us—Abraham left his native town, Ur of the Chaldees, to make his
pioneer journey to Palestine. This is the land where the great
cities of Babylon and Nineveh afterward arose; Babylon, where Daniel
interpreted the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, and Nineveh, whence the
Assyrians, the fierce conquerors of the ancient world, "came down
like a wolf on the fold" against the peaceful Kingdom of Judah. It
is the land where, thousands of years later, the famous Arab capital
of Bagdad was built; it is the land of Harun al Raschid and the
"Arabian Nights," and the land which the British Army conquered in a
remarkable campaign against the Turks and Germans. Mesopotamia is a
land of color, brilliant life, wonders and romance. Many students and
statesmen believe that it will, in days to come, grow fruitful and
populous again, that it will once more be great among the countries of
the earth. It is a flat region, with wide-stretching plains. For the
most part, there are no hills to limit the view of the skies, and the
heavens are brilliant upon starry nights.

In this favored portion of the earth, a high civilization had already
been developed in the very earliest days of which we have authentic
historic record. The caveman type had long disappeared and had been
forgotten; people were already living in well-built cities of brick
and stone. Their houses were low and flat-roofed, but the cities were
surrounded with high and massive walls to protect them from enemies,
and here and there within rose great square towers which were also
temples. Perhaps the famous Tower of Babel was one of these, for Babel,
of course, is another name for Babylon, and its people are known to
have worshipped on the tops of towers, as if, by so doing, they could
reach nearer to their gods. The ancient Chaldeans were religious by
nature, and because the skies contained the greatest things of which
they knew, they identified many of their gods with the sun, the moon,
and the stars, and they worshipped these in their temples.

Thus, the sun was the god _Shamash_, the moon was _Sin_, Jupiter was
_Marduk_, Venus was _Ishtar_, Mars was _Nergal_, Mercury was _Nebo_,
and Saturn was _Ninib_.

In consequence, their priests came to give much of their time to a
study of the movements of the stars. These priests, who were shrewd and
learned men, discovered a great deal, but they kept their knowledge
closely within the circle of their caste. Learning was not for everyone
in those days because the priests posed as magicians able to interpret
dreams, to explain signs, and to foretell the future. This brought
them much revenue; as prophets they were not unmindful of profits.

When we consider that these astrologer-astronomers did not have
telescopes or our other modern instruments, it is marvelous to see how
many of the laws of the heavenly bodies they really did find out for
themselves. Books could be filled, with the story of their discoveries.
For example, they observed that the sun slowly changed the points at
which it rose and set. During certain months, the place of sunrise
traveled northward, and at the same time the sun rose higher in the
sky, and at noon was more nearly overhead. At this time, the days were
also longer, because the sun was above the horizon more of the time,
and then it was summer. During certain other months, the sun traveled
south again, and all these conditions were reversed; the days grew
shorter and shorter, and it was winter. This is, of course, exactly
what the sun appears to do here and now, and we may observe it for
ourselves. But these Babylonian priests were the first to study these
phenomena and accomplish something by applying their reasoning powers
to the facts that presented themselves. They took the time which was
consumed in this motion from the furthest north to the furthest south
and return, and from that worked out their year.

In order to calculate time, they next devised the zodiac, a sort of
belt encircling the heavens and showing the course of the sun, and the
location of twelve constellations, or groups of stars, through which
he would be seen to pass if his light did not blot out theirs. They
divided the region of these twelve constellations into the same number
of equal parts; consequently, the sun passing from any given point
around the heavens to the same point, occupied in so doing an amount of
time that was arbitrarily divided into twelfths.

But they also devised another twelve-part division of the year. They
noticed that the moon went through her phases, from full moon to full
moon in about thirty days. So one moon, or one month, corresponded with
the passage of the sun through one "sign" of the zodiac. Our own word
"month" might have been written "moonth," since that is its meaning.
That gave them a year of twelve months, each month having thirty days,
or three hundred and sixty days in all.

Then from the seven heavenly bodies which they had identified with
seven great gods, they got the idea of a week of seven days, one day
for the special worship of each god and named for him.

In like manner, they divided the day and the night each into twelve
hours; and the hour into sixty minutes and these again into sixty
seconds. The choice of "sixty" was not a chance shot or accident;
it was carefully selected for practical reasons since these old
astronomers were wise and level-headed men. No lower number can be
divided by so many other numbers as can sixty. Just look at your
watch for a moment and notice how simply and naturally the minutes,
divided into fives, fit into place between the figures for the hours,
and, because sixty divides evenly by fifteen and thirty, we have
quarter-hours and half-hours.

Therefore, we should realize, with a bit of gratitude, that we owe
these divisions of time, of which we still make use, to the ancient
magician-priests of Babylon and Chaldea, thousands and thousands of
years ago.

In doing all this, these early scientists developed at the same time
an elaborate system of so-called "magic" by which they pretended to
foretell future events and the destinies of men born on certain days.
This was an important part of their priestcraft, and probably it was
not the least profitable part. In fact, the priests called themselves
_magi_, meaning "wise men" in their language, and our word "magic" is
derived from "magi."

This _magic_, or prophetic study of the stars, we call _astrology_
to distinguish it from the true science of _astronomy_. But mingled
with it all, these priests possessed a wonderful amount of genuine
scientific knowledge. Their year of three hundred and sixty days
was, of course, five days too short, as they presently found out
for themselves. In six years, the difference would amount to thirty
days, which was exactly the length of one of their months. So they
corrected the calendar very easily by doubling the month Adar once in
six years. Thus, every sixth year contained thirteen months instead
of twelve; that was the origin of the leap-year principle which we
still use, although more accurately. It can be seen that, with all
their superstition and their befooling of other people, the priests
themselves were by no means ignorant; they were really keen observers.

This calendar, by which we still measure the years and the seasons, is
so interesting a thing that it is worth while to pause for a moment in
our story in order to trace out its later development. The Babylonian
calendar remained practically the same up to the time of Julius Caesar,
only a few years before the Christian Epoch. The names of the months
had naturally been changed into the Latin language; and the Romans,
instead of doubling a whole month, had come to add the extra five days
to several months, one day to each. That is the reason for some of our
months having thirty-one days.

When Caesar was Dictator of Rome, it had become known that the year
of exactly 365 days was still a little too short. It should have been
365¼. So Caesar in reforming the calendar, provided that the first,
third, fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh months should be given
thirty-one days each, and that the others should have thirty days,
except in the case of February which should have its thirtieth day
only once in four years. A little later, his successor, the Emperor
Augustus, after whom the month of August is named, decided that _his_
month must be as long as July, which was Julius Caesar's month.
Therefore, he stole a day from February and added one to August; then
he changed the following months by making September and November
thirty-day months and giving thirty-one days to October and December.

The Julian calendar, with these changes by Augustus, remained in use
until the year A. D. 1582, nearly a century after the discovery of
America. Then it was learned that the average year of 365¼ days was
still not exactly right according to the motion of the earth around the
sun. The exact time is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds,
being 11 minutes and 14 seconds less than 365¼ days. When, therefore,
we add a day to the year every four years, as Caesar commanded, we
are really adding too much. This excess was corrected by Pope Gregory
XII in 1582, when he changed the calendar so that the last year of a
century should be a leap-year only when its number could be divided
evenly by 400. Thus, 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap-years,
though the year 2000 will be. This new calendar, which is the one
now generally in use in most of the world, is known as the Gregorian
calendar.

Thus the plan and principle of the calendar, as well as our smaller
divisions of time, in spite of the small changes by Caesar and
Gregory, have remained from the Babylonian days down to the present;
and we have done nothing to their system in all these thousands of
years, except, incidentally to correct it.

Only once in history have the measures of the ancient calendar been
set aside. That was in France at the time of the Revolution, when the
French people, in their passionate hatred of all the traditional things
that reminded them of their past sufferings, invented a new calendar,
in which they changed the names of months and days, and counted the
years from 1792, the first of their liberty. They also abolished all
Sundays and religious festivals, and divided the day into ten hours.
This played havoc with time-keeping, and caused great confusion.
Watches and clocks were made with one circle of numbers for the new
hours, and another, within, on which were shown the old hours which
people could understand. But this complication lasted only a few years,
for the traditional system was soon restored.

To return again to the era of the first calendar. While the wise men
of Mesopotamia were engaged in mingling science and mystery, another
civilization, the Egyptian, was developing upon the banks of the Nile
and passing through much of the same stages. In due course the Persians
conquered both Mesopotamia and Egypt and absorbed their knowledge.
Still later the wonderful Greek nation combined astronomy with
mathematics in a way which makes us wonder to this day. This is the way
in which civilization has grown. Race after race, during century after
century has added its new knowledge and discoveries to that which has
been learned before. It is interesting to note that the astronomy of
the Babylonians appears to have been paralleled independently by other
ancient civilizations between which there was no apparent possibility
of intercourse. The Chinese in the East and the Aztecs of Mexico, on
the other side of the world, invented practically the same astronomical
instruments as the Babylonians and made similar discoveries. All
methods of indicating time have been steps upon the long road which has
led to the making of modern timepieces.

The progressive Greeks did not permit knowledge to be monopolized
by the priesthood and probably their common people knew more about
the stars than most of the population of America do to this day.
Sailors possessed no compasses, but they voyaged very skilfully
with the guidance of the stars, while farmers, lacking our modern
weather-reports and crop-bulletins, learned to govern their planting
and harvesting by the positions of the heavenly bodies.

In one sense, this is time-telling and in another it is not, but our
ideas of time and astronomy have always been so closely associated that
it is hard to think of one apart from the other. This is because the
movements of the earth, which produce night and day and the changes
of the seasons, are our supreme court of time, our final standard for
its measurement. And since we cannot see the earth move, we judge of
its motion by the apparent movement of the heavenly bodies, just as we
realize the movement of a train by watching the landscape rush past us
as we go.

Some of the great Greek scientists, by the way, had even learned to
foretell eclipses of the sun. According to Herodotus the one which
occurred on May 28th, in the year 585 B. C., was predicted by Thales
of Miletus, one of the famous "Seven Wise Men." This event was also
celebrated because of another interesting association; it stopped a
battle between the armies of the Medes and the Lydians. Perhaps we can
guess at what happened. Undoubtedly the eclipse was interpreted by the
armies as a sign of divine anger, for the ancients identified many
of the forces and objects of nature as gods, and Phoebus Apollo, who
it was believed daily drove his flaming chariot across the sky, was
the great divinity of the sun. Furthermore, these gods were very apt
to meddle with happenings upon the earth, particularly with wars, as
anyone who has read the "Iliad" will recall.

[Illustration: TIME TELLING IN THE "LAND BETWEEN THE RIVERS"

_The Chaldean priests in ancient Mesopotamia told time by the stars,
thus combining science with religion._]

Imagine, then, the two armies about to go to battle when suddenly
something appeared to go wrong with the sun. There to their amazement,
in a cloudless sky, a dimming shadow touched the edge of the sun's
shining disk and began slowly to blot it out. The warriors forgot to
fight each other and stared in terror at the sky. The sun dwindled to
a crescent; a weird twilight fell upon the earth. Finally, the last
thread of brightness disappeared leaving a dull circle in the sky,
surrounded by faint bands of light. The gloom of night fell upon the
ground. Birds and animals went to their rest.

No further evidence was needed by the superstitious and frightened
soldiers. It must be true that Phoebus Apollo was grievously angered,
and they forthwith laid down their arms. The sun god, of course, soon
showed his approval of this action by coming back into the sky.

This is only one of many tales which might be told to show the state of
superstition in those days. Learning, then, was confined to the few,
and in many instances was used to mystify or terrorize the mass of the
people and thus keep them submissive. At best, new ideas were slow to
grow or to be believed.

For example, Pythagorus, the great Greek philosopher of the sixth
century B. C., believed the earth to be a globe, but it was not
until Columbus discovered America—twenty centuries later—that people
generally began to know that it was not flat. Even in these modern
days of the public school, the press, the telephone, the telegraph,
the wireless and other means for the wide-spread distribution of
knowledge, how slowly does truth find its way to acceptance! To this
day, superstition is by no means dead.

Even Mark Twain, who scoffed at superstition all his life, often said
that, as he came into the world with Halley's Comet, in the year 1835,
so he expected to die in 1910, the year of the comet's next appearance.
Strangely enough, his half-jesting prophecy was fulfilled, for he
really did die in that year.

Astronomers to-day can figure out in advance what is to happen in the
heavens with an exactness which would have seemed magical in olden
times, and is hardly less astonishing even now. Their power is largely
due to improved scientific instruments, proficiency in mathematics and
greater accuracy in the measurement of time. Not only is the date of an
eclipse of the sun now known in advance, but so also is the exact path
of the shadow across the world, and the instant of its appearance in
any given place.

We now have glanced briefly at a few of the features of early
humanity's dependence upon the clocks of nature and the way in which
they influenced its manner of life. We still depend upon these great
primeval timepieces and we do it for the most part unconsciously, for
our master clocks must still be set by the motion of the heavenly
bodies.

That motion, which now we know to be really the revolution of our
earth, is still the legislator and supreme court of time. But we
have learned to make and carry everywhere a wonderful machine, whose
revolving wheels and pointing hands keep tryst with the stars in the
heavens and move to the rhythm of wheeling worlds. And so familiar is
this talisman of man's making, that we forget to look beyond it or
think of time at all save as the position of the hands upon the dial.

We carry with us carelessly a toy which tells tales upon the solar
system—our watch is a pocket universe.



CHAPTER THREE

_How Man Began to Model After Nature_


We now have reached a point far ahead of our story and must take a
backward step. We have been seeing man as a mere observer of nature;
but man doesn't stop with nature as he finds it—his man-brain drives
him forward; he must make improvements of his own. Animals may live
and die and leave no trace save their bones, which for the most part
soon disappear, but man always leaves traces behind him. He has always
interfered with nature, or rather has modeled after nature, seeing
in her work the revelations of principles and laws that he might
utilize in varying ways for his own benefit and progress. Our material
civilization is built up from the accumulated results of all this study
and control of nature by hundreds of millions of busy brains and hands,
through tens of thousands of years.

Here we are, then, living, in a sense on the top of the ages of human
history, like the dwellers on a coral island. 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 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.

In order to appreciate this development, let us return, therefore, for
another rapid view of prehistoric times; life in its crudest form—one
day much like another—a scanty population, huddled in little groups in
places naturally sheltered—the simplest physical needs to be provided
for—little thought of the past or care for the future—time-reckoning
reduced to the single thought of appointment—no reason for measuring
intervals—in these and other respects antiquity presented the greatest
possible contrast to our complicated modern life.

The long-armed man of our first chapter noticed that as the sun moved,
the shadows of the cliff also moved, as did all other shadows. As
he formed habits of regularity, it was natural for him to perform a
certain daily act when, perhaps, the shadow of a certain tree touched
upon a certain stone. This would be a _natural_ sun-dial.

But a thinner, sharper shadow would be easier to observe; suppose,
therefore, that some successor to the long-armed man set up a pole
in some open space and laid a stone to mark the spot where the
shadow fell when the sun was highest in the heavens. That would be an
_artificial_ sun-dial—_a device deliberately planned to accomplish a
certain purpose_. The man who first took such a step was probably the
first manufacturer who had a hand in supplying you with your watch. The
shaggy mammoth, the terrible saber-tooth tiger and the eohippus, the
small ancestor of our modern horse, must have been familiar sights when
time-recording at the hands of some rude, unconscious inventor thus
began the long story of its development.

One stone reached by the moving shadow would mark only one point of
time each day. Why not place two stones, three stones, or even more and
get more markings? Such a procedure would be more useful because it
would indicate the time of other happenings in the course of the day.
The sun would pass across the skies and the shadow must travel around
the pole. What more natural than to place the stones in a circle and
get a series of these markings?

Of course, as the ages passed, life became more complex—not complex as
we would consider it to-day, but, as compared with its rude beginnings.
New habits were formed, new needs developed, new activities were
undertaken at different periods.

Here, then, was the sprouting of modern civilization—the beginning
of that specializing of each man in his own particular direction
that has carried the world to its present high state of expertness
in so many fields. Slowly steadily, and inevitably this principle of
specialization has been developed. With the increase of laws, for
example, certain men came to give them special study and then to
sell their knowledge and skill to other men who had no opportunity
for such study. In course of time, the aggregation of laws became so
great that these lawyers were forced to specialize among themselves;
to-day, therefore, we find a number of classes of law specialists. The
same thing is true of doctors who have limited their practise until
we find those who treat the eye only, or the lungs, the stomach, or
the teeth. Even the treatment of the teeth has been subdivided, some
dentists limiting themselves to extraction and some of them even to the
treatment of a single disease of the gums.

Engineering, too, has branched like a tree and the branches have
branched again and yet again. Electrical engineering has come to be
divided into so many departments that telephone companies employ
specialists in many branches of the engineering profession.

We find the same conditions in any field of thought or activity—all
commercial and industrial life is divided and subdivided; labor is
specialized; writing is specialized; teaching is specialized; even
warfare has become a contest between many kinds of trained specialists,
each employing the tools of his trade; and every man's outlook
upon life is directed chiefly toward the particular corner of the
particular field that he has fitted himself to occupy.

The first step toward this complex condition of the modern world was
taken when each man stopped getting his own food, making his own
weapons, and providing for all his individual wants without dependence
upon others. When he learned to exchange that which he could best
produce for that which some other man had learned to make better than
he, the human race unconsciously turned away from the status of the
birds and the beasts and began the long, slow upward climb that history
records.

It was, then, through trade, barter and exchange that man began
to acquire the manners of civilized life. Trade itself became a
specialized activity, and dealers who did nothing but buy and sell, but
themselves produced no material goods, found that a special calling
was rightfully theirs. The modern merchant is the heir of one of the
first "specialists" in human activity, and the misunderstood work of
the so-called "middleman" is one of the bases of modern civilization—a
necessary and honorable calling.

[Illustration: THE FIRST RECORDED SUN DIAL

_The "Dial of Ahaz" was probably a flight of curving steps upon which a
beam of sunlight fell. See Isaiah, xxxviii._]

Civilization is a thing of the spirit, but it has the support of
material things and it has been truly said that the degree of a
people's civilization can be measured by the multiplicity of its needs.
The savage is content with food, shelter and a covering for his body,
but every step in civilization's progress has a more and more complex
material accompaniment, and these interwoven relationships of
modern life in which the question of time is a most important factor
can only be sustained through the use of accurate time-measure. In
other words, modern civilization leans upon the watch.

But here again we have run somewhat ahead of our story which, as a
matter of fact, had only reached the point of primitive sun-dials.
But this anticipation will be excused because of the importance of
emphasizing that the growing interdependence of human relations had
made it necessary to take into account the convenience of a greater
and greater number of people, and this involved closer and closer
time-recording in smaller divisions of time by more exact methods.

The sun-dial underwent so many changes that a volume would be needed
to describe them all. For example, it was found that the shadow of an
upright stick or stone varied from day to day, because, as we have
already noticed, the sun rises farther north in summer in the northern
hemisphere than it does in winter. So the mark for a certain hour would
change as the season changed, and the dial would not indicate time
accurately.

Berosus, a Chaldean historian and priest of Bel, or Baal, a god of the
old Babylonian, lived about the year 250 B. C., and hit upon a very
ingenious way of solving this difficulty. He made the dial hollow like
the inside of a bowl. Into this the shadow was cast by a little round
ball or bead at the end of a pointer that stood horizontally out over
the bowl.

Now the sky itself is like a great bowl or inverted hemisphere, and,
howsoever the sun moved upon it, the shadow would move in the same way
upon the inside of the bowl or hemisphere. And by drawing lines in the
bowl, similar to the lines of longitude upon the map, the hours could
be correctly measured. The "Hemicycle of Berosus," as it was called,
remained in use for centuries and was the favorite form of sun-dial all
through the classic period of Greece and Rome. Cicero had one at his
villa near Tusculum, and one was found, in 1762, at Pompeii.

But the hemicycle was not easy to make unless it were fairly small,
and, if small, it was not very easy to read. You can see that a shadow
which traveled only a few inches in a whole day would move so slowly
that one could hardly see it go. And the shadow of a round ball is
not a clear sharp-pointed thing like the hand of a watch, whose exact
position can be seen however small it may be. Besides, the ancients
were not very particular about exact timekeeping. They had no trains to
catch, and in their leisurely lives convenience counted for more than
doing things "on the minute." So they still continued using the upright
pointer which the Greeks called the _gnomon_, meaning "the one who
knows."

"Cleopatra's Needle," and other Egyptian obelisks may also have been
used as huge gnomons to cast their shadows upon mammoth dials, for they
were dedicated to the sun. With an object of such great size the shadow
would move rapidly enough to be followed easily by the eye. But of
course its motion would be irregular because of the flat surface of the
dial. The word "dial," by the way, comes from the Latin _dies_ meaning
"day," because it determined the divisions of the day.

Then there was applied the idea of making the shadow move over a hollow
space, such as a walled courtyard, going down one side, across, and up
the other side as the sun went up, across and down the sky. Sometimes
light was used instead of shadow, the place being partially roofed over
and a single beam of light being admitted through a small hole at the
southern end. Men kept track of the motion of this beam as it touched
one point after another during the day.

Do you remember the miracle of the dial of Ahaz, mentioned in the
Bible? Hezekiah the king was sick and despondent, and would not
believe that he could ever recover from his illness or prevail against
his enemies. So the prophet, Isaiah, in an effort to comfort the
royal sufferer, made the shadow return backward ten degrees upon the
dial of Ahaz, as a sign from heaven that his prophecy of the king's
future recovery was true. You will find the story in Isaiah, Chapter
thirty-eight.

This dial of Ahaz was probably a curved flight of steps rising like the
side of a huge bowl at one end of the palace courtyard, with either a
shadow cast by a pointer overhead or a beam of light admitted through
an opening. It can be seen that this and similar great dials were
applications of the hemicycle idea on a large scale.

According to our chronology, the dial of Ahaz must have been built
during the eighth century, B. C. Although the sun-dial period was, of
course, many hundreds of years older than this, yet the story of this
Hebrew king and prophet is the first authentic reference to a sun-dial
which has been discovered.

However, the final improvement of the dial was made when it was
discovered that by slanting the pointer, or gnomon, exactly toward
the north pole of the sky—the point where the north star appears at
night—the sun's shadow could be cast upon a flat surface with accurate
results in indicating time.

This may sound simple, but if you will look at a sun-dial such as may
still be found in gardens, you will see that the lines of the hours
and minutes are laid out on certain carefully calculated angles; you
will realize that people had to acquire considerable knowledge before
they were capable of making such calculations. The whole subject of
dial-making is so complicated that, in 1612, there was published a big
book of eight hundred pages on the subject.

The angles of the lines of the sun-dial must be different for different
latitudes. It took that strong-arm race of ancient times, the Romans,
a hundred years to learn this fact. The Romans, at this time, were
developing their civilization from the shoulders downward, while
the Greeks and some of the Greek colonies developed theirs from the
shoulders upward. Rome was a burly power, with powerful military
muscles. Whatever it wanted it went out and took at the point of the
sword, as some nations have endeavored to do in latter days. Thus, the
city of Rome became a vast storehouse of miscellaneous loot—the fruit
of other men's brains and hands.

Some conqueror of that day took back with him a sun-dial from the Greek
colony of Sicily. This was set up in Rome, where nobody realized that
even the power of Rome's armies was not able to transplant the angle of
the sun as it shone upon Sicily far to the southward. It was nearly one
hundred years before these self-satisfied robbers found that they had
been getting the wrong time-record from the stolen instrument. Thus,
the original owners had a form of belated revenge, could they but have
known it.

One of the largest of all the sun-dials was the one set up by the Roman
Emperor Augustus when he returned from his Egyptian wars bringing
with him an obelisk not unlike the one which now stands near the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park, New York City. If you can
imagine this Egyptian obelisk, with its strange hieroglyphic characters
upon its four sides, surrounded by a great dial with the figures of the
hours marked upon its surface, you will get an idea of the size of this
huge timepiece. However, it was probably more picturesque than valuable
as a time-keeper.

There is an important difference between clocks and sun-dials, aside
from the self-evident one of the difference in their construction.
Clock-time is based on what is called "mean time." If we study the
almanac table of times of sunrises and sunsets, and count the number
of hours from sunrise of one day to sunrise of the next, we find it is
rarely exactly twenty-four hours, but usually a few minutes more or
less, while the average for the whole year is twenty-four hours. The
clock is constructed to keep uniform time based on this average length
of day.

The sun-dial time marks "apparent time," the actual varying length of
each day. The sun-dial time, therefore, is nearly always some minutes
ahead or behind that of a clock, the greatest discrepancy being about
sixteen minutes for a few days in November. There are, however, four
days in the year when the clock and the sun-dial agree perfectly in the
time they indicate. These days are April 15th, June 15th, September
1st, and December 24th.

When in the eighteenth century clocks and watches began to come into
wide-spread use sun-dials fell into neglect, except as an appropriate
bit of ornament in gardens. At Castletown, in the Isle of Man, is a
remarkable sun-dial with thirteen faces, dating from 1720.

It was usual to place on sun-dials appropriate mottoes expressing a
sentiment exciting inspiration or giving a warning to better living.
A dial that used to be at Paul's Cross, London, bore an inscription
in Latin, which translated means, "I count none but the sunny hours."
In an old sweet-scented garden in Sussex was a sun-dial with a plate
bearing four mottoes, each for its own season: "After darkness, light;"
"Alas, how swift;" "I wait whilst I move;" "So passes life." Sometimes
short familiar proverbs were used like: "All things do wax and wane;"
"The longest day must end;" "Make hay while the sun shines."

It is told of Lord Bacon, that, without intending to do so, he
furnished the motto borne by a dial that stood in the old Temple
Gardens in London. A young student was sent to him for a suggestion
for the motto of the dial, then being built. His lordship was busy
at work in his rooms when the messenger humbly and respectfully made
his request. There was no answer. A second request met with equally
oppressive silence and seeming ignorance of even the existence of
the speaker. At last, when the petitioner ventured a third attack on
the attention of the venerable chancellor, Bacon looked up and said
sharply: "_Sirrah, be gone about your business_." "A thousand thanks,
my lord," was the unexpected reply, "The very thing for the dial!
Nothing could be better."

We see that the principle of the sun-dial has been recognized and
utilized for many centuries; indeed, we still find sun-dials placed
in gardens and parks although we rarely take the trouble to look to
them for the time. Like the dinosaur and the saber-toothed tiger,
they have had their day. They have been forced to give way to devices
that overcame some of their objections; therefore we must not linger
too long upon what is, after all, a closed chapter in the history of
time-recording.



CHAPTER FOUR

_Telling Time by the Water-Thief_


Now we must take another backward step of thousands of years. In
considering the subject of time-recording, it seems necessary to wear
a pair of mental seven-league boots, for we must often pass back and
forth over great periods at single strides. While men were still
improving the sun-dial, its disadvantages were already recognized and
search was being made for some other means of telling time.

Suppose, for example, that one had only a sun-dial about the house; how
would one be able to tell time after sunset or on a dark day? How would
one know the hour if he were surrounded by tall buildings or a thick
growth of trees? And it might be very necessary to tell time under any
of these conditions.

Then, again, merely as a question of accuracy, the sun-dial was
not always reliable. It would get badly out of the way if used
by travelers, since different markings were needed for different
latitudes. While on shipboard the motion of the waves would cause the
shadow to swing around in the most bewildering manner. Even under ideal
conditions it was never absolutely exact, because the apparent motion
of our steady-gaited old sun is not quite as dependable as most of us
imagine.

Astronomers find that they must allow for what they call "equation of
time" in order to make their calculations come out true. The question
need not be discussed at this point, but it can be seen that, as
humanity left its earliest care-free days and began to get busy, and
hurried and anxious over its affairs, it came to feel that after all
the sun-dial was not altogether sufficient for its needs.

For this reason we are now taking a third big backward step, returning,
this time, not to the caveman but to ancient Babylon and Egypt,
probably not less than twenty-seven hundred years ago and possibly much
longer. In this way we meet the _clepsydra_.

The clepsydra was an interesting instrument, and it had an interesting
name, which meant the "thief of water" and came from two Greek
words meaning "thief" and "water"; you can trace this in our words
"kleptomaniac" and "hydrant." We shall now examine a timepiece that was
much more nearly a machine than was the simple shade-casting sun-dial.

The original idea was simple enough. At first, it was merely that of a
vessel of water, having a small hole in the bottom, so that the liquid
dripped out drop by drop. As the level within the jar was lowered, it
showed the time upon a scale. Thus, if the hole were so small and the
vessel were so large that it would require twenty-four hours for the
water to drip away at an absolutely steady rate, it may be seen that
the side of the vessel might easily have been marked with twenty-four
divisions to indicate the hours. It may also be seen that the water
would drip as rapidly at night or in shadow as in sunlight. And the
clepsydra could be used indoors, which the sun-dial could not, although
it required attention in that it must be regularly refilled and the
orifice must always be kept completely open, because the slightest
stoppage would retard the rate of dripping and the "clock" would run
slow.

The sun, which, with the other heavenly bodies, had therefore been the
sole reliance of the human race in its time-reckoning could now be
ignored and the would-be timekeeper called to his aid another mighty
servant from the forces of nature—that of gravitation.

The most interesting human fact, however, about the clepsydra is that
it involved an entirely different conception of the marking of time.
Now it was not so much a question of _when_ as of _how long_. A good
sun-dial set in a proper position would always indicate three o'clock
when it _was_ three o'clock, but the clepsydra might do no such thing.
It would merely show how many hours had elapsed since last it was
filled, and the steady drip, drip, drip of the escaping water could—and
did—lower the surface quite as evenly at one time of day as at another.


We have already seen that the first purpose in marking time was merely
for making appointments, but the clepsydra shows that, with its
invention, mankind had already made some progress toward a new point
of view. One important factor in this change was the very practical
need of telling time at night, in stormy weather, or indoors, where the
sun-dial could not be used. The clepsydra, on the other hand, worked
equally well at any hour or place, and in all sorts of weather.

Nevertheless, it, too, proved to have certain faults. After a time,
people noticed the interesting fact that water ran faster from a full
vessel than from one which was nearly empty; this was, of course,
because of the greater pressure. Since such a variation interfered with
calculations, they hit upon the idea of a double vessel; the larger one
below containing a float which rose as the vessel filled, thus marking
the hours upon the scale, and the smaller one above, the one from
which the water dripped, being kept constantly filled to the point of
overflow.

This improved form of clepsydra opened a field of fascinating
possibilities in time-recording—_it gave the chance to make use of a
machine_. There is, perhaps, no more interesting point in studying
human development than to see the steady, inevitable way in which
mankind from its cave-dwelling days has tended toward machinery.
Roughly, this progress may be characterized as of three stages.

First. Primitive man—an upright-standing animal, naked, unarmed,
weak as compared with some creatures, slow as compared with others,
clumsy as compared with still others—a creature with many physical
disadvantages, but with the best brain in the animal kingdom.

Second. The tool-using man, who had begun to grasp weapons and to
fashion implements, thus supplementing his natural abilities by
artificial means.

Third. The machine-making man, who has fashioned to himself a
mechanical "body" of incredible powers—that is to say, he has learned
to intensify his own powers through artificial means which he has
invented, as when he made the telescope to give himself greater vision;
he has made inventions by means of which he can outrun the antelopes,
outfly the birds, outswim the fishes, outgaze the eagles, and overmatch
the elephants in sheer physical force—he can turn night into day, can
send his voice across the continent, can strike crushing blows at a
distance of many miles and can carry the movements of the stars in his
pocket. Some phases of this third stage were foreshadowed when man
first applied wheels and pulleys to his clepsydra.

Here, then, was water steadily raised or lowered by means of uniform
dropping; here was a float whose motion was controlled by that of the
water; here, in fact, was water-power with a means for applying it.
Attach a cord to the float, cause it to turn a wheel by use of the
pulley-principle, and the motion of the wheel would indicate the time.
Still better, rig up a turning-pointer, increase its speed through the
use of toothed gear-wheels, place it in front of a stationary disk
divided to indicate the hours, and now the apparatus looked not unlike
a modern clock. Or attach a bell and let it be caused to ring at a
certain point in the motion—what was that but an alarm-clock? Ctesibus
of Alexandra was the one who is believed first to have applied the
toothed wheels to the clepsydra and this was about 140 B. C.

[Illustration]

Clepsydrae were expensive of course; accurate mechanical work was
never cheap until modern times. Cunning craftsmen spent their time
upon costly decorations, and these water-clocks became triumphs of the
jeweler's art, a gift for kings. Therefore, like the sun-dial, they
drifted into Rome—that vast maelstrom of the ancient world. Imagine a
great walled city of low flat-roofed buildings, with fronts and porches
of great columns, a town mostly of stone and much of it of marble,
gleaming white under the bright Italian sun, the streets thronged with
men in tunics and togas and here and there some person of importance
driving by, standing erect in his chariot drawn by four horses
harnessed abreast. And statues everywhere, in the streets and about the
buildings and in cool courtyards and gardens among green leaves. The
ancients thought of sculpture as an outdoor thing, and where we have
one statue in the streets or public places of our cities, they had a
hundred. We treasure the remains of them as artistic wonders in our
museums, but they put them indoors and out as common ornaments, and
lived among them.

[Illustration]

Presently we hear of the clepsydra being used in Roman law courts
by command of Pompey, to limit the time of speakers. "This," says
one writer of the day, "was to prevent babblings, that such as spoke
ought to be brief in their speeches." It is not difficult to picture
some pompous and tiresome togaed advocate, rolling out sonorous Latin
syllables as he cites precedents and builds up arguments, while an
unseen dropping checks the time against him, and to hear his indignant
surprise—and the chuckles of his auditors—when the relentless
water-clock cuts him short in the middle of some period. Martial, the
Latin poet, referring to a tiresome speaker who repeatedly moistened
his throat from a glass of water during the lengthy speech, suggested
that it would be an equal relief to him and to his audience, if he were
to drink from the clepsydra. But Roman lawyers were not guileless, and
sometimes, so we are told, they tampered with the mechanical regulation
or else introduced muddy water, which would run out more slowly.

This suggests one of the difficulties of the clepsydra. Still more
serious was the fact that it would freeze on frosty nights. There were
no Pearys among the ancient Romans; polar exploration interested them
not at all; but they did spread their conquests into regions of colder
weather—as when Julius Caesar mentions using the clepsydra to regulate
the length of the night-watches in Britain. His keen mind noted by this
means that the summer nights in Britain were shorter than those at
Rome, a fact now known to be due to difference of latitude.

[Illustration: THE CLEPSYDRA, OR WATER CLOCK

_The Clepsydra, one of the earliest time-telling devices, was used
in Roman law courts to limit the time of speakers and "to prevent
babbling."_]

As late as the ninth century, a clepsydra was regarded as a
princely gift. It is said, that the good caliph, Harun-al-Raschid,
beloved by all readers of the "Arabian Nights," sent one of great
beauty to Charlemagne, the Emperor of the West. Its case was elaborate,
and, at the stroke of each hour, small doors opened to give passage
to cavaliers. After the twelfth hour these cavaliers retired into the
case. The striking apparatus consisted of small balls which dropped
into a resounding basin underneath.

The clepsydra appears to have been used throughout the Middle Ages in
some European countries, and it lingered along in Italy and France down
to the close of the fifteenth century. Some of these water-clocks were
plain tin tubes; some were hollow cups, each with a tiny hole at the
bottom, which were placed in water and gradually filled and sank in a
definite space of time.

When the clepsydra was introduced from Egypt into Greece, and later
into Rome, one was considered enough for each town and was set in the
market-place or some public square. It was carefully guarded by a civic
officer, who religiously filled it at stated times. The nobility of the
town and the wealthy people sent their servants to find out the exact
time, while the poorer inhabitants were informed occasionally by the
sound of the horn which was blown by the attendant of the clepsydra
to denote the hour of changing the guard. This was much in the spirit
of the calls of the watchmen in old England, and later in our New
England, who were, in a way, walking clocks that shouted "Eleven
o'clock and all's well," or whatever might be the hour.

Allowing for the fact that the clepsydra was none too accurate at the
best and that its reservoir must occasionally be refilled, it can be
seen that this early form of timepiece, having played its part, was
ready to step off the stage when a more practical successor should
arrive.

With one of its earliest successors we are familiar.



CHAPTER FIVE

_How Father Time Got His Hour-Glass_


Every now and then one sees a picture of a lean old gentleman, with a
long white beard, flowing robes, and an expression of most misleading
benignity. In spite of his look of kindly good humor, he is none too
popular with the human race and his methods are not always of the
gentlest. In one hand he carries the familiar scythe, and, in the
other, the even more familiar hour-glass. By this we may assume that
he began to be pictured in this way while the hour-glass was still in
common use.

The principle of the hour-glass is so similar to that of the clepsydra,
and its first use was so early, that it is somewhat of a misnomer
to speak of it as a successor. About the only justification that
can be made is that the clepsydra has long disappeared, while the
sand-glass—if not the hour-glass—is still sold in the stores for
such familiar uses as timing the boiling of eggs, the length of
telephone-conversations, and other short-time needs.

Nothing could be much simpler than the hour-glass, in which fine sand
poured through a tiny hole from an upper into a lower compartment. It
had none of the mechanical features of the later clepsydræ; it did
not adjust itself to astronomical laws like the perfected sun-dials;
it merely permitted a steady stream of fine sand to pass through an
opening at a uniform rate of speed, until one of the funnel-shaped
bowls had emptied itself—then waited with entire unconcern until some
one stood it upon its head and caused the sand to run back again.

However, it possessed some very solid advantages of its own. It would
not freeze; it would not spill over; it did not need refilling; it
would run at a steady rate whether the reservoir were full or nearly
empty; it could be made very cheaply, and there was nothing about it to
wear out.

A water-clock might be of considerable size but a sand-clock, since it
required turning, must be kept small, and an _hour-glass_—a size small
enough to carry—became popular, although its use was correspondingly
limited. Thus, it naturally was assigned to Father Time to be carried
before watches were available. A sun-dial simply would not answer this
purpose, since the old gentleman works by night as steadily as by day.

How old is the sand-glass?

We do not know definitely, but it is said to have been invented at
Alexandria about the middle of the third century B.C. That it was known
in ancient Athens is certain, for a Greek bas-relief at the Mattei
Palace in Rome, representing a marriage, shows Morpheus, the god of
dreams, holding an hour-glass. The Athenians used to carry these
timepieces as we do our watches.

Some hour-glasses contained mercury, but sand was an ideal substance,
for, when fine and dry, it flows with an approximately constant speed
whether the quantity is great or small, whereas, liquids descend more
swiftly the greater the pressure above the opening.

Hour-glasses were introduced into churches in the early sixteenth
century when the preachers were famous for their wearisome sermons.
The story is told of one of these long-winded divines who, on a hot
day, had reached his "tenthly" just as the restless congregation were
gladdened to see the last grains of sand fall from the upper bowl.
"Brethren," he remarked; "Let us take another glass," and he reversed
it—"Ahem, as I was saying—" And he went on for another hour.

Other preachers, more merciful, used a half-hour glass and kept within
its limits. Many churches were furnished with ornamental stands to
hold the glass. These timekeepers lingered along in country churches
for many years, but ceased to be in anything like general demand after
about 1650.

For rough purposes of keeping time on board ship, sand-glasses were
employed and it is curious to note that hour and half-hour glasses were
used for this purpose in the British navy as recently as the year 1839.

The very baby of the hour-glass family was a twenty-eight second affair
which assisted in determining the speed of the vessel. The log-line
was divided by knots, at intervals of forty-seven feet, three inches,
and this distance would go into a nautical mile as many times as
twenty-eight seconds would go into an hour. When the line was thrown
overboard the mariner counted the number of knots slipping through his
fingers while his eyes were fixed on the tiny emptying sand-glass, and
in this way so many "knots" an hour denoted the ship's speed in miles.

In the British House of Commons, even at the present time, a two-minute
glass is used in the preliminary to a "division," which is a method
of voting wherein the members leave their seats and go into either
the affirmative or negative lobbies. While the sand is running,
"division-bells" are set in motion in every part of the building to
give members notice that a "division" is at hand.

It was an ancient custom to put an hour-glass, as an emblem that the
sands of life had run out, into coffins at burials.

Another early means of recording time applied the principle of the
consumption of some slow-burning fuel by fire. From remote ages, the
Chinese and Japanese thus used ropes, knotted at regular intervals, or
cylinders of glue and sawdust marked in rings, which slowly smoldered
away. Alfred the Great, that noble English king of the ninth century,
is said to have invented the candle-clock, because of a vow to give
eight hours of the day to acts of religion, eight hours to public
affairs, and eight hours to rest and recreation. He had six tapers
made, each twelve inches long and divided into twelve parts, or inches,
colored alternately black and white. Three of these parts were burned
in one hour, making each inch represent twenty minutes, so that his six
candles, lighted one after the other by his chaplains, would burn for
twenty-four hours.

The Eskimos also, through the long arctic night have watched the
lamp which gives both light and heat to their cold huts of snow. But
all these are no more than crude conveniences, whose irregularity is
evident, and there is likewise no need to do more than call attention
to the effect upon fire in any form, of wind or dampness in the air.
The Roman lamp-clock sheltered from the weather was the best of them
all, and was the only one which long continued in civilized use.

Our chief interest in all such devices comes from the touch of poetry
still remaining in the tradition of the sacred flame which must be kept
forever burning, and in association of life and time with fire, in such
parables as that of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. There is a reminder
of this old time-keeping by fire in all that poetry and philosophy
which tells of hope that still may live or of deeds that maybe done,
"while the lamp holds out to burn."

Thus far, in spite of occasional glimpses of the Middle Ages and of
modern times, we have dealt, for the most part, with earlier ages.
Now our story must leave these behind, and thus passes the ancient
world with its strange pagan civilization which was so human, so wise
and so simple. It is difficult for modern Americans even to imagine
existence in ancient Greece or Rome or in still more ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia—since the whole attitude toward life was so essentially
different from what it is to-day.

Our debt to the ancients in this one matter of recording time is
typical of that in many others. To them we owe our whole fundamental
system and conception of it from the astronomy by which we measure our
years and our seasons and make our appeal to the final standard of the
stars, down to the arithmetic of our minutes and seconds and the very
names of our months and days.

[Illustration:

Sun Dial Designed and Placed by Sir Isaac Newton in
Cranbury Park, Winchester, England

Pulpit Two-Hour Glass American, 1700-50 in the Essex Institute, Salem,
Mass.

Silver Gilt French Hour Glass Eighteenth Century in the Metropolitan
Museum


TYPES OF THE EARLIEST TIME TELLING DEVICES

_The sun dial is the first ancestor of all time tellers, and the sand
glass was probably the first portable time telling device._]

In the modern application and practical use of all this, on the other
hand, we owe them nothing. They never made a clock or watch, or any
like device which has more than a merely ornamental use to-day. They
gave us the general plan so well that we have never bettered it, but
they left later generations to work out the details. They invented the
second as a division of time but they did not measure by it. They did
not care to try. For them, learning was the natural right and power of
the few, and the gulf between the most that was known by the few
and the little that was known in general, was like the gulf between
great wealth and great poverty among ourselves.

Indeed, in this age of teaching and preaching, when a thought seems to
need only to be born in order to be spread abroad over the world, it
is hard for us even to conceive the instinct by which men kept their
learning like a secret among the initiated and felt no impulse to make
known that which they knew.

Their great men thought and did wonderful things which are now the
common property of us all. And their common folk lived in a fashion
astonishingly primitive by comparison, in an ignorance which certainly
was weakness and may somehow have been bliss.

That world of theirs is gone—the body and the spirit of it alike. And
there remains to us, along with much of their art and their science,
the hour-glass to symbolize that relentless flight of time which they
feared but never tried to save; and the quaint sun-dial in our gardens,
a memory of that worldly-wise old philosophy which counted only the
shining hours.



CHAPTER SIX

_The Clocks Which Named Themselves_


Now the scene changes again, and the story shifts forward over the
interval of a thousand years. As we take up the tale once more, we find
ourselves in another world, amid a life as different from that ancient
life of which we have been speaking as either of them is from our own
life to-day.

The ancient civilization, which may be traced from Rome through Greece,
Babylon and Egypt back to the dim dawn of history, is gone almost
as if it had never been. For there came a period when great hordes
of barbarians defeated the armies, burnt the cities, pillaged and
destroyed, leaving only desolation and ruin behind them. Then followed
hundreds of years of what we call the "Dark Ages,"—ages of ignorance
and violence, when mankind was slowly struggling upwards again and was
forming a new civilization upon the ruins of the old. Therefore, at the
point we have now reached, there are no more white temples and pillared
porticos and sandaled men in white tunic and toga, and marble statues
in green gardens; but everywhere we find sharp roofs and towers, quaint
outlines, and wild color like a child's picture-book.

There are castles with their moats and battlements, and monasteries
with their cloistered arches; there are knights in armor riding, and
lords and ladies gorgeous in strange garments, and monks in their dull
gowns, and the sturdy peasant working in the field; and in the towns,
all among peaked gables and Gothic windows and rough cobbled streets,
a motley crowd of beggar and burgher and courtier, priest and clerk,
doctor and scholar and soldier and merchant and tradesman—an endless
variety of types, and each in the distinctive costume of his calling.
And there are churches everywhere, from the huge cathedral towering
like a forest of carven stone to the humble village chapel or wayside
shrine, their spires all pointing up to heaven in token of the change
that has come upon the life and spirit of the world.

We have come from the height of the classic period suddenly into the
heart of the Middle Ages; and in the dark centuries that lie between,
Christ and His Disciples have come and gone, and the religion of the
Western World has changed; the old gods have perished and the saints
have filled their places. And Rome has died, and Romance has been born.

The center of civilization has shifted to the north and west; from the
old ring of lands around the Mediterranean to the great nations of
modern Europe. Italy has become a jealous group of independent cities,
great in art and commerce, but in little else. Germany is much the
same, except for the lack of some few score centuries of tradition.
France and Spain are already great and growing. William the Conqueror
has fought and ruled and died, and the "Merry England" of song and
story has grown up out of the fusion of Saxon and Norman. Chivalry and
the Crusades, the times of _Ivanhoe_ and _The Talisman_, are as fresh
as yesterday.

And by green hedgerows and hospitable inns, Chaucer's Pilgrims are
plodding onward toward the sound of Canterbury's bells. For here is the
point of all our seeking—that there are clocks now in the monasteries
and in the Cathedral towers. There is just one curious link of likeness
between the Middle Ages and the remoter past; as it was at first at
Babylon, so now in the fourteenth century the priesthood holds almost a
monopoly of science and of learning.

Thus, although the sun-dial, clepsydra and sand-glass are still much
used, we find ourselves at last in the time and lands of _clocks_. The
very sound of the word "clock" gives a clue to its origin. It suggests
the striking of the hour upon some bell. The French called the word
_cloche_ and the Saxons _clugga_, and both of these originally meant a
bell.

If you will put yourself back in the picture at the beginning of the
chapter, you will find yourself in a realm of sounding, pealing,
chiming bells with the hours of prayer throughout the day, from
matins to angelus, rung out from the belfries, and with frequent
deep-toned strikings of the hour. Not even a blind man could have
remained unconscious of the passage of the hours under such conditions,
and time, in a sense, became more a possession of democracy although
timepieces themselves were still the mark of special privilege.

Life also was beginning to hurry just a little. Very deliberate,
we should call it in comparison with the mad rush of the twentieth
century, and yet it began to show its growing complexity in that
humanity was becoming more definitely organized and men were forced
to depend more and more upon each other. In all of this, there was a
slightly growing sense of the things that were to be, just as the water
for some miles above Niagara begins to hasten its course under the
influence of the mighty cataract over which it will at last go madly
plunging.

Herein occurs another of those baffling questions, like the old-time
puzzler as to whether the hen first came from the egg or the egg from
the hen. One cannot help wondering to what extent the increasing
accuracy of the broadening knowledge of time-keeping was the _result_
of our complicated modern life and to what extent it was the _cause_.
Certainly we cannot conceive of present-day affairs as being conducted
save in the light of moving hands and figures upon a dial.

From the Middle Ages, then, we get our word for clock and, which is
more important, we begin to get some crude application of its modern
mechanical principles. They were wonderfully skilful, those medieval
workmen, considering the means at their disposal, and the ingenuity
of some of their clocks is still a delight, but, perhaps, for better
understanding of the story, we should stop for a minute to inquire
exactly what a clock means from the mechanical point of view.

A clock is a machine for keeping time. And for this there are four
essentials, without any one of which there would be no clock. First,
there must be a motive power to make it run; second, there must be a
means of transmitting this power; third, there must be a regulating
device to make the mechanism move steadily and slowly, and keep the
motive power from running down too quickly; and, fourth, there must be
some device to mark the time and make it known.

In a typical modern clock the power comes from the pull of a weight or
the pressure of a spring—although clocks may, of course, be operated by
electricity or compressed air or some other means; also, the regulator
is what is known as the "escapement" and the recording device consists
of the hands, the dial, and the striking mechanism. Having stated
this, let us return to the past and see if we can determine how these
principles came to be applied.

This is not altogether easy. Our forefathers were less particular than
we over such trifling questions as names and spelling—even the learned
Shakespeare, long afterward, used several different spellings of his
own name. Thus, when we see in the records of the period the name of
"clock" or "horologe" we cannot tell with certainty what type is meant,
since "horologe" meant simply a device for keeping time; it might have
been applied equally well to a clock, clepsydra, an hour-glass, or even
a sun-dial.

"It is quite possible," writes M. Gubelin Breitschmidt, the younger,
an eminent horologist of Lucerne, Switzerland, "that a large number of
the technical inventions of antiquity were lost during the migrations
of the barbarians and under the chaotic conditions prevailing during
the first thousand years of Christianity, but the most perfect
surviving instrument for measuring time was the water-clock, known as
the clepsydra, which was able to maintain its supremacy long after
the appearance of the wholly mechanical clock, just as the beautiful
manuscripts of the artist monks and laymen were favored by the cultured
classes long after the invention of movable types for printing.

"The spread of Christianity throughout Europe caused the foundation of
many religious communities, and the severe rules by which they were
governed—fixing the hours of prayer, labor, and refreshment—forced
their members to seek instruments by which to measure time. In the year
605, a bull of Pope Sabinianus decreed that all bells be rung seven
times in the twenty-four hours, at fixed moments and regularly, and
these fixed times became known as the seven canonical hours. The sound
of the bells penetrated and came to regulate not only the life of the
religious bodies but also that of the secular people who lived outside
the walls of the monasteries. Oil-lamps, candles, hour-glasses, prayers
and—for those who had the means of buying them—clepsydræ served as
chronometers for the brotherhoods; so that one can easily imagine that
many a monk sought to improve these instruments. But as yet, no one had
found means to regulate the wheel-system of a movement. In the best
instruments of this period, water supplied the motive power and served
as well to regulate the action."

There is a general belief that Gerbert, the monk, who was the most
accomplished scholar of his age, and who later became Pope Sylvester
II, was the one who first took the important step of producing a real
clock, and that this occurred near the close of the tenth century—or
to be more exact, about 990 A. D. This period was one of densest
superstition, and expectancy of the end of the world was in the air,
since many people had fixed upon the year 1000 A. D. as the date of
that cataclysmic event.

Authorities of the Church and of the state were not very partial
to invention and research, their attention being fixed largely
upon theological, political, or military affairs; but, of course,
inquiring and constructive minds were still to be found; even without
encouragement these tended to follow the impulse of their natures.

[Illustration: GALILEO DISCOVERING THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PENDULUM

_As a youth of seventeen Galileo watched a swinging lamp, in the
Cathedral of Pisa, timed it by his pulse, and discovered the principle
upon which pendulum clocks are built._]

It is to the monks in their cloisters that we chiefly owe the
preservation of learning through the "dark ages," and from the monks,
for the most part, came such progress of science and invention as was
made. If Gerbert, the monk, after patient tinkering with wheels and
weights in his stone-walled workshop, really achieved some form of the
clock-action as we know it, he was one of the great benefactors of the
human race. Still, it is not impossible that his device may only have
been a more remarkable application of the clepsydra principle.

Whatever it was, it seems to have startled the authorities, for they
are said to have accused him of having practiced sorcery through league
with the devil, and to have banished him for a time from France. His
age appears to have had a vast respect for the intellectual powers of
his Satanic Majesty. Anything which was too ingenious or scientific to
be understood without an uncomfortable degree of mental application was
very apt to be ascribed to diabolic inspiration and thus found unfit
for use in "Christian" lands. It could hardly have been a stimulating
atmosphere for would-be inventors.

All of the credit that we are ascribing to Gerbert must therefore
be prefixed with an "if." Did he really invent the clock-movements,
or is this merely another of the tales which have blown down to us
from this age of tradition and romance? For similar tales are told of
Pacificus in 849 A. D. of the early Pope Sabinianus in 612 and even of
Boetheus, the philosopher, as far back as 510 A. D., while always in
the background are claims of priority for the Chinese who are supposed
to have discovered many of our most important mechanical and scientific
principles away off upon the other side of the world before these were
dreamed of in the west.

If all of these various claims were true, which is far from likely, it
still would not need to surprise us, for it must be remembered that
humanity, until within the past few generations, was more or less a
collection of separated units and its records were very incomplete.
There was scant interest in abstract research and very limited
intercourse between towns and countries; one who made an important
discovery in one locality might be unheard of a hundred miles away.
Unless all the conditions were favorable, his ideas might even pass
from memory with his death, until some scholar of modern times might
chance upon their record.

All that can with certainty be said, therefore, is that there were
clocks of some sort in the monasteries during the eleventh century;
that back of these were the clepsydræ and other time recording
devices; and that here and there through the preceding centuries are
more or less believable tales of inventions that had to do with the
subject.

Let it be remembered, too, that some of the brilliant minds of ancient
times made discoveries that were forgotten after the barbarian waves
overwhelmed preceding civilizations. The ages following the downfall of
Rome were those of intellectual darkness, illiteracy, and rude force
until mankind groped slowly back toward the light through the process
of _rediscovery_.

Thus, it mattered not at all to the medieval world that Archimedes,
the great Greek scientist and engineer—who, however, chanced to live
in the Greek colony of Sicily—was able, somewhere about 200 B. C., to
construct a system of revolving spheres which reproduced the motion
of the heavenly bodies. Such a machine must necessarily have involved
some sort of clock-work. We dare not stop to consider Archimedes,
lest we stray too far from our subject, but this marvelous man of
ancient times, the Benjamin Franklin of his day, seems to have had a
hand in almost every sort of mechanical and scientific research, from
discovering the principle of specific gravity, in order to checkmate
a dishonest goldsmith, to destroying Roman war-ships by means of his
scientific "engines." The story is told that he set the ships on fire
by concentrating upon them the rays of the sun from a number of concave
mirrors. And, although this story may not be true, the things that he
is known to have done are extraordinary.

Archimedes and his knowledge had long passed away when the monastery
clocks of the eleventh century began to sound the hour. These were
the fruit of a crude new civilization just struggling for expression,
and represented the general period when William the Conqueror led his
Norman army into England.



CHAPTER SEVEN

_The Modern Clock and Its Creators_


We learn that toward the close of the thirteenth century a clock was
set up in St. Paul's Cathedral in London (1286); one in Westminster, by
1288; and one in Canterbury Cathedral, by 1292. The Westminster clock
and the chime of bells were put up from funds raised by a fine imposed
on a chief justice who had offended the government. The clock bore
as an inscription the words of Virgil: "_Discite justitiam moniti_,"
"Learn justice from my advice," and the bells were gambled away by
Henry VIII! In the same century, Dante, whose wonderful poem the
_Commedia_, (the _Inferno_, _Purgatory_ and _Paradise_) is sometimes
called the "Swan Song of the Middle Ages," since it marks the passing
of the medieval times, spoke of "wheels that wound their circle in an
orloge."

Chaucer speaks of a cock crowing as regularly "as a _clock_ in an abbey
orloge." And this shows, curiously, the early meaning of the word, for
by the word "clock," Chaucer evidently meant the _bell_ which struck
the hour, and, very obviously, he used the word "orloge" to indicate
the clock itself.

Many of these "clocks" had neither dials nor hands. They told time
only by striking the hour. Sometimes in the great tower clocks there
were placed automatic figures representing men in armor or even mere
grotesque figures which, at the right moment, beat upon the bell. These
figures were called "jacks o' the clock" or "jacquemarts" and curious
specimens of them are still in existence.

The early abbey clocks did not even strike the hour but rang an alarm
to awaken the monks for prayers. Here again, the alarm principle
precedes the visible measurement of time; even now, as already noted,
we speak of a "clock" by the old word for "bell."

In the course of the following century—the fourteenth—clocks began
to appear which were really worthy of the name, and of these we
have authentic details. They were to be found in many lands. One of
them was built, in 1344, by Giacomo Dondi at Padua, Italy. Another
was constructed in England, in 1340, by Peter Lightfoot, a monk of
Glastonbury. And in 1364, Henry de Wieck, De Wyck, or de Vick, of
Wurtemburg, was sent for by Charles V, King of France, to come to Paris
and build a clock for the tower of the royal palace, which is now
the Palais de Justice. It was finished and set up in February 1379,
and there it still remains after lapse of five and a half centuries,
although its present architectural surroundings were not finished until
a much later date.

This venerable timepiece termed by some chroniclers "the parent of
modern timekeepers," was still performing its duty as late as 1850.
And so it is a matter of interesting record that its mechanism, which
served to measure the passage of time in the days when the earth was
generally believed to be flat and when the Eastern Division of the
Roman Empire was still ruled from Byzantium, now Constantinople, has
served the same purpose within the possible memory of men now living.
Its bell has one grim association—it gave the signal for that frightful
piece of Medicean treachery, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, planned
by Catherine de Medici, the mother of the King Charles IX, when the
armed retainers of the crown of France flung themselves upon the
unsuspecting Huguenots and caused the streets to run red with the blood
of men, women and children—a ghastly butchery of thousands of people.

As we have seen, de Vick's clock was neither the earliest made, nor
among the earliest; nor, probably, did it embody any at that time new
mechanical invention. It does, however, fairly and clearly typify the
oldest style of clock of which we to-day have any accurate knowledge.
Compare its description, then, with the clock upon your shelf.

We think of the tall-cased "grandfather's clocks" as antique; but this
tower-clock of de Vick's outdoes them in antiquity by some four hundred
years. And its most interesting feature is its curious likeness in
mechanical principle to the clocks of modern times. Like most early
clocks, it has only one hand—the hour-hand. Its ponderous movement is
of iron, laboriously hand-wrought; the teeth of its wheels and pinions
were cut out one by one. It was driven by a weight of five hundred
pounds, the cord of which was wound round a drum, or barrel. This
barrel carried, at one end, a pinion, meshing with the hour-wheel,
which drove the hands; the flange at the other end of the barrel
formed the great wheel, or first wheel of the train. This meshed with
a pinion on the shaft of the second wheel, and this in turn with a
lantern-pinion upon the shaft of the escape-wheel. All of this is, of
course, essentially the modern train of gears, only with fewer wheels.

The escapement is the most important part of the whole mechanism,
because it is the part which makes the clock keep time. It is an
_interrupter_, checking the movement almost as soon as, under the urge
of the mainspring, it starts forward. The frequency and duration of
these interruptions determines the rate of running. Without this, the
movement would run down swiftly; with it, the operation stretches over
thirty hours, involving 432,000 _interruptions_.

[Illustration: A TIME PIECE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

_The huge and elaborate Clock of Strasbourg Cathedral, in Lorraine, was
built in 1352 and is an example of the first clocks._]

De Vick's escapement is shown in the illustration. The escape-wheel was
bent into the shape of a shallow pan, so that its toothed edge was at a
right angle to the flat part of the wheel. Near it was placed a verge,
or rotating shaft, so called from a Latin word meaning "turning
around." On this verge were fastened two flat projections called
_pallets_, diverging from each other at about an angle of one hundred
degrees. The width between the pallets, from center to center of each,
was equal to the diameter of the wheel, so that one would mesh with the
teeth at the top of the escape-wheel and the other with the teeth at
the bottom.

[Illustration: _de Vick's Clock_]

Now, if the upper pallet were between the teeth at the top of the
wheel, the pressure of the wheel trying to turn would push it away
until the teeth were set free. But, in so doing, it would cause the
verge to turn and bring the lower pallet between the teeth at the
bottom of the wheel. And since the bottom of the wheel was, of course,
traveling in the opposite direction from the top, the action would be
reversed, and the lower pallet would be pushed away, bringing the upper
one back between the teeth of the wheel again; and so on, "tick-tock,"
the wheel moving a little way each time, and the pallets alternately
catching and holding it from going too far.

The device was kept running slowly by means of a cross-bar called a
"foliot," fastened across the top of the verge in the shape of a T, and
having weights on its two ends. When this weighted bar was set turning
in one direction, it would, of course, resist being suddenly stopped
and started turning the other way, as it was constantly made to do. And
this furnished the regulating action which retarded the motion of the
works and kept them from running down.

This involves the principle of the modern balance-wheel in both watches
and clocks, which is that of _inertia_; the rim of the balance-wheel
represents the weights on the bar that resist the pull of the pallets.
A vital improvement, however, is the interception of the hair spring
which gives elasticity to the pull and thus supplies the elements of
precision and refinement. The inertia of the balance-wheel is gauged
by the weight of the rim and its distance from the center; and the last
refinement of regulation of the mechanism is produced by moving the
tiny screws on the periphery of this wheel outward or inward.

We shall see later how this old escapement was in principle much like
the improved forms in use to-day. It was as quaint and clumsy an affair
as the first automobile or the first steam-engine. But, like them, it
was a great invention, destined to achieve great results. For it was
the means of _making a machine keep time_. And every clock and watch in
use to-day depends for its usefulness upon a similar device. The tick
is the first thing we think of in connection with a clock; and it is
the most essential thing also, _because it is the escapement which does
the ticking_.

This old clock of de Vick's also struck the hours upon a bell and
in very much the same way as modern clocks are made to do. But the
mechanical means by which it did so are too complicated to be easily
described here. And indeed it is unnecessary to do so, since the bell
is far less important. A clock need not strike, but it must keep time.

On the fearsome eve of St. Bartholomew, therefore, and _again within
the past generation_, the clanging of this old clock's bell was brought
about by the whirling gears and ponderous weights of an early craftsman
who wrought his work into the ages.

As already stated, de Vick's mechanism embodied mechanical principles
which, although greatly developed and improved, are employed even
at the present day. All the essentials of a clock are there; the
motive power—the descent of a massive weight—is now replaced by a
slender spring; the train of gears by which this motion is reduced
and communicated, are cut to-day with the extreme accuracy of modern
machine work; the hand moving around the dial is now accompanied by
a longer, swifter hand to tell the minutes; the escapement which
by checking the motive power while yet allowing it to move on step
by step, retards and regulates—even the numbered striking of the
unchanging hours.

De Vick's old clock may have been a crude machine—it certainly was a
poor timekeeper—but it was the sturdy ancestor of all those myriad
tribes of clocks and watches which warn us solemnly from our towers,
chime to us from our mantels, or, nestling snugly in our pockets, or
clinging to our wrists, help us to maintain our efficiency in the
complexities of modern life. The mechanism employed by de Vick was
retained without any improvement of importance in all the time-pieces
of the next three hundred years. The foliot escapement, especially,
remained in use much longer. Indeed, any modern watchmaker would
recognize that it was practically a horizontal balance-wheel.

Long before it was improved upon, watches had been invented and clocks
had everywhere become common. But we shall reserve the watch for the
next chapter; for the moment, our concern is with clocks alone.

The disadvantage of the medieval clock was its inaccuracy. This was due
first to crude workmanship and unnecessary friction; but that trouble
was presently overcome, for the medieval mechanic could be as fine
and accurate a workman as any modern. He had the artist's personal
pride and pleasure in his skill, and also a great unhurried patience,
somewhat hard for us to picture in this breathless age. At best,
however, his work fell far short of the accuracy possible with modern
machinery. Other important difficulties were found in the expansion
and contraction of parts due to temperature variations, and the fact
that the foliot balance was at its best only when running slowly.
Altogether, then, these early clocks were easily surpassed in accuracy
of timekeeping by a sun-dial or a good clepsydra.

The question arises, therefore, why this newcomer in the field of
timekeeping, should have begun to displace the earlier devices. The
clock was not yet a better timepiece than the sun-dial; why did it grow
more common? Well, for one thing, people like novelties. For another,
people loved their churches and lived by the chimes of distant bells;
and the clock was by far the most practical striking device, whatever
might be its faults in keeping time. But, what was most important of
all, it was a machine, susceptible of infinite improvement and offering
a field for endless ingenuity. It appealed to that inborn mechanical
instinct by means of which mankind has wrought his mastery over the
world.

We have seen how de Vick's clock contained, as it were, the germ
of all our clocks. And, moreover, the medieval regarded machinery
with profoundest awe. It is the unknown which awakes imagination.
_We_ wonder at the cathedrals of his day, but the medieval knew
about cathedrals; he built them. Considering their comparatively
cruder tools, lack of modern hoisting machinery, and so forth, their
architectural and building abilities exceeded even those of to-day. On
the other hand, a locomotive or a modern watch, such as we glance at
without special notice, would have appeared to him the product of sheer
sorcery, too wonderful to be the work of human hands.

The Middle Ages could not much improve their clock without some radical
invention; and such a mechanical type of invention was yet the province
of but few minds. The typical craftsman could merely make the clock
more convenient, more decorative, and more wonderful. To this work, he
and his fellows addressed themselves with all of their patient skill
and their endless ingenuity for ornamentation.

They made clocks for their churches and public buildings, and
elaborated them with intricate mechanical devices. The old "Jacks" that
struck the bells were only a beginning. They made clocks for their
kings and wealthy nobles, adorning them with all the richness that an
artist could design and a skilful jeweler execute. They made clocks
even for ordinary domestic use so quaint in design and so clever in
workmanship that we exhibit them to-day in our museums. One difficulty
in determining the date of the first invention is that long before the
days of de Vick and Lightfoot, machines were made to show the day of
the week and month and to imitate the movements of the stars; and the
first horological records may refer to clock-works of this kind.

The famous clock of Strassburg Cathedral shows the extreme to which the
medieval craftsman carried this kind of ingenuity. It was originally
put up in 1352 and has been twice rebuilt, each time with greater
elaboration. It is three stories high and stands against the wall
somewhat in the shape of a great altar with three towers. Among its
movements are a celestial globe showing the positions of the sun, moon,
and stars, a perpetual calendar, a device for predicting eclipses and
a procession of figures representing the pagan gods from whom the
days of the week are named. There are devices for showing the age and
phases of the moon and other astronomical events. The hours are struck
by a succession of automatic figures, and at the stroke of noon a
cock, perched upon one of the towers, flaps his wings, ruffles his
neck, and crows three times. This clock still remains, having last
been rebuilt in the four years 1838 to 1842. But its chief interest is
that of a mechanical curiosity. It keeps no better time than a common
alarm-clock, nor ever did. And in beauty as well as usefulness, it has
been surpassed many times by later and simpler structures.

For the first really important improvement in clock making we must pass
to the latter end of the sixteenth century. The Italian Renaissance
with its great impulse to art and science has come and gone, and the
march of events has brought us well into the modern world. America had
been discovered a century and is beginning to be colonized. Spain is
trying to found a world empire upon blood and gold and the tortures
of the Inquisition. England is at the height of the great Elizabethan
period. It is the time of Drake and Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh.

At this period of intellectual awakening, a remarkable young man steps
upon the scene. In 1564, the year in which the wonderful Englishman,
Shakespeare, first saw the light of day, the scarcely less wonderful
Italian, Galileo, was born in Pisa. He was gifted with keen eyes and
a swift, logical mind, which left its impress upon so many subjects
of human thought and speculation that we are tempted to stop as with
Archimedes and trace his history. But, one single incident must
suffice.

[Illustration: Ivory and Silver Folding Dial German, Seventeenth Century

Ring Dial in general use during Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century

Universal Cube Dial German, Eighteenth Century

Ivory Compass Dial Italy, 1628


ANCESTORS OF THE WATCH

_Portable and pocket sun dials in the collections of the Metropolitan
Museum._]

In 1581, this youth of seventeen stood in the cathedral of Pisa.
Close at hand, a lamp suspended by a long chain swung lazily in the
air currents. There was nothing unusual in such a sight. Millions of
other eyes had seen other suspended objects going through exactly this
motion and had not given the sight a second thought. At this moment,
however, a great discovery of far-reaching application—one which was to
revolutionize clock construction—hung waiting in the air. Young Galileo
took notice.

The lamp swung to and fro, to and fro. Sometimes it moved but slightly.
Again, as a stronger breeze blew through the great drafty structure, it
swung in a considerable arc, but always—and this was the point which
impressed itself upon the Italian lad—the swing was accomplished in
exactly the same time. When it moved a short distance, it moved slowly;
the farther it moved, the faster became the motion; in its arc it moved
more swiftly, accomplishing the long swing in the same time as it did
the short one. In order to make sure of this fact, Galileo is said to
have timed the swinging lamp by counting the beating of his pulse.

Thus was discovered the principle of the pendulum and its
"isochronism." By "isochronism" we mean _inequal arcs in equal time_.
In other words, any swinging body, such as a pendulum, is said to be
"isochronous" when it describes long or short arcs in equal lengths
of time. This also applies to a balance-wheel, and hair-spring. And
herein lies a remarkable fact—this epoch-making discovery was after
all but a rediscovery. The isochronism of a swinging body was known in
Babylon thousands of years before, although the Babylonians, of course,
could not explain it. Lacking in application, it had passed from the
minds of men, and it remained for Galileo to observe the long-forgotten
fact and to work out its mechanical application. He did not himself
apply this principle to clock-making, although some fifty years later,
toward the end of his life, he did suggest such an application.

The first pendulum clocks were probably made about 1665, by Christian
Huyghens, the celebrated Dutch astronomer and mathematician who
discovered the rings of Saturn; and by the English inventor, Doctor
Robert Hooke. The invention is claimed for several other men in England
and abroad at about the same time; but hardly upon sufficient authority.

From that time on, the important improvements of clockwork were chiefly
made in two directions—those of the mechanical perfection of the
escapement and the compensation for changes of temperature.

There is a little world of invention and discovery behind the face of
the clock which beats so steadily on your mantel. Look within if you
will, and see the compact mechanism with its toothed gears, its coiled
spring, or its swinging pendulum, in which the motion of the cathedral
lamp is harnessed for your service,—nothing in that grouping has merely
happened so. You may or may not understand all the action of its parts,
or the technical names of them; but each feature in the structure has
been the result of study and experiment, as when Huyghens hung the
pendulum from a separate point and connected it with a forked crank
astride the pendulum shaft. You can see that forked crank to this day,
if you care to look; it was the product of good Dutch brains.

Next we come to one of the greatest single improvements in clock-work,
and the chief difference between the mechanism made by de Vick and the
better ones of our own time. When the pallets in a clock are forced by
an increased swing of the pendulum or by the form of the pallet faces
against the teeth of the escape-wheel in the direction opposite to
that in which the wheel is moving, the wheel must be pushed backward
a little way each time, and the whole clock action is made to back up
a little. You can see that this would tend to interfere with good and
regular timekeeping. George Graham, in London, in 1690 corrected this
error by inventing the _dead-beat escapement_ which rather contradicted
its name by working very well and faithfully.

There are many forms of this escapement and there is no need to explain
it in detail. But the main idea is this: At the end of each vibration
or swing of the pendulum, the escape-teeth, instead of being made to
recoil by the downward motion of the pallets, simply remains stationary
or at rest until the commencement of the return swing of the pendulum.
This was brought about by applying certain curves to the acting faces
of the pallets. But the acting faces of both tooth and pallet are
beveled, so that the tooth in slipping by gives the pallet a "kick"
or impulse outward and keeps it in motion. Nowadays, even a common
alarm-clock has an escapement working in this way.

Then came another remarkably interesting contribution. Have you
ever wondered why the pendulums of fine clocks were weighted with
a _gridiron_ of alternate rods of brass and steel? For purpose of
ornament? Not at all—it constitutes a scientific solution of an
embarrasing problem, due to the inevitable variations in temperature.
Metals expand with heat and contract with cold. Notched iron bars
can be made to "crawl" along a flat surface by alternately heating
and cooling them. Bridge-builders sometimes arrange sliding points,
or rocking points to adjust the differences in the length of the
steel. Contraction and expansion are important factors in all their
calculations. But a pendulum would change its rate of motion if it
changed its length and this would interfere with its accuracy as a
measurer of time. Graham worked upon this problem, too, and attached a
jar of mercury to the rod of his pendulum for a weight. When the heat
lengthened the rod, it also caused the mercury to rise, just as in a
thermometer, and this left the "working-length" the same.

Such mercury-weighted pendulums are not uncommon to this day, but the
more familiar _gridiron_ came from the brain of John Harrison, who, in
1726, fixed the alternate rods in such a way that the expanding brass
rods raised the weight as much as the expanding steel rods lowered it.
Thus they neutralized each other.

The clock as we know it was now virtually complete. There were
structural refinements, but no more radical improvements to be made. In
tracing its development from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century,
we note one curious likeness to the ancient history of recorded time.
In this case, as before in Babylon, the people first concerned with the
science were the priests, and after them the astronomers, but we note a
still more important difference.

As the medieval passed into the modern, the practise of horology passed
more and more out of the hands of scientists into the keeping of
commercial workmen. The custodian of time was at first a priest, and
finally a manufacturer. And this change was attended by a vast increase
in the general use of timepieces, and the correspondingly greater
influence of time upon society and men's way of living. The Middle Ages
made clocks and watches; and clocks and watches make the age in which
we live.



CHAPTER EIGHT

_The Watch that Was Hatched from the "Nuremburg Egg"_


In the second act of Shakespeare's play, _As You Like It_, when
Touchstone, the fool, meets Jaques, the sage, he draws forth a sun-dial
from his pocket and begins to moralize upon Time.

Touchstone's dial must have looked like a napkin-ring, with a stem like
that of a watch, by which to hold it up edgewise toward the sun, and a
tiny hole in the upper part of the ring through which a little sunbeam
could fall upon the inner surface whereon the hours were marked. This
pinhole was perhaps pierced through a slide, which could be adjusted
up or down according to the sun's position at the time of year. In
principle, therefore, it was a miniature of the huge dial of Ahaz of
more than two thousand years before.

In another Shakespeare play, _Twelfth Night_, Malvolio is gloating
in imagination over his coming luxury when he shall have married the
heiress and entered upon a life of wealth and leisure.

"I frown the while," says he; "and perchance wind up my watch, or play
with my—some rich jewel."

There, in those two quotations, we have the whole meaning of the watch
in the time of Queen Elizabeth. Touchstone's dial was a practical
convenience—a thing to tell the time. Malvolio's watch was a piece of
jewelry, an ornament indicating wealth and splendor. While watches had
been well known for many years, people wore them chiefly for display
and told time by means of pocket sun-dials.

For the first watches we must go back to about the year 1500, shortly
after America had been discovered, and when the great tower-clocks
of de Vick and Lightfoot were not much more than a century old. In
the quaint old town of Nuremberg there lived, at that time, one Peter
Henlein, probably a locksmith. But a locksmith, in those days, would be
an expert mechanic—more like a modern toolmaker; very likely an armorer
also; capable of that fine workmanship in metal which we still wonder
at in our museums. Nuremberg was then very much a medieval city, all
red-tiled roofs and queer windows, where people went about dressed in
trunks and jerkins and pointed caps and pointed shoes. It looked like
_Die Meistersinger_, and _Grimm's Fairy Tales_, and pictures by Howard
Pyle and Maxfield Parrish; very much like "Spotless Town," except that
it was far from spotless.

Now, as you remember, there was not until long after this any means
of making clocks keep anything like accurate time; so, instead of
improving them, people competed with each other in devising novel and
ingenious forms. There could be no more desirable novelty than a clock
small enough to stand upon a desk or table, or even to be carried
around. Such a clock could not well be driven by weights. But Peter
Henlein overcame that difficulty by using for the motive power a coiled
mainspring wound up with a ratchet, just as we still do to-day.

There is some dispute over attributing to Henlein the credit for this
invention; but at least he did the thing, and it cannot be proved that
anybody did it before him. "Every day," wrote Johannes Coeuleus, in
1511, "produces more ingenious inventions. A clever and comparatively
young man—Peter Henlein—creates works that are the admiration of
leading mathematicians, for, out of a little iron he constructs clocks
with numerous wheels, which, without any impulse and in any position,
indicate time for forty hours and strike, and which can be carried in
the purse as well as in the pocket."

[Illustration: THE FIRST POCKET TIME PIECE

_In Shakespear's play, "As You Like It," Touchstone, the Fool, draws
forth a pocket sun dial, which probably was of the "napkin ring" type._]

There was, however, no invention of any such thing as we mean by the
term _watch_ to-day that came complete from the mind of any one man,
but the contrivance gradually grew, in shape and structure out of the
small clock which could be worn at the belt or on a chain round the
neck. It came to be called a _watch_ because _clock_ meant a bell
that struck the hours. But many of the first watches had striking
apparatus, and this circumstance added to the confusion of names. We
slangily call a fat, old-fashioned watch a _turnip_; but the first
watches were very much fatter and more old-fashioned, and might fairly
have deserved the name. Before long, Henlein was making them oval in
shape. Hence, they were called _Nuremberg eggs_.

Here, then, is something which we can really consider a watch. Let us
see how it compares with those that we know to-day. In the first place,
being egg-shaped, it was thick and heavy—you would not like to carry it
in your pocket. It had no crystal and only one hand—the hour-hand. So
much for the outside.

Inside, the difference was still greater. The works were made of iron
and put together with pins and rivets. It was all hand-work—expert
workmanship, indeed—but look at the works of your own watch and try
to imagine cutting the teeth in those tiny gears, or making those
delicate springs with files and hammers. As pieces of hand-workmanship,
therefore, the watches made by Henlein and his followers were
remarkable; but when compared with our modern watches, they were crude
and clumsy affairs.

Furthermore, they were poor timekeepers. They had the old foliot
balance running parallel to the dial. This was all very well as long as
the watch lay on the table with the balance swinging horizontally. But
as soon as it was carried, in a perpendicular position, the arms of
the balance had to swing up and down, which was quite another matter.
And then, of course, the crudeness of the works produced a great deal
of friction. This made it necessary to use a very stiff mainspring,
otherwise the watch would not run at all. Such a spring exercised more
pressure when fully wound than when it was nearly run down. And so
the worst fault of the foliot was that it speeded up under increased
pressure.

The first improvements, and, in fact, the only ones for nearly two
hundred years, were directed toward doing away with the unequal
pressure of the mainspring and thus make the watch keep better time.
If you look into the back of a very early watch, you may see a curious
device consisting of a curved arm ending in a pinion, which travels
round an eccentric gear of peculiar shape. This is the first type of
equalizing mechanism; it was invented in Peter Henlein's time and was
called the _stackfreed_; but it was a clumsy device at best and a great
waste of power. Therefore it was gradually displaced by the _fusee_.

Perhaps one might have felt a certain amount of pride in carrying about
such a thick, bulging mechanical toy, as were these early watches,
but, as to possessing something that would keep correct time—that was
a different matter. After admiring it and listening to its ticking,
one would have to guess as to just how far wrong it might be. People
did not figure closely on minutes and half minutes in the day of the
_Nuremberg egg_; there was no "Wall Street" and no commuting. And this
brings us to a real event in the whole story.

Jacob Zech, a Swiss mechanic, living at Prague in Bohemia, Austria,
about 1525, began studying the problem of the equalization of watch
mechanism. He was sure that there ought to be some better means than
that of the clumsy stackfreed. Presently he hit upon the principle of
the fusee, and Gruet, another Swiss, perfected it. At last it became
possible to make a watch that would not run fast when first wound and
then go more and more slowly as it ran down—and to do this in a really
practical way. Before this time, a watch was a clumsy piece of ticking
jewelry; now it became something of a real time-keeper. Therefore, it
was not long before people began to want Swiss watches. These were the
days when skilful Swiss craftsmen worked patiently in their little home
shops, making some single watch-part and making it extremely well,
while the so-called "manufacturer" bought up these separate parts, and
assembled them into watches.

What was the fusee that brought about such a change? Not much to look
at, surely—merely a short cone with a spiral groove running about it,
and a cord, or chain, wound in this groove and fastened at the large
end of the core. Its principle and its action were very simple, and
that is why it was a great invention. Some one has said that anyone
can invent a complicated machine to do a piece of work, but it takes
real brains to make a _simple_ machine _that will do the same work_.

[Illustration: _Stackfreed_

_Mainspring Barrel and Fusee_]

The shaft of the fusee was attached to the great wheel which drove the
gears, and the other end of the cord was fastened to the mainspring
barrel. This is the way in which it worked: The mainspring slowly
turned the barrel; this gradually unwound the cord from the fusee and
caused the fusee to turn. When the fusee turned, the wheels also were
forced to turn, and the watch was running. At the start, the cord
would unwind from the small end where the leverage was least, but as
the tension of the mainspring grew slowly less, the leverage of the
cord grew slowly greater and, consequently, the power applied to the
wheels was always of the same degree of strength. This invention gave a
great impulse to Swiss watchmaking; several centuries later it worked
to the disadvantage of English manufacturers, for they continued to
use it after other countries had found still better methods of power
equalization.

The fusee was invented about the year 1525, at a time when the world
was fairly alive with new ideas. People in Europe were just beginning
to realize that they were living on a sphere and not upon a flat
surface, and that there was a vast new land on the other side of the
ocean. Columbus had crossed the Atlantic but a few years before and now
explorers were making new voyages of discovery in every direction.

Printing, invented by Gutenberg, about a century before, was becoming
common enough to be a real power in the world, bringing the thoughts
of men before the eyes of thousands without the slow and expensive
process of hand-copying. The first printed copy of the Bible had made
its appearance and Caxton had set up his first printing-press—all
within the lifetime of people then living—and printing shops were being
established in many places. Many people were learning to read—a thing
that could be said of very few in the Middle Ages. They were finding
out something about the wonderful forgotten civilization of ancient
times. Everywhere people's minds were stirring. We call it the time
of the _Renaissance_, or the _rebirth_ of civilization, but in some
respects it was more like the awakening of the world after a long
sleep. Just as a person on waking looks first at his clock or watch,
so now the world, preparing to be busy and modern, needed some better
means of telling time. It therefore was both natural and necessary that
the watch should have received such a great improvement as the fusee at
just this period.

Then began the age of those strange, ingenious watches which we
still find in the museums. For some time, there were only a few real
improvements. Screws and brass wheels were introduced into their
construction about 1550, and glass crystals about 1600. The minute-hand
appeared occasionally; but it was not in common use for nearly a
century afterward. And that shows how watches were regarded in those
days. One would think that such an obvious advantage as that of
minute-notation would have been seized upon and utilized at once; on
the contrary, people did not seem to care much about it. What was the
use of a hand to mark the minutes, when the watch was more likely than
not to be half an hour or so in error?

For real timekeeping there were dials everywhere, and there were also
fairly good clocks in the towers; at night, watchmen patrolled the
streets and called out the hours. These watchmen were the police of
the period; it was part of their duty to call out the time, just as
the modern police direct people upon the way they wish to go. For
timekeeping, the watch was still less useful than the watchman. Made
entirely by hand, it was necessarily expensive; therefore, it was made
regardless of expense. It was thought of as Malvolio thought of it—a
possession showing the wealth and station of the wearer, a rich jewel,
a toy for noblemen and for kings. Centuries were to pass before real
watches were within the reach of common people.

It is said that Edward VI was the first Englishman to possess a watch.
This young king, who reigned so short a time, will be remembered by
many as the young prince in Mark Twain's famous story _The Prince
and the Pauper_. Mary Queen of Scots had a small watch shaped like a
skull—a cheerful fashion of the time. Many others were shaped in the
form of insects, flowers, animals, and various other objects. Even
to-day the Swiss make many watches of curious form.

Queen Elizabeth and her court selected watches as modern women do
their hats—to match their various costumes. These watches were usually
worn on a chain or ribbon round the neck and were largely for display.
Several outside cases were often supplied with watches of that period,
and they were made to fit on over that which held the works; these were
variously ornamented with jewels, tortoise-shell and intricate pierced
work in gold, almost as delicate as lace. The covers were decorated
with miniature paintings, some of which were very beautiful.

Strangely enough, it was this practise of decorating watches that
later gave us our plain white enameled dials, because enamel was the
best material on which to paint delicately. To the average museum
visitor, the interest in any collection of old watches, aside from
their historic association, lies in their marvelously ornamented cases
rather than in their mechanism. And in this he very closely repeats the
feeling of their original makers or owners; it was more important to
follow fashion than to know the time.

This custom of watch-decoration continued more or less through the
eighteenth century, and even into the nineteenth, although, by that
time, watches had, as we shall see, become excellent timepieces. The
story is told that when Dresden was captured by the Prussians in 1757,
they found in the wardrobe of Count Bruhl, the Saxon Minister, a
different suit of clothes for every day in the year; each had a watch,
stick, and snuff-box, appropriately decorated, as part of each one.

Shakespeare never regarded a watch seriously. In _Love's Labour's Lost_
he compares a woman to

            _A German clock,
    Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
    And never going aright, being a watch—_

A century after Shakespeare's day, Doctor Johnson remarked that a
dictionary was like a watch: "The worst is better than none, and the
best cannot be expected to go quite true." And Pope says in the same
vein:

    _'Tis with our judgments as our watches—none
    Go just alike, yet each believes his own._

[Illustration: THE "NUREMBURG EGG," THE FIRST REAL WATCH

_"Out of a little iron, Peter Henlein constructs clocks which ... can
be carried in the pocket."—so wrote Johannes Coeleus, in 1511._]

All of this reminds one of Dickens' famous character, Cap'n Cuttle,
whose watch was evidently of the old school. Readers of _Dombey and
Son_ may remember how "the Captain drew Walter into a corner, and with
a great effort, that made his face very red, pulled up the silver
watch, which was so big and so tight in his pocket that it came out
like a bung. "Wal'r," said the Captain, handing it over and shaking him
heartily by the hand, "a parting gift, my lad. Put it back half an hour
every morning and another quarter toward afternoon and it's a watch
that'll do you credit.""

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. Some people still continue this mistaken idea
by thinking of a watch merely as jewelry, as a thing meant more for
ornament than for use.



CHAPTER NINE

_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. We have
seen him growing out of his savage isolated life in caves and forests
and forming tribes and settlements, and have seen him coming out of the
darkness of those early ages into Mesopotamia, the Land Between the
Rivers, where our first written history seems to begin.

Here, with great cities, temples, and a high degree of civilization and
culture, we have found priests studying the stars and making sun-dials
and clepsydræ in order to tell the time by shadows, sunbeams, or the
dropping of water. We have taken a glimpse at the wonderful people of
Greece and Rome, and have seen how, as they became more cultured, they
found it necessary to have more accurate means of telling time. We
have considered the advantages and disadvantages of the sand-glass,
have found clumsy pieces of clock-work in church towers, getting their
running power from weights, in order to strike the bells, and have
stood with young Galileo in the Cathedral at Pisa, when a swinging lamp
gave him the idea of the pendulum.

Lastly, we have seen the making of smaller clocks—that were made
smaller and smaller until they could be carried as watches, in which
springs were used instead of weights. Following this, it has been
merely a question of improvement, as one inventor after another has hit
upon some idea that would do away with this or that difficulty.

Thus we have come, in the time of Shakespeare, to a clever little
contrivance that ticked beautifully but registered time rather badly;
that took a long while to manufacture by hand, and cost so much that
only the rich could afford to buy it, and that, in consequence, people
were proud to own, but did not take seriously as a timepiece.

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 the mainspring,
which by pressing steadily forces them into motion. In very much the
same way, the busy brains of the inventors and the busy hands of the
workmen have been kept active because advancing civilization has been
like a great mainspring, always pressing upon larger affairs and
greater numbers of people, always needing to fit its engagements more
and more closely together, and always calling for better and better
means for telling time. Thus, if the watch in the days of Shakespeare
and Queen Elizabeth was still an inaccurate timepiece, its improvement
was a foregone conclusion. Brains and hands were still active;
civilization was still pressing.

It is said that a hog helped in the next development; he helped
quite unconsciously by furnishing a bristle. In order to understand
this, we must remember Galileo's swinging lamp and the pendulum that
the Englishman, Hooke, and the Hollander, Huyghens, applied in the
making of clocks. It will be recalled that a pendulum swings in arcs
of different lengths in exactly the same time and that this property
is called _isochronism_. Both Hooke and Huyghens could see that the
application of isochronism would be quite as valuable in a watch as in
a clock, but they realized that this could not be accomplished by means
of the pendulum. Therefore, each began to experiment, and each seems to
have hit upon the same idea as a substitute for the pendulum in about
the year 1665.

This is where the hog's bristle came into use. One end was made fast
while the other was bent back and forth by the balance, as it swung
to and fro. Being short and stiff, it acted as a spring; in fact, its
motion was something like the swing of a small pendulum, and some
people incorrectly claim that the name of _hair-spring_ first came from
this use of a hair. Of course, a very fine steel was soon substituted
for the bristle. Next, it was realized that there would be an advantage
if a much longer spring were used, and obviously the only way in which
this could be done was by making it in the form of a coil, and so
we have the delicate, coiled hair-spring, as it is found in our own
watches to-day.

The principle of the hair-spring is not unlike that of the pendulum:
the farther the pendulum is swung out from the lowest point of its arc,
the greater is the force that gets it back; and the farther a spring is
bent from its position of rest, the greater is the force exerted to get
it back. With both of these devices it is possible to obtain regular
beats and steady motion.

It is hard to realize that nearly a hundred years must have passed by
before the hair-spring came into common use. To-day any new device
is described in catalogs, written up in the papers, manufactured in
quantities and is quickly carried by travelers into every country,
but in those days everything was still made by hand, piece by piece,
and there was comparatively little travel that would admit of its
distribution. Ideas made their way very slowly. In fact, Julien Le
Roy rediscovered the principle of isochronism and announced it with a
good deal of pride, quite ignorant of the fact that Hooke and Huyghens
explained it nearly a century before. 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. Therefore
the minute- and second-hands were added to the hour-hand that so long
had moved alone around the watch-dial. And in 1704, Nicholas Facio, a
Swiss doing business in London, introduced jeweled bearings into the
mechanism.

The importance of jewels is often misunderstood even at the present
day. Many people do not know why jewels are used in a watch, assuming
that they are intended for ornament or in some way to increase the
value. But most of the jewels in a watch-movement are placed out of
sight; and, although they often consist of real rubies or sapphires,
they are so tiny and their intrinsic value so small that no watch
requires more than one dollar's worth of jewels. They are strictly
utilitarian in their purpose. A pivot or bearing, running in a hole
drilled in a jewel, creates almost no friction and requires so little
oil that a single drop as big as a pinhead is enough for an entire
watch. Because jewels are so hard and smooth, a watch with jeweled
bearings runs better and wears less and requires less power to drive
it, than one in which they are lacking.

During all the time recounted, the great mainspring of civilization had
been pressing, ever pressing. Nothing could be considered "good enough"
if a way could be found to improve it.

At last an improvement came out of the sea. Travel had been reaching
out in every direction; ships were fitted out by scores to take goods
from England or the continent of Europe to lands across the seas and to
bring back the products of these countries.

The time had been, but a few generations earlier, when people had stood
on the shores of the ocean and had wondered what might lie beyond
their sight. That water stretched out to the "edge of the world" they
felt sure, but what there happened to it they could not tell. Surely,
however, it must be peopled with monsters and demons. It was foolhardy
to venture too far from land. We can hardly realize what a piece of
insane rashness it must have seemed to most people when Columbus
sailed out boldly into this vast mystery, nor how the world was
thrilled when he brought back word of strange lands and strange peoples
he had found beyond the horizon.

But by the time now reached in our story the oceans had become highways
of trade, and men were beginning to draw those strange, crude maps of
the continents, which make us smile until we stop to think how maps
might have looked had they been left for us to make. At all events, the
problems involved in navigation were being much discussed in every land.

One of the greatest of these problems was to discover the whereabouts
of the ship at any given time. When one is out of sight of land the
sense of location necessarily becomes inoperative; one wave looks like
another, and there are winds and currents which might carry a ship
hundreds of miles out of its course unless there were some way of
knowing its true position. At first, the stars, and later the compass
gave help in giving _direction_ but not in showing _position_. How
might this be done? There was no possible way in which the element of
telling time did not enter.

[Illustration: Table Watch in Drum-Shaped Case, Nuremburg, before 1560
One of the Oldest Watches in Existence

Table Clock by Bartholomew Newsom London, 1565

Enormous Repeater Watch Newsom, London, 1565

Large Brass Table Clock Dutch, Seventeenth Century


FIRST FORMS OF THE WATCH

_Types of table clocks and two of the oldest watches in existence In
the collections of the Metropolitan Museum._]

That sounds a bit strange until one stops to think of the rotation of
the earth once in twenty-four hours. If one could travel around the
earth, from east to west, at a uniform rate in exactly twenty-four
hours, he would find clocks and watches indicating the exact minute
he started at every step of his journey; and the sun would remain
steadily at the same height above the horizon, if he always kept to one
parallel of latitude. His rate of speed would have to be about eighteen
miles a minute, if he chose to travel along the equator, or to state
this same thing in another way, when it is noon in New York, it is 11
A. M. in Chicago, 10 A. M. in Denver and 9 A. M. in San Francisco; it
is also 1 P. M. several hundred miles out into the Atlantic; 2 P. M.
still farther out; 5 P. M. in London; and so on. In other words, it is
some one of all the moments of the twenty-four-hour day at the _same
time_, but _the time that indicates each of these moments is different
at different points_. Therefore, if you could find out the time at any
point, and could compare it with the time at the place you had left,
you would know just how far east or west you had come, but not how far
north or south.

Ascertaining the time was not difficult; at noon it would be shown by
the sun. Nor was it difficult to compare the time provided one had an
_accurate_ timepiece, but a watch that ran either fast or slow might
mislead one by hundreds of miles. You can see how important it was that
navigators have some means of _exactly_ measuring time. This was one
of the points at which the great mainspring of civilization pressed
hardest upon the brains of inventors and the hands of workmen.

So, from the sixteenth century onward, the leading governments of
Europe offered large rewards for a chronometer sufficiently accurate
to determine longitude at sea. In England, Parliament offered twenty
thousand pounds, or one hundred thousand dollars, for a time-keeper
which, throughout a voyage to the West Indies, would give the longitude
within thirty miles. This meant that it must keep time within a minute
a month, or two seconds a day. Both Huyghens and Hooke somewhat naively
attempted to make a pendulum clock keep time at sea; but imagine the
action of a pendulum while a ship was rolling and tossing!

The problem was really one for the watchmaker, since a clock is made
for keeping time while standing in one position and a watch for
keeping time while being moved about. John Harrison, the inventor of
the famous _gridiron_ pendulum, finally won the munificent prize. In
1762, after several trials and failures, he succeeded in producing a
timepiece which varied, under test, only a minute and four seconds
during a voyage of some five months. This was excellent timekeeping—far
within half a second a day; it made it possible for a captain at sea
to determine his position within eighteen miles. Harrison's mechanism
was too complicated for description in these pages. Indeed, it was so
difficult of comprehension that, before paying him his reward, the
English government asked Harrison to write a book of explanation in
order that his inventions might be copied by other makers. He did so
and finally received the money. Harrison's ideas have now been greatly
simplified, but, in general, his plan is used in the making of marine
chronometers to this day; thus, in a sense, it is due to Harrison's
brain that our great ships are able to cross the ocean on almost
schedule time.

Both the first success of the chronometer and the later efforts toward
improving it had a great influence upon the next few generations of
watchmakers; the final improvements were made in the days of the
American Revolution. It was at this latter period that a man named
Thomas Mudge worked out the kind of escapement that is still used in
our watches. A little later, the Swiss-Parisian, Abraham Louis Breguét,
improved the hair-spring by bending its outer coil across the others to
their center and fastening it at that point in order that the spiral of
the spring should expand equally in all directions from the center.

The last development of importance consisted in doing away with the
fusee. The faults of this device had been the need of a thick watch to
give it room, and the danger that a broken mainspring might destroy
other parts of the movement in its recoil. French and Swiss watchmakers
reduced the friction until it needed very little power to run the
mechanism, and then were able to employ a mainspring which was not
stiff enough to require a fusee. American makers adopted this idea, but
the British clung to the fusee and the stiff spring; it has cost them
much of their prestige as watchmakers and much of their trade.

Thus, the mechanism of both clocks and watches was practically in its
present state by the year 1800. The "grandfather's clock" of that
date may look old-fashioned, but it tells time a modern way, and
the mechanical ideas in George Washington's watch were not so very
different from those which we find in our own. There have been many
small improvements since, but the great inventions had all been made.

It is interesting to remember that most of these inventions are due
to the English artisans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
although in delicate workmanship and beautiful decoration, they were
equaled and perhaps excelled by the Swiss and by the French. The work
of producing a satisfactory timekeeping machine, begun by priests and
by astronomers, and carried forward by the demands of the navigator and
the patient labor of the craftsman, had ended after thousands of years,
in triumph. The ticking contrivance of wheels, levers, and springs was
no longer a mechanical toy; it was a marvelous instrument which was
made by man with his head and hands and yet was almost as accurate in
its action as the sun and stars themselves.

Here ends the first great division of our story. The scientific problem
had been solved; what remained was to democratize the keeping of time;
to place mechanism equal to the best of those days within the reach
and within the means of every man. In this later development the work
was to pass out of the hands of artists and inventors into those of
manufacturers. Its history from this point on is no longer a record of
science but a romance of industry.



CHAPTER TEN

_The "Worshipful Company" and English Watchmaking_


From the beginning, there are two sides to the history of timekeeping.
The first is the story of discovery and invention—how men labored for
thousands of years to produce a contrivance that would really tell the
time. But if only a few such machines existed in the world, it would be
of very little use to humanity in general, however perfect each might
be. Accordingly history must now recount how clocks and watches came to
be made in sufficiently large numbers and at sufficiently low cost to
be within the reach of all who needed them.

The turning-point from the inventive to the industrial side of the
development was reached about the year 1800. Timekeeping has always
been a part of history, and history a part of timekeeping, and this
opening of the nineteenth century was a period when history itself
was changing, for the progress of civilization is like a journey over
a mountain road; one must needs turn occasionally or one can rise no
higher. The American Revolution had ended but a few years before,
and the thinly settled states were trying the strange experiment of
having the people govern themselves without a king. In the old world,
the people of France had suddenly risen up and seized the power from
_their_ king, and a bloody struggle had ensued in which many of the
old nobility had been beheaded. In England, the power of the throne
was growing less and the power of the people greater. In fact, the
whole world was becoming more and more filled with democratic ideas and
ideals than ever before.

Now, this same democratic idea that set up republics was getting ready
to put a watch into every man's pocket. At first, everyone had told
the time for himself, and had told it badly. Now, after thousands of
years, it had come about that a few had the means of telling time
accurately. The great inventors mentioned in the last few chapters had
contributed one idea after another, until, among them all they had
worked out clocks and watches that would keep correct time. But these
timepieces were not yet convenient in form, and they certainly were not
yet convenient in price for the average man. They still were made by
hand in small quantities, and such a condition would have to be changed
before it would be possible for _everyone_ to tell the time and to
_tell it well_.

Naturally, the industrial and business development of watchmaking began
long before 1800, long before, indeed, the time at which the inventions
were all complete. For centuries the two sides of the story, the
inventive and the industrial, had progressed side by side, but for the
sake of clearness, we have described the inventions first. Now we must
glance back again to the time of Shakespeare, when the period of modern
inventions was just beginning, in order to see how the _business_ side
of watchmaking started upon its growth.

Four nations have been concerned in this development—England, France,
Switzerland, and the United States. The English worked in one way;
the French worked in another; the Swiss, in still another; while the
Americans took up the final organization of the work in a manner that
was thoroughly typical of their peculiar genius.

The mechanical improvements and inventions were mostly made, as we
know, by the English. But for the beginnings of the watch industry
in England one must go back to a time before the days of Hooke
and Huyghens, to the year 1627, the year of incorporation of the
_Worshipful Clock-makers, Company_. Imagine such a name being chosen
to-day! The Worshipful Clock-makers' Company was the original
trade-organization of the business in England. It was not at all like
our modern companies but was one of those great trade "guilds" which
played such an important part in the development of European industry.

[Illustration:

London about 1600

Octagonal Rock Crystal Watch French, 1560-90

Square French Watch Late Sixteenth Century

Oval French Watch 1590

Shell Shaped Rock Crystal Watch French

Cross Shaped Rock Crystal Watch French

Book Shaped Swiss Watch 1560-1600


WHEN WATCHES WERE JEWELS

_Watches of the Sixteenth Century, with but one hand, and pierced metal
or rock crystal cases. In the collections of the Metropolitan Museum._ ]

People sometimes think of the medieval trade-guild as something like
the modern trade-union, but this is a mistake; it was in many ways
quite different. Perhaps one might call it a sort of a cross between
a labor-union and a manufacturing trust. Within a certain district,
all who were occupied in a particular business were required to
belong to the guild; otherwise they were not allowed to do business,
and the "district" might include the whole country. In order to gain
an idea of a guild, imagine in this country a single association of
jewelers to which everyone connected with the jewelry business was
forced to belong, whether he were manufacturer or retailer, employer,
or employee, the head of his firm or the last new clerk behind the
counter. Or, to look at it in another way, imagine a trust controlling
the whole industry and a union including all the workmen under a
closed-shop system, and then suppose that the trust and the union were
one and the same. That would be like one of the great medieval guilds.
It was easy for such an organization to create a monopoly of the entire
national product.

Sometimes the guild would forbid the importation of foreign goods and
would not permit workmen to come from other countries. It usually
regulated, to some extent, the conditions of wages and labor. It fixed
its own standards of quality of the product; if goods did not come up
to this standard, they might not be sold, and the rules of the guild
had practically the force of law. But it did not attempt to control
prices, nor to limit the quantity of production, nor to interfere,
except very indirectly, with free competition among its own members.

Thus, it was not, in our modern sense of the conception, a company at
all, but an association of independent manufacturers or tradesmen,
each in business for himself, each in competition with his fellow
craftsmen, and all kept upon a tolerably even footing by limiting
the amount of labor that each one might employ. Its members were the
master craftsmen, each the head of his own house; through them were
associated the journeymen, or skilled workmen in their employ, and the
apprentices. These latter might rise to be masters, in business for
themselves. But no one without such a connection could engage in the
business at all, in any capacity whatever.

The Worshipful Clock-makers' Company, under its charter granted
by Charles I, had the power to make rules for the government of
all persons following the trade within ten miles of London, and
for regulating the trade throughout the kingdom. Its first master,
or president, was David Ramsay, who was mentioned as having been
"constructor of horologes to His Most Sacred Majesty, James I," and
is one of the characters in Scott's novel "_The Fortunes of Nigel_."
Its wardens or executives were Henry Archer, John Willowe, and Sampson
Shelton; and there was, besides, a fellowship, or board of directors.
The company proceeded at once to forbid all persons "making, buying,
selling, transporting, and importing any bad, deceitful clocks,
watches, larums, sun-dials or cases for the said trade," and full power
to search for, confiscate and destroy all such inferior goods, "or
cause them to be amended."

This company limited the volume of business by forbidding any one
master to employ more than two apprentices at one time without express
permission; and, since all journeymen must first pass through the stage
of apprenticeship, this tended to keep up wages by limiting the labor
supply and to keep competition on a fair basis. The coat of arms of the
company represented a clock surmounted by a crown, the feet resting
upon the backs of four lions, all of gold, upon a black ground; on
either side were the figures of Father Time and of a king in royal
robes; and the motto beneath read: _Tempus Imperator Rerum_, or "Time,
the Emperor of Things." These matters sound rather quaint to us, but
perhaps the quaintest of them all is the idea of a monopoly concerning
itself so jealously with the quality of the product, and letting prices
and competition practically alone.

It was under such conditions that the English work was done and the
inventions made. Huyghens was, of course, not an Englishman; and Hooke
was rather an inventor and a scientist than a manufacturer. Both these
men themselves made clocks and watches, but they made them only as
instruments to assist them in their researches, or as working-models of
their design. It was often said of Hooke that he never cared to develop
an invention after he had proved that it would work. But once these
first inventions had been adopted, the real production of timepieces
was in the hands of the Clock-makers' Company, and the great names were
those of clock-makers.

These were the days when the leaders of the industry worked with their
own hands as well as with their heads. We may imagine the master seated
in the front room of his shop studying over a new model, or putting
together and decorating one already made; or, perhaps, making with his
own hands some of the most delicate parts. From the back rooms would
come the sound of tapping or filing as the journeymen and apprentices
were hard at work upon their various tasks. Meanwhile, perhaps some
apprentice, standing outside the door, would call out to passers-by and
urge them to step in and buy. This was a favorite form of advertising
in that time. For that matter, we still have our "barkers" and
"pullers-in" at Coney Island and elsewhere. Everything about the small
business was carried out under the personal direction of the master
and, where necessary, by his own hand. The phrase "clockmaker to the
King" meant something more when applied to such a man than merely that
royalty had purchased some product of his craft.

Such a one was Thomas Tompion, often called "the father of English
watchmaking." He was the leader of his craft in the time of Charles II
and he, more than anyone else, worked out the inventions of Hooke for
actual manufacture. He left his father's blacksmith shop to become a
clock-maker, from this he went on to the more delicate work of making
watches, and at last became a famous master of his guild. It may fairly
be said of him that he set the time for history in his day, for most
of the royalty and great men of Europe timed all their doings from
banquets to battles by Tompion watches.

Meanwhile, he, too, was making watchmaking history by his improvements.
Tompion made watches with hair-springs, balance-wheels and escapements
with various improvements. His design of the regulator is nearly that
in modern use. His cases, too, were as famous as the movements that
he made. The so-called "pendulum watches" were then much in fashion,
and Tompion met the demand by making a number of them. They did not,
of course, work with a pendulum; but one arm of the old foliot balance
could be seen through an opening in the case or dial, and looked like
a pendulum swinging to and fro. To read the advertisements of that
day one would think that all lost or stolen watches were of Tompion's
making, so often does his name appear in them.

Many legendary stories are told about Tompion's work. It has been set
down in cold print that Queen Mary gave one of his watches to Philip II
of Spain, and that he made watches for Queen Elizabeth. Unfortunately
for such stories, Tompion was not born until 1638, by which time both
Mary and Elizabeth had been dead for some years. But though the legends
themselves are untrue, yet they do shed some light upon their subject,
for such stories, true or false, are not told about unimportant men.
And it is true that Tompion grew so celebrated that at his death, in
1713, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where only the great may have
resting-places.

Another famous watchmaker was George Graham, the inventor of the
mercury pendulum. He first was Tompion's journeyman, then his partner,
and at last became a well-known astronomer, having become interested
in astronomy through making astronomical clocks. But his great
contribution was the invention of the _dead-beat escapement_, which,
in one form or another, is in use in all the best clocks and watches
of the present time, and which has had more to do with making their
accuracy possible than has any other improvement since the discovery
of the isochronism of the pendulum and hair-springs. Graham, also, is
buried in Westminster Abbey; his body lies beside that of Tompion, his
teacher and friend.

Another famous figure was Daniel Quare, the first to devise the
mechanism for driving the two hands as we have it to-day. Quare was
a Quaker, and was no less prominent in the Society of Friends than in
his business. As a Quaker, he was opposed to taking an oath of any
kind, and was what we now call a "conscientious objector" to warfare.
Therefore, at the same time that he was being honored by royalty for
his work, he was being prosecuted and fined for his refusal to pay
taxes for the support of the army and of the Established Church. When
he was made clock-maker to King George I, means had to be devised for
excusing him from taking the oath of allegiance.

It was Quare who originated the practise of giving to each watch a
serial number, so that it could always be identified. This is, of
course, a common custom with us; we also number automobiles, and many
other manufactured articles of value, and Quare's device of numbering
watch-movements may very well have given the start to all this.

Still other famous watchmakers were Harrison and Arnold and Earnshaw,
who between them developed and perfected the marine chronometer
that we discussed in the last chapter; and Mudge, in whose hands
watch-movements really became modern in type. Men of this kind thought
first of producing reliable work which would give service; ornaments,
curiosities of workmanship, and even convenience, were secondary. Some
of these men were extremely independent; for example, Arnold, in his
early days and by way of establishing a reputation, made a repeating
watch less than a half-inch in diameter—so small that it was worn set
in a ring; but when King George III had bought the masterpiece, and the
Empress of Russia offered one thousand guineas (more than five thousand
dollars) for a duplicate, Arnold coolly excused himself on the plea
that he desired the specimen to remain unique.

Time passed; machinery began to be employed in manufacturing and
hand-work declined. The guild system in every line slowly changed into
our modern organized industry. This was only natural, for factories
were becoming larger, their output was increasing and the head of the
business was no longer likely to be himself a master workman. The
greater part of this change, of course, took place in the nineteenth
century, and was primarily owing to the increased use of machine-power
and improvement in transportation. But as regards watchmaking in
England, the substitution never became complete, for the bulldog
quality in the Englishman has always made him hold fast to his ideas.
Habits died hard, and the old methods were changed slowly and under
protest, even when these changes spelled progress.

At first, as we have seen, the watch was the work of one man and of his
assistants, and was almost entirely handmade. In those days, the trade
was supplied by a multitude of small independent manufacturers. To make
a single watch might take weeks or months; and every one must be
made separately and patiently, regardless of labor or expense. So long
as this method could hold its own, the English watchmakers led the
world; their watches were good, but they certainly were not cheap.

[Illustration: LATE—IN SPITE OF HIS TWO WATCHES

_The gallant of Colonial times often carried two watches, as was the
fashion, but often they were both unreliable._]

After a time, other countries began to use more modern methods, and
English watches could no longer stand competition in the world's
markets. However, the bulldog quality still held; English manufacturers
preferred to lose ground rather than change their methods. The
introduction of machinery and the employment of women operatives
were each bitterly opposed. Factory production was never adopted on
a large scale, nor was there much combination of small independent
manufacturers. Necessarily, these things did, at last, come to be done;
but half-heartedly, and without much success. At one time, for example,
there were some forty small factories making various parts which each
watch manufacturer assembled and adjusted for himself.

The Clock-makers' Company is still in existence; although now, of
course, it has developed into a society like the ordinary modern
association of manufacturers. Under pressure of change and competition,
English manufacturers were compelled unwillingly to change their system
of production, but the character of the watches they would not change.
The same country which had made so many of the mechanical inventions
finally settled down into satisfaction with its models at a time when
other nations were continuing to make improvements, as, for example,
when they clung to the fusee after watchmakers abroad had found a
better substitute.

The English watch has remained heavy, substantial, and reliable; it is
an excellent mechanism produced regardless of expense. Such a watch
cannot be made cheaply, least of all by British methods. There has been
something obstinate in the maker's attitude; if the law of supply and
demand called for something different, so much the worse for the law.
The English have been slow to see the possibilities in the cheap watch.
They have not realized that a watch need not be expensive in order to
keep good time. They _started_ to put the watch into universal use, but
left to other nations the completion of the process.



CHAPTER ELEVEN

_What Happened in France and Switzerland_


Across the English Channel lives a race of a very different character.
The French are people of highly adaptable minds; often they see
possibilities in the inventions of other nations which those other
nations have failed themselves to see. The automobile was first made in
the United States, but the French soon developed it into something that
was better than our early clumsy cars, and we were years in overtaking
them. The Wright Brothers first learned the secret of aerial flight,
and then Wilbur Wright sailed for France, where the people went wild
with enthusiasm over the idea of flying; it was in France that aviation
really became what it is to-day.

The French have always been fine mechanics and finished workmen.
It was to be expected that they would do something artistic and
interesting with the manufacture of timepieces. They could not make a
better watch than the British were turning out toward the end of the
eighteenth century. Nobody could—but they could make it more beautiful.
In Shakespeare's time and afterward, while watches were still more
valuable as works of art than they could be as timepieces, the richest
work of this nature was done in France. There watches were made in
the form of mandolins and other musical instruments, in the form of
flowers, in the form of jeweled butterflies, and in wonderful cases,
painted and enameled and engraved. In the J. Pierpont Morgan collection
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, there is a watch which, in
1800, on the fete-day after the battle of Marengo, Napoleon Bonaparte
gave to Murat, who was his brother-in-law and one of his generals. On
the back cover of this watch appears a miniature portrait of Napoleon
himself. And since he himself was the author of the gift, one may
assume that it represented the Great Emperor's own conception of
himself.

The wrist-watch, to-day a military necessity, was at first a French
idea. It is interesting to learn that the merchants and makers of
this kind of work were in their own time called neither watchmakers
nor horologists, but toymen. There again is shown the old idea about
watches; they were not timepieces but toys.

Later on, toward the end of the period of invention, when first, the
clock, and soon afterward, the watch, had become fairly accurate
timekeepers, the French makers again took the lead in the same way;
once more they beautified what they could not practically improve.
The French clocks of the period of Louis XIV and his successors are
celebrated for their design. One might easily suppose, from an
examination of the great modern collections of rare and precious
watches in our museums that the French had been the leading watchmakers
of the world, for the specimens there found being selected chiefly
for beauty or value from the collector's point of view, are oftener
of French than of any other make. Yet it must not be supposed that
the French made no inventions. The credit for some of the important
improvements is disputed between the English, French and Swiss, and
it is not always easy to decide which nation has the better claim.
Furthermore, certain of the French watchmakers came from Switzerland
while at various times, some of those in France moved to England,
especially during the reign of Terror. The distinctions are somewhat
confused and we can only speak in a general way.

However, while the watchmaking industry was developing in France, it
gave forth a seed which took root in new soil. In the hill country of
eastern France, in the town of Autun, there lived a watchmaker named
Charles Cusin. One day, in 1574, for reasons that we do not know, he
moved a few miles eastward across the border into Switzerland and
there settled in the beautiful lake city of Geneva. He probably had
no thought that this personal act of a private citizen would have an
effect upon history, but an industry employing thousands of people and
making millions of dollars worth of goods can be traced back to the
time when he crossed the border.

Remember that this was back in the days of Shakespeare and Queen
Elizabeth, while watches were still esteemed jewels and ornaments
for the wealthy, and when the improvements which later made them
practically useful had not yet been invented. The business side of
watchmaking was thus growing up at the same time with the inventive
and scientific; it was preparing itself for the day when the mechanism
should be perfected, and the only remaining task would be to popularize
its perfection.

Charles Cusin liked Switzerland and thirteen years later he became
a citizen. In the course of time, he was active in founding a
watchmaker's guild in Geneva and from that period Geneva watches
have been famous. This does not mean that Switzerland had contained
no watchmakers before Cusin's appearance, but we are considering the
beginnings of a great industry and not mere instances of isolated
workmen. The man from Autun seems to have been one of those energetic
leaders who see possibilities and know how to organize. It is largely
through such men that the world progresses.

You will remember that in an early chapter we touched upon the way in
which men first began to exchange the results of their work in order
that each man might devote most of his time to the special task for
which he was best fitted, such as hunting, or the making of weapons.
Through this exchange, _everyone_ was enabled to live better than
_anyone_ could have lived by himself. But if it were true that people
doing _different_ things could help each other, it also became true,
after a while, that people doing the _same_ thing could help each
other and could help the general public, by learning to co-operate.
They could exchange ideas, improve their work, and bring about better
conditions. This was one of the effects of the guilds—they changed
crafts into industries.

The guild with which Charles Cusin now had to do—some say he was
its sole founder—was a very dignified and important board of
master-workmen. It was founded about fifty years earlier than was the
Worshipful Clock-makers' Company in England, and its members were
no ordinary workmen. Switzerland was, and still is, a thoroughly
independent little country and a man skilful enough to make a whole
watch with his own hands was apt to be a man who realized his own worth.

The members of this guild were decidedly particular about their dignity
and their meetings were serious occasions, as may be seen from Article
I of their regulations which read: "Whenever the master workmen shall
meet in a body to discuss subjects pertaining to their guild, they
shall, before proceeding to such discussion, offer prayer to God
beseeching Him that all that they say and do may rebound to His glory
and may further the interests of these people."

As a matter of fact this dignity was based upon a correct conception
that has been somewhat overlooked in the present busy age. The man
who has to do either with the manufacture or sale of timepieces does
well to take his position seriously since he is a most important link
in our entire civilization. Such a man may well reflect upon the fact
that without the timepieces which he produces or sells, the world would
drop into hopeless confusion, for human society is able to run smoothly
and efficiently only when it is correctly timed. Workmen and dealers
engaged in such a vital industry have a great responsibility to their
fellow-men.

It is probable that members of this guild who met from time to time in
the Swiss city by the lake shores, under the shadows of the snow-topped
Alps, realized something of this responsibility. Their timepieces were
not yet as accurate as are ours of to-day, and the world was not yet
so busy that its affairs required the closest adjustment, but they at
least were trying earnestly to keep the human cogs running smoothly
by turning out watches as nearly perfect as their skill and knowledge
would permit.

This may be seen again in Article V of their regulations; "The
functions of the jurors are to enforce the laws of the guild and to
provide that there be no infringement of the same. To this end,
they shall be required to visit each journeyman at least four times
during the year, having power to seize all articles which do not
conform to the specifications now in force, to report all delinquents
to the worthy governing board, and to punish the offenders in
accordance with the gravity of their fault."

[Illustration:

  Limoges Enamel                English Repeater
      Watch                        about 1650
  English 1610-25

                     Silver
              Skull Watch, French.
             Intended to remind the
             wearer that each second
              brought death nearer

   Gold Enamel                    French Watch
  Watch—French                 intended for the
                                 head of a cane,
                                    1645-70

                    Agate Case
                      French

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY WATCHES

_Grew more elaborate and ornamental, but scarcely more useful._

_In the collections of the Metropolitan Museum._]

It is quite clear that Geneva was out for quality in watches, and,
indeed the name of the Swiss city has always been associated with
quality. Nevertheless, they were no angels—those old Swiss craftsmen;
they were in fact quite preponderatingly human. Thus it was not long
before they began to make a tight little monopoly of their business.
They restricted the number of workmen who might be admitted to the
guild, and they secured special ordinances by means of which all other
watchmakers were forbidden to establish themselves within a certain
distance of the city. In other words, they did not purpose allowing the
new and promising industry to grow beyond their control.

There were, however, other independent people in those days who hadn't
the slightest intention of being bound by such restrictions. Here and
there, a watchmaker left Geneva to carry on his work in some foreign
city, as, for example, in Besancon, France. Thus began a competition
which grew and spread as time went on.

This competition developed some interesting features. For example, the
guild in Geneva obtained the passage of laws forbidding anyone from
bringing into the city, in a finished state, a watch constructed within
a certain distance. "Schemes" for watches and certain parts might be
made at will, but only members of the citizen guild were permitted to
complete these schemes.

Such restrictions naturally did not tend toward low-priced watches;
but all watches in those days were necessarily high-priced, and a man
wealthy enough to afford one was apt to seek the best that could be
bought. Geneva's strictness gave it so great a reputation that during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries foreign watchmakers flocked
to the Swiss city very much as art students later journeyed to Paris,
and it became the acknowledged center of the European industry. As time
went on the demand for time-pieces became more widespread and many
Genevans moved to other cities where they became dealers in Geneva
watches. It is said that, in 1725, the city of Constantinople contained
as many as eighty-eight mercantile agents who had become established in
this way.

One hundred years after the founding of the guild, Geneva was producing
five thousand watches a year, having one hundred masters of the guild
and three hundred journeymen. Now five thousand watches is no small
output when it is considered that each one must be constructed entirely
by hand and occupied a matter of weeks in the making; yet, by 1799, the
city contained nearly six thousand watchmakers and jewelers and was
producing fifty thousand timepieces a year.

Not many miles to the northward from Geneva is another mountain
city—that of Neuchatel. Neuchatel also contained an enterprising and
skilful population, for the Swiss people seem to have been naturally
ingenious and skilful in the use of tools. Doubtless the mountainous
character of the country has had something to do with this fact;
farming and fruit-raising are slow, hard work in their rocky soil and
severe climate and the making of bulky articles is not desirable where
transportation must be had over mountain trails.

The Swiss with their clever fingers had long been famous for their
wood-carving; now, when they had a chance at an industry which called
for delicate and skilful hand-work and which produced goods of small
size and high value, it exactly suited them.

Geneva "saw it first," but kept it so closely to herself that it was
several generations later before watches were known in the Neuchatel
district not far away, yet, this district is another great center of
the industry.

It is said that in 1680, more than one hundred years after Charles
Cusin moved to Geneva, a horse-dealer from the little town of La Sagne,
came home from his travels and brought with him an English watch. Great
was the wonder that it excited among the simple people of his native
place. They passed from hand to hand the little ticking mechanism
which had the strange power to tell time, and then one day the ticking
ceased, which perhaps is not surprising, in view of the freedom with
which the watch had been handled.

The horse-dealer knew nothing of the mechanism but was very anxious to
have the works set right. It chanced that there was a young locksmith
in La Sagne, a lad of only fifteen, named Daniel Jean Richard, who was
so skilful and ingenious that he had already made repairs in the tower
clock of the village. "Show the watch to Daniel Jean Richard" said
everybody.

The delighted lad began to take the delicate mechanism apart, studying
carefully each wheel and spring and lever until he felt that he
understood exactly how it should work. Then, when he had succeeded in
reassembling the parts and in making the watch tick bravely once more,
he was seized with a great ambition to build another one all by himself.

After many experiments with his crude locksmith tools, he did produce
a watch which would run and which would tell time after a fashion—the
first watch ever made in the Neuchatel district—but it did not satisfy
his artist's soul and he realized that he must have better tools.

Somebody told him that there was in Geneva a machine for cutting
wheels, and he set out to see it for himself, only to come back sadly
disappointed. Wherever he asked to see the machine, the canny Geneva
craftsmen shook their heads. This eager lad from another town had far
too intelligent a face to be allowed to learn the precious secrets. The
most that they would do was to let him have a few of the wheels made by
the machine.

Then he began to work out for himself a machine to cut the wheels,
and at last succeeded in the task, so that before long he was well
on the way to becoming a watch manufacturer. Richard, however, was
generous with his ideas; he instructed a number of the young men of his
district, so that watchmaking soon began to flourish in his town and in
those about it.

We have now seen how the watchmaking industry became established in
two great centers—in Geneva, where the highest quality was maintained,
but under the rule of the guild, which did not encourage quantity of
output, and in the Neuchatel region where no guild system existed. In
the course of time this latter region overtook and passed in quantity
of output that of Geneva. By 1818, the Neuchatel district of the Jura
was turning out watches at the rate of 130,000 a year.

The solid old Geneva watchmakers criticized their rivals as being less
exacting in quality and less careful as to the standard of gold used
in their cases, but the Neuchatel people had no difficulty in finding
customers; we read that one hundred and forty of their merchants went
twice a year to the Leipsig fair, where they sometimes sold watches to
the value of four million francs ($800,000) in a year.

The two principal centers of Swiss watchmaking have been mentioned
although, of course, watches were made in other districts as well. It
is easy to see that many generations ago it had already become a very
large industry, and so we need not be surprised to learn that even
to-day the tiny inland country produces a larger annual export value of
watches than even our vast United States. Watchmaking has been so large
a source of wealth that the Swiss government has aided it in every
way, including the establishment of schools and courses for training
skilled workmen. More than sixty thousand Swiss people are directly
employed in the Swiss watch industry and over three hundred thousand,
or one-twelfth of the entire population, are indirectly connected with
it. The Swiss have also made many inventions and improvements so that
they have had much to do with the development of the watch itself as
well as with the industry.

As we have already seen, it was a Swiss who invented the fusee, another
who introduced the use of jewels for reducing friction and the stemwind
is also of Swiss origin. It was the Swiss, too, who, early in the
nineteenth century, did away with the solid upper plate which covered
the works and used, instead, a system of bridges. The bridge form of
movement allows each part to be repaired or adjusted separately and
to-day it is to be found in all watches of the higher grades.

The Swiss invention of the fusee, described in Chapter VIII, played an
important part for several hundred years, but at last it was replaced
by something simpler and still more effective. Made to equalize the
difference in the pressure exerted by a stiff mainspring when first
wound up and when partly run down, it worked beautifully but was rather
clumsy; and it required comparatively heavier parts which naturally
necessitated the use of greater power. Thus friction and, consequently,
wear were increased. But the Swiss by making watch-parts that were very
light but yet strong, and by reducing friction principally through the
introduction of jewels into the mechanism, succeeded at last in getting
a movement that could be run with very little power. So they now could
use a weak and slender mainspring, made so long that only its middle
part ever was wound and unwound, and thus the pressure remained equal,
and the use of the fusee was no longer necessary. This principle,
called the "going barrel" construction, reduced friction, and made
the thin modern watch a possibility. The American makers, as we shall
presently see, adopted the "going barrel" construction practically from
the first. They had no traditional prejudices, and they knew a good
mechanical idea when they saw it.

But the British would have none of it. Their national bulldog quality
set its teeth on the old idea that had given them their heavy,
substantial, accurate watches, and hung on grimly. The Swiss watches
might be lighter and more graceful but they questioned their lasting
qualities. The Swiss could make watches more beautifully, but the
English were suspicious of cheapness and declined to adopt the new
development.

Thus the English, who up to about 1840, had led the world in the
manufacture and sale of watches, began to fall behind. The American
watch industry was then in its infancy, and the French industry had
never been of any great size. The Swiss gradually drew ahead until
they practically gained control of the world's market for watches.
Switzerland became known as the place from which watches came, and,
very much as "Havana" stands for a fine cigar, so a fine watch was apt
to be called a "Geneva."

[Illustration: THE SWISS "MANUFACTURER" AND A CRAFTSMAN

_In former days, Swiss workmen made some particular watch part in
their own homes, while so-called "manufacturers" bought the parts and
"assembled" the watches._]

This, then, was the situation at about the middle of the nineteenth
century when watchmaking in America was beginning to grow into a large
industry. The French had always made good watches and very beautiful
and elaborate ones too, but they never made very many. The English
were falling behind so far that it was said, in 1870, that half the
watchmakers' tools in England were in pawn. The Swiss were in control
of the business, making both the best and the worst watches in the
world and by far the greatest number. Everywhere a good watch was still
too costly to be owned by anyone of moderate means, while cheap watches
were little more than toys which could not be depended upon either to
wear well or to keep good time.

In spite of all developments, therefore, there still remained the need
both for a high-grade watch at a reasonable price and for a cheap watch
that would be accurate under rough usage. These things were genuinely
necessary, for the world was growing steadily away from the theory
of special privilege, and the requirements of the average man were
becoming more insistent.

From those early days, when the astrologers in Mesopotamia had kept
their knowledge a secret for themselves, down through more than forty
centuries, only a few had possessed the means of accurately telling
time; but now had come the railroad, the telegraph, the modern factory,
the newspaper and many other developments which speeded up the
movements of humanity in the rush and whirl of modern life until it had
become absolutely necessary that the means of measuring and performing
those movements in an economical manner should be within the reach of
every man.

It remains to be shown how American watchmaking discovered this need
and organized to meet it; how it found and filled the gap that had been
left in foreign watchmaking, between high-priced watches that were
good, and low-priced watches that were not good; how it developed a
cheaper good watch and a better low-priced one than the world had so
far known; and how, in so doing, the American industry has grown within
the memory of living men to such an extent as to take second place,
and, in many respects, first place in watchmaking throughout the world.



CHAPTER TWELVE

_How An American Industry Came On Horseback_


At last the clock industry came to America, and it came on horseback.
If you had been upon a dusty country road in Connecticut about the year
1800, you might have seen a plainly dressed young man come riding along
with a clock strapped to each side of his saddle and a third fastened
crosswise behind him.

"Hello, Eli Terry!" you might have heard some farmer sing out, as the
rider drew near.

"Hello, Silas," the other would call back; "don't you think it's about
time you bought a clock?"

"Can't afford it, Eli; it takes me a long time to make forty dollars
raising wheat."

"Yes; but you can't afford to be without one, Silas." And, dismounting,
he would unstrap one of the clocks and bring it up to the stone wall.
Then would follow the period of bargaining, so dear to the shrewd,
hard-headed sons of Connecticut. Perhaps when young Terry climbed back
into the saddle and said "Gid-dap," one of his clocks would stay behind
with the farmer. Like most successful salesmen, Terry was a close
observer of human nature; he knew that habits once formed are hard
to break. He discovered early that if a prospective customer could be
made to depend upon a clock for telling time, the clock would soon sell
itself. One day, during a rain-storm, he sought refuge in a farmer's
home. He brought in with him one of his clocks and placed it on the
mantel over the fireplace, explaining that he would like to leave it
there, where it would not get wet, while he continued on his journey.

"I'll be back for it in a few days," he said, as he waved good-by.

When Terry returned, some days later, the farmer realized that the
clock, which he had first regarded as an extravagance had somehow
become a necessity, and, with no urging on Terry's part, the sale was
quickly completed.

Some of the original clocks are still running in the very farmhouses
where Eli Terry succeeded in selling them, and where they have ticked
off the minutes of American history since the days of Adams and
Jefferson. They were truly remarkable clocks, in spite of the fact
that their works were cut out of hard wood with country tools, and put
together by a carpenter.

The first American clocks were made of wood, and most of the early
clockmakers were at first carpenters. We have seen clockmakers
developing from priests and astronomers and blacksmiths and locksmiths
and jewelers; but here is a new gateway to the trade. This came about
naturally enough in a country where the cheapest and most plentiful
material was wood, and where the carpenter and joiner was accustomed to
constructing every possible thing of it. Eli Terry of Connecticut was
one of the best known of these early New England craftsmen. He was born
in East Windsor, just a few years before the Revolution. By the time
that he was twenty, he had made a few clocks, cutting the wheels out of
hard wood with saw and file, and making wooden hands, dials, and cases.
Then he moved to Plymouth, not far from Waterbury, and set up a small
shop where he employed several workmen. They would make a dozen or two
at a time, entirely by hand. Then Terry would take these out and sell
them, sometimes as far as the "new country" across the New York state
line.

It took a long time to make a clock in this way, even for fingers that
were as clever as Terry's, and it is no wonder that he was compelled to
charge from twenty to forty dollars apiece, a sum, which, by-the-way,
would be equal to at least four times as much to-day according to
the difference in the purchasing power of money. We must remember,
too, that a family then bought its clock as it bought a wagon or a
spinning-wheel, almost as a man buys his house to-day. Certainly it
was a far more important transaction relatively than the purchase of a
motor-car.

Probably, if one could have overheard some of these roadside
clock-sales it would have been noted that the bargaining was not all
upon one side, for there was not a great deal of money in circulation,
and people were very apt to "swap." Likely as not, Terry would have to
take his payment in lumber, in clothing, or in some other commodity
and these, in turn, he would dispose of when an opportunity presented
itself. This was more or less the type of the old horseback Yankee
trader of the days when men still remembered the Revolutionary War.
These were the days when a man who produced some one thing might be
forced, in order to realize on its value, to trade it for almost
anything else.

When we think of the early American timepiece, we generally picture to
ourselves the so-called "Grandfather's Clock," the kind with the tall
case which Longfellow wrote about as standing on a turning in the stair
and ticking away: "Forever!" "Never!" "Never!" "Forever!" as it marked
the passage of the years. But Eli Terry, the first of all American
clock-makers, could not well carry such a big contrivance with him
on his horseback trips; therefore, while he made the works for these
clocks, he left it for other people to construct the cases; the clocks
which he sold complete were those which could stand upon a shelf or
hang upon the wall.

After a time, his orders increased to a point where he felt justified
in moving into an old water-power mill and rigging machinery to do
some parts of the work. Thus we find machinery used in American
clock-making almost from the beginning of the industry. Terry thus
was a real manufacturer; he had grasped the importance of machine
production in contrast to hand-craftsmanship.

The move paid; it cut the cost of making nearly in half and greatly
increased the output. He now could afford to sell his clocks more
cheaply, and the business grew at once. After a while he began to make
clocks in lots of one or two hundred and then, indeed, his neighbors
shook their heads gravely.

"You are losing your mind, Eli," they told him, in solemn warning. "The
first thing you know, the country will be so full of clocks that there
will be no market for them. You are getting reckless and ruining your
business."

But Eli Terry followed his own judgment instead of that of the
croakers; before he died he was making ten or twelve thousand clocks in
a year and was selling them too. They brought him a fortune.

Thus was the industry of making timepieces born in America. It began
in New England, which is still the chief center of manufacture, and it
began with clocks, not watches, for the simple reason that in those
days, a watch was a luxury whereas a clock was a necessity. Like the
watch industry in Switzerland, American clock-making was an active
business from the start, and, as we have seen, the man with whom it
started was a typically Yankee combination of ingenious mind, skilful
fingers, and a knack for business.

Of course, the conditions of life in America at that time had a great
deal to do with methods used in building up the industry. Instead of
a civilization centuries old that had wealth, rank, royalty, and a
complete organization of all methods of living, here was a new country
learning to do things in its own way.

It is hard for us to imagine the conditions which prevailed when our
whole population was a mere fringe of scattered settlements along the
Atlantic seaboard; when people made long trips on horseback or by
stage-coach and men wore powdered wigs and knickerbockers; when New
York was a small town on the lower end of Manhattan Island, and Chicago
had not even been dreamed of. Still, it was necessary to tell time, and
our thrifty ancestors needs must watch the minutes in order to save
them as thriftily as they saved everything else. Not one person out
of hundreds, in a country where a living must be wrung from the soil
by means of hard work, could afford to own anything so expensive as a
watch, but every one felt it necessary to have a clock, if possible,
and it became one of the greatest treasures of the home.

[Illustration: THE FIRST YANKEE CLOCK MAKER

_Eli Terry, America's first clock manufacturer, peddled his wares among
the shrewd, hard-headed sons of Connecticut._]

This, then, was the market in which Terry and those who followed him
had to sell. It was a market that could not afford to pay for ornament
but desired practical service at low cost. What was needed,
therefore, was a clock that would keep time and cost not a cent more
than was absolutely necessary. The American industry was forced to
start upon a basis entirely different from that of Europe.

As Eli Terry's business grew, he needed assistance, and he secured the
help of a young mechanic named Seth Thomas from West Haven, and the two
worked together for some time.

The name of Seth Thomas has appeared upon so many clock-dials that it
is perhaps the best known name in all American clock-making. He was a
good mechanic, and a good business man, and he had ideas of his own
about increasing trade. In the course of time, about the year 1800,
he and a man named Silas Hoadley bought the original Terry factory
in the old mill, and set up business for themselves. Terry, however,
established himself elsewhere and continued to manufacture clocks.

Thus the industry was growing; there were now two factories instead
of one. Seth Thomas prospered by adopting each popular fashion or
improvement in clocks as it came along and applying it upon as large
a scale and as honestly and well as could be done. He built up such a
reputation that even to-day, while the name of Seth Thomas on a clock
face does not suggest any particular form or style of clock, it is
associated with good time keeping and honest workmanship.

The third of the famous old New England clock-makers was Chauncey
Jerome. He was a man younger than Terry and Thomas by nearly a
generation. Like both of his predecessors he was brought up to the
carpenter's trade, and like both of them he was a born New England
trader. But of the three, Jerome was perhaps most the inventor and
least the man of business. As a boy, he worked for Seth Thomas when
Thomas was still building barns and houses. He worked for Eli Terry in
the old shop at Plymouth. Then, after a period of soldiering in the
War of 1812, he went back to clock-making, sometimes manufacturing by
himself and sometimes associated with one or the other of the two older
men, or in other firms and enterprises too numerous to follow. Always
he seems to have been somewhat of a rolling stone, although in his time
he gathered as much moss as the best of them: always he was inclined to
experiment with new ideas.

Jerome's carpentering skill caused him to be first interested in
the making of cases, and most of the familiar forms of old American
clocks—the square clock with pillars at the corners and a scroll top,
the clock with a mirror underneath the dial and the like, were designed
by Terry and Jerome between them. Later on, when the establishment of
brass foundries in Waterbury and Bristol had enabled American makers
to construct their work of brass instead of wood, Jerome worked out a
design for a brass one-day timepiece in a wooden case, small enough
for easy transportation, and cheaper than any clock ever made up to
that time. Its price at first, near the place of manufacture, was only
five or six dollars, but afterwards this was reduced.

This low-priced clock was as remarkable in its way as was the dollar
watch, which it foreshadowed. And like the watch, it would not have
been possible except through machine work and quantity production.
It was a success at once and Jerome's business rapidly increased. In
1840, he was established in Bristol, turning out the new clocks by the
thousand, and rapidly making a fortune. A year or two later, he decided
to send a consignment of them to England.

Again, people shook their heads and prophesied failure. "You're losing
your mind, Chauncey," they told him as they had told Eli Terry before
him.

The older wooden movements could not, of course, endure a sea voyage
without swelling and becoming useless. A brass movement could, of
course, be sent anywhere, and some of the more expensive ones had been
shipped to all parts of the country, yet it seemed absurd enough to
send American clocks to England where labor was so cheap—to England,
which was then the chief clockmaker of the world. Nevertheless, Jerome
persevered, and his son sailed for London with a cargo of the cheap
clocks. At first, the English trade would have none of them. No clock
so cheap could possibly be good, they said, and Connecticut was the
home of "the wooden nutmegs." It was only after great difficulty that
they were introduced. Young Jerome got rid of the first few by leaving
them about in retail stores, asking no payment for them until sold.

The enterprise was saved by an event which was a joke in itself. The
English revenue law at that time permitted the owner of imported goods
to fix their taxable value. But the government could take any such
property upon payment of a sum ten per cent greater than the owner's
valuation. Jerome's clocks were valued at their wholesale price, and
were presently seized by the customs officials on the ground that this
valuation was fraudulently low.

The elder Jerome chuckled upon learning of this. He was well satisfied
to have closed out his first cargo at ten per cent profit, and at once
sent over another shipment which was taken over by the customs as
promptly as the first. But by the time the third consignment arrived,
enough of the clocks had been sold to establish a demand for them among
the retailers, and the officials finally conceded that the low price
might be a reasonable one after all.

Jerome was not at the height of his prosperity. He had the largest and
probably the most profitable clock business in the country; and, in
the few years following, his product was exported to all parts of the
world. Then the Bristol factory burned down and he moved to New Haven,
where the Jerome Manufacturing Company enjoyed a brief period of great
success. The business was constantly extended, and the wholesale price
of the cheap brass clocks was brought as low as seventy-five cents.
This figure seems almost impossibly low for the time, but the authority
for it is Jerome's own autobiography.

A few years before the Civil War, the Jerome Company failed and,
curiously enough, this failure came about through its connection
with that usually successful man, P. T. Barnum, the famous showman.
The story is too much complicated to be given here in detail, but it
seems that Barnum had become heavily interested in a smaller clock
company, which was merged with the Jerome concern. The overvaluation
of its stock, combined with mismanagement and speculation among the
officials of the Jerome Company, served to drive the whole business
into bankruptcy. Barnum lost heavily, and it took him years to clear
up his obligations. Jerome never did recover from it; after some years
of failing power in the employ of other manufacturers, he died in
comparative poverty.

His long and eventful life spans the whole growth of the American clock
business from the days of Eli Terry and his handsawed wooden movements
down to the maturity of the modern business supplying, by factory
methods and the use of specialized machinery, millions of clocks to
all parts of the world. He had made clocks all over Connecticut, in
Plymouth, Farmington, Bristol, New Haven and Waterbury, as well as
in Massachusetts and, for a time, in South Carolina and Virginia. He
had worked with his hands for Terry and Seth Thomas at the old wooden
wheels and veneered cases, which were peddled about the country and
sold for thirty or forty dollars each to be the treasured timekeepers
of many households. And he had headed a modern factory, turning out
dollar clocks by the tens of thousands.

It is said that a child in the first few years of its life lives
briefly through the whole evolution of civilized mankind. That "infant
industry," American clock-making, likewise, in the short space of
fifty years passed through most of the steps of the whole growth of
time-recording between the Middle Ages and our own era. This country
stands now among the leading clock-making nations of the world; its
product is famous in every land and a timepiece from Waterbury or New
Haven may mark the minutes in the town from which Gerbert was banished
for sorcery because he made a time-machine, or in that land between the
rivers where the Babylonians first looked out upon the stars.

Most of the American clocks are still made in Connecticut; in fact,
more than eighty per cent of the whole world's supply (excluding the
German) comes from the Naugatuck Valley. The New Haven Clock Company,
which is the successor of the Jerome Company, is to-day one of the
largest. As far back as 1860, it was producing some two hundred
thousand clocks a year. The Seth Thomas Company and others of the
historic concerns are still at work in various portions of the state.
And the Benedict & Burnham Company, with which, at one time, Chauncey
Jerome was associated, became the Waterbury Clock Company, now regarded
as the largest clock producer, and of which we shall hear more later on.

The key-note of the whole development was that new principle which
American invention, prompted and stimulated by the pressing necessities
of a new nation, brought into the business of time-recording—the
principle of marvelously cheapening production-costs without loss of
efficiency, through the systematic employment of machinery on a large
scale.

As long as the inventive brains and the technical knowledge of the
old-time craftsman found expression only through his own fingers, the
results would be limited to his individual production, and the costs
would be proportionately high. When, however, the master mind was able
to operate through rows of machines, each under the supervision of
a mechanic trained to its particular function, his inventive genius
was provided with ten thousand hands and a hundred thousand fingers.
Furthermore, the production gained in quality as well as in quantity,
because of specialization, all the time its costs were in process of
reduction. This, perhaps, has been America's chief contribution, not
only to the making of timepieces, but, also to the world's industry in
general.

[Illustration: English Clock about 1700—Floral Marquetry in Walnut
Ground

American Clock Black Walnut on Pine Eighteenth Century


"GRANDFATHER'S CLOCKS"

_These huge but beautiful clocks represent the most reliable form
of timepiece known to the people of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries. In the Metropolitan Museum._]



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

_America Learns to Make Watches_


While Eli Terry was sawing wood for his curious clocks back in the
early days of the nineteenth century, Luther Goddard, America's
first watch-manufacturer, was preaching the Gospel to the town and
country-folk in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Between sermons he
repaired watches.

Although we can find no record of such a meeting, it is easy to imagine
that while plodding along some dusty country road Preacher Goddard met
Terry jogging along with his cumbersome wooden clocks hanging from his
saddle. The thought may have come to the minister-mechanic that it
would be much easier to peddle watches than clocks.

Whatever may have been the prompting, we find, as a matter of record,
that, in the year 1809, while Terry was making and peddling his
clocks, Luther Goddard set up a small watch-making shop in Shrewsbury,
Massachusetts, the place of his birth. He employed watch-makers who had
learned their trade in England. At that time, there was a law in force
which prohibited the importation of foreign-made watches into America
and this gave Goddard his chance. But in 1815, when the law was
repealed and the American market was quickly flooded with cheaper, if
not better watches from abroad, he was forced to retire from the field.
During those few years he had produced about five hundred watches.

Discouraged by his venture into worldly affairs, he turned again to
his former occupation of preacher and evangelist, and consoled himself
with the remark that he "had here a profession high above his secular
vocation." In those days, protection and free trade had not yet become
the rival rallying cries of two great political parties; otherwise we
might have found this early manufacturer entering politics instead of
the pulpit. While he is credited with manufacturing the first American
watches, however, it is doubtful whether he and his workmen really did
more than to assemble imported parts.

More than twenty years now passed before another effort was made
to produce watches in America—this time by two brothers—Henry and
James F. Pitkin of Hartford, Connecticut. In 1838, they brought out
a watch, most of the parts of which were made by machinery, but it
proved more or less a failure. After a brief struggle, they gave up in
discouragement. Henry Pitkin died in 1845, and his brother, a few years
later.

While the Pitkin Brothers were struggling with their problem in
Hartford, Jacob D. Custer of Norristown, Pennsylvania, was engaged in
a similar task. He succeeded in making a few watches between 1840 and
1845, thus gaining his niche in history as the third American watch
manufacturer.

But all of these were merely forerunners, for now there stepped upon
the stage a young man whose ability and perseverance were destined
to launch American watch-making fairly upon its way. This young man
was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1813, and his name was Edward
Howard; it was born in him to be an inventive and ingenious craftsman
and to feel toward the mechanism of time-keeping the devotion of an
artist to his art. At the age of sixteen, he was apprenticed to Aaron
Willard, Jr., of Roxbury, one of the cleverest clock-makers of his time.

Young Howard took to clock-making as naturally as a Gloucester man
takes to the sea. Some of the clocks he then made are still ticking as
vigorously as ever. Having presently learned all he cared to know about
clock-making, he cast about for other fields of action. His bent, as
he himself said, "was all for the finer and more delicate mechanism,"
and it was natural that these qualities of the watch should absorb his
interest. It was equally natural, since he was an American clock-maker
at a time when that trade was being revolutionized by machine-work,
that he should dream of applying such methods to the watch.

"One difficulty I found," he is quoted as saying, "was that
watch-making did not exist in the United States as an industry. There
were watchmakers, so-called, at that time, and there are great numbers
of the same kind now, but they never made a watch; their business
being only to clean and repair. I knew from experience that there was
no proper system employed in making watches. The work was all done
by hand. Now, hand-work is superior in many of the arts because it
allows variation according to the individuality of the worker. But
in the exquisitely fine wheels and screws and pinions that make up
the parts of a watch, the less variation the better. Some of these
parts are so fine as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. A
variation of one five-thousandths of an inch would throw the watch out
altogether, or make it useless as a timepiece. As I say, all of these
minute parts were laboriously cut and filed out by hand, so it will
readily be understood that in watches purporting to be of the same
size and of the same makers, there are no two alike, and there was no
interchangeability of parts. Consequently it was 'cut and try'. A great
deal of time was wasted and many imperfections resulted."

Howard's ambition lay in the production of a perfect watch for its
own sake; and he wanted to make it by machinery, believing that, in
that way, it could be made most perfectly. Other people had thought
of the same thing. Pitkin had attempted it, and there had been some
experiments of like nature in Switzerland. But the man who loves his
work as Howard did will succeed in anything short of the impossible,
because neither time nor labor, neither failure nor discouragement,
matter at all to him as against the hope of making his dream come true.

As Howard was emerging into young manhood, the great period of
American invention was rapidly developing. Morse was struggling with
the electric telegraph which he invented and perfected in 1835, and
Goodyear was busy with machinery and processes for enabling rubber
to be used commercially, thus laying the foundation for one of the
greatest American industries of to-day. Ingenuity was in the air and
invention was conquering realms that had been believed beyond reach.

When people told Howard that it was absurd to think of improving upon
the manual skill of centuries, he answered that he expected to make his
machinery by hand. And when they said that a machine for watch-making
would be more wonderful than the watch itself, he only laughed and
agreed that this might be so.

To-day, we are familiar with such phrases as "standardized parts" and
"quantity production," which explain to us how it is possible for
a single factory to produce millions of watches in a year, or for
another kind of plant to turn out half a million automobiles in a like
period. The way in which "quantity production" came about is curiously
interesting. Watch-making received one of its greatest impulses from a
famous American inventor who probably would have been amazed had anyone
told him that his idea upon quite another subject would some day help
to put watches into millions of pockets.

There is no particular connection between a cotton-gin and the
"quantity production" of watches, but it is interesting to know that
the same ingenious brain which designed the one also unconsciously
suggested the other. Late in the eighteenth century, Eli Whitney gained
lasting fame as the inventor of a machine which would automatically
separate the seeds from the fiber of crude cotton—a machine which
revolutionized the cotton industry of the south.

In 1798, Whitney secured a contract to manufacture rifles for the
government. He decided that they could be made much more rapidly and
cheaply if he could find some way to produce all the separate parts in
large quantities by machinery, and then merely assemble the various
parts into the completed weapon. The inventive mind which was capable
of devising the cotton-gin found this new problem to be comparatively
simple, and it was not long before Whitney was making thousands of
rifles from machine-made "standardized parts," where only one could be
made before. Half a century later his machinery was still turning out
rifles parts in the great arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts, and
it was not until this period that it exerted a distinct influence upon
watch-making.

While Howard in Roxbury was dreaming of producing watches by machinery,
another young man—Aaron L. Dennison, of Boston—was also obsessed with
the same dream and grappling with the same problem. It is therefore not
strange that the paths of these two soon crossed. Born in Freeport,
Maine, 1812, Dennison was just a year older than Howard. He was an
expert watch-repairer and watch-assembler, having learned his craft
among the Swiss and the English workmen in New York and Boston. The
year 1845 found him conducting a small watch and jewelry business in
Boston.

Some few years earlier, Dennison had visited friends in Springfield,
Massachusetts, and while there he was taken to one of the interesting
show-places of the town—the Springfield Arsenal. As he made his slow
progress through the great rifle factory, he marveled at the wonderful
machinery and the system which had originated in the brain of Eli
Whitney nearly half a century before; Whitney was dead and gone, but
his works still lived.

Dennison returned to Boston, fired with an ambition to apply the
Whitney system and methods of rifle-making to the manufacture of
watches. He brooded over the scheme for years, constructing a
pasteboard model of his imaginary watch factory and planning in detail
its organization.

Then occurred a meeting that was to make history—a meeting marking the
first step in founding a great American industry and wresting from
Europe and Great Britain the watch-making monopoly which they had
continuously held since the days of the "Nuremburg Egg." Dennison met
Howard, and the contact of the two minds was like the meeting of flint
and steel. Dennison shared Howard's belief that watch-parts could be
made better and more accurately by the use of machines. He had the
watch-making experience and Howard the mechanical skill to design the
new machinery. One may imagine how the two young men inspired each
other. They had the ideas; all they now needed was the capital and
this was supplied in 1848 by Mr. Samuel Curtis, who backed them to the
extent of twenty thousand dollars.

Dennison immediately went abroad to study methods in England and
Switzerland and came back more than ever convinced of the soundness of
their own ideas.

"I have examined," said he, "watches made by a man whose reputation at
this moment is far beyond that of any other watchmaker in Great Britain
and have found in them such workmanship as I should blush to have it
supposed had passed from under my hands in our own lower grade of work.
Of course I do not mean to say that there is not work in these watches
of the highest grade possible, but errors do creep in and are allowed
to pass the hands of competent examiners. And it needs but slight
acquaintance with our art to discover that the lower grade of foreign
watches are hardly as mechanically correct in their construction as a
common wheelbarrow."

[Illustration: French Enamel Case, about 1800

Austrian Lyre-shaped Watch, 1770

French Musical Repeater Watch, Gold Case, Richly Enameled and Set with
Pearls Presented by Napoleon to Murat in 1800

French, about 1800

Beetle Shaped Watch, about 1800

Guitar Shaped Watch Swiss, about 1800

French Combination of Watch, Snuff Box and Music Box, playing several
tunes, about 1700


EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WATCHES

_Reached the extreme of elaboration and costliness, but were not
always equally successful as time keepers. In the collections of the
Metropolitan Museum._]

On his return, in 1850, he and Howard established themselves in a small
factory in Roxbury, under the name of the American Horologe Company.
And that little factory was the foundation of what is now the great
establishment of the Waltham Watch Company, the first and hence the
oldest watch company in America, and the parent concern of most of the
rest.

It was perhaps at this time that an employee, one P. S. Bartlett,
returned to his home town on a visit and was asked by his old neighbors
what he had been doing.

"I am working," said he, "for a company which makes seven complete
watches in a day." Great was the merriment at this reply. "Why, where
on earth could you _sell_ seven watches a day?" they shouted.

With the advent of the factory, the real troubles of Dennison and
Howard began. It is worth while to glance for a moment at the problem
which lay before them, if only to appreciate its difficulty. The old
plan was to have a model watch made by hand by a master workman. This
watch was then taken apart and its separate parts distributed for
reproduction by a multitude of specialized workers involving perhaps
some forty or fifty minor trades. These parts, hand-made after a
hand-made model, were then returned to the expert who assembled and
adjusted them. At the worst, this resulted in gross error; at the best,
in individual variation. A part from one watch could not be expected to
fit and work accurately in another, although the two were supposed to
be alike in all their parts.

The new idea was first to lay out the whole design on paper and then to
make the various parts by machinery according to the exact design. It
was supposed that a machine making one part would duplicate that part
repeatedly without variation; that in so far as the machines themselves
were accurate, the parts produced would necessarily be interchangeable;
that any set of parts could therefore be assembled without fitting
or alteration. The finished watch, it was assumed, would require
adjustment only. Theoretically, this idea was correct; practically,
it could not be perfectly carried out, and the results did not fulfil
the hopes of the manufacturers. In the first place, there were not in
existence any machines of the required delicacy and precision; every
one must first be invented, then designed, then made, and finally
adjusted for practical operation. Even so, and notwithstanding the
great mechanical achievements of the Waltham Company, the results
never succeeded in realizing the dreams of Howard and Dennison, of
absolute interchangeability of parts. It remained for the Ingersoll
organization, many years later, to develop such a factory system.

Before Howard and Dennison could make a single watch, therefore, they
had to invent all the mechanism, and themselves build and install
every invention. Moreover, several of the processes had to be worked
out from the ground up. There was nobody in America who understood
watch-gilding, for example, or who could make dials or jewels.

Thus they set to work developing the machinery as fast as they could do
so, and imported such parts as they themselves could not yet make. It
was a staggering task and a discouraging devourer of capital. "I do not
think," said Dennison many years later, "there were seven times in the
seven years we were together that we had money enough to pay all our
employees at the time their wages were due. Very often we would find
ourselves without any cash on hand, but Mr. Howard would manage some
way to produce enough to tide over with."

The two men made a perfect team, eager to give each other credit,
and each having unbounded loyalty and confidence in the other and in
their enterprise. But, curiously enough, it was Howard, the artist and
dreamer, who seems to have developed into the business man of the two,
in addition to being the inventor and engineer, whereas Dennison, the
expert watch-repairer, became the designer and originator of plans. It
was said of him long afterward that there was probably never an idea
in American watch-making that had not at some time passed through Mr.
Dennison's resourceful mind. He is known to many as the "Father of the
American Watch Industry," although he insisted that Howard deserved the
title as much if not more than he. Dennison schemed out what was to
be done, while Howard found the money and invented the machinery with
which to do it.

Their first model, an eight-day watch, was Dennison's idea. It was
found to be impracticable and was soon abandoned in favor of a one-day
model. The name of the company had to be changed, because it did
not find favor with some of the English firms from whom they bought
certain parts. They called it the "Warren Manufacturing Company" for
a time, and their first few watches were marked with this name. Later
on, they moved to a new factory at Waltham and incorporated under the
name of the Waltham Improvement Company. It was while the act for its
incorporation was before the Massachusetts legislature that some wag
there produced the couplet:

    "_A Waltham' 'patent' watch, which ere it goes
    Besides the 'hands' must have the 'ayes' and 'noes._"

All this time, the tools and machinery were giving trouble. There were
innumerable difficulties. For example, New England workmen objected to
cutting the pinion-leaves because they were shaped like a bishop's
miter. And financial pressure was always upon them. The building was
one of the earliest attempts at concrete construction, and was far from
stable in stormy weather. Mr. Hull, afterward foreman in the dial-room,
said: "Often in those days we would jump from our stools when we felt
something jar, for fear the building would fall down. Somehow, it never
did."

In 1854 the name was changed again, this time to the American Watch
Company. Incidentally, Mr. Dennison took his place among the large and
honorable company of inventors who have been called insane. He earned
that title by saying that they would eventually make as many as fifty
watches a day. The company now makes between two thousand and three
thousand a day.

Just as they were on the point of a richly deserved success, the
panic of 1857 drove the young company into bankruptcy. The plant was
purchased by Royal E. Robbins, of the firm of Robbins & Appleton, watch
importers. Howard went back to the old factory at Roxbury, taking with
him a few trained workmen, and patiently started all over again. He
succeeded, at last, in producing really fine watches, although in small
numbers; and his new business, as we shall see later, developed into
the E. Howard Clock Company, and practically abandoned the manufacture
of watches. Meanwhile, the Waltham factory, under good business
management and with Dennison as its superintendent, was safely steered
past the financial rocks and shoals of the period, and began gradually
to reap the reward of its less fortunate early efforts.

It was the Civil War, with its great military demand for watches, which
first set the Waltham Company squarely upon its feet by justifying
quantity production. A dividend of five per cent was declared in 1860;
and one of one hundred and fifty per cent in 1866, the short-lived
Nashua Watch Company having meanwhile been absorbed. Since that date
its name has been twice changed—first, to the American Waltham Watch
Company, and then to the Waltham Watch Company, which is now its title.

At the present day, the Waltham Company employs nearly four thousand
people and produces about sixty-eight thousand complete watch-movements
a month, or over three-quarters of a million a year.

This output is made possible only through the extensive employment of
automatic machines, all of which have been invented and manufactured at
the Waltham factory. Even now it is not possible to buy watch-making
machinery ready-made in the open market; it is all "special" work,
designed and often built by the watch manufacturers themselves. And the
development of this great industry, employing, at first, crude devices
operated for the most part by hand-power, to the complex automatic
mechanism which seems to act almost with human intelligence, has been
a marvelous achievement.

The company now makes ten different sizes of regular movements, in more
than a hundred different grades and styles. Of these every part is made
in the Waltham factory. It was the first establishment in the world in
which all parts of a watch were made by machinery and under the same
roof. And its success revolutionized the methods of watch-making not
only in America but, to a less degree, in all parts of the world. A
prominent London watchmaker who went through the plant in the early
period of its success said to his colleagues: "On leaving the factory,
I felt that the manufacture of watches on the old plan was gone." And
the name passed into literature when Emerson, describing a successful
type of man, said, "He is put together like a Waltham watch."



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

_Checkered History_


One of those mental marvels who can play fifteen simultaneous games
of chess, blindfolded, might be able to form a complete idea of the
American watch-making industry in the years that followed the Civil
War; all that the ordinary mind can gain is a bewildering impression
of change and confusion, with companies springing up, and merging or
disappearing, all over the industrial map. Inventions were as thick as
blackberries in August and, to investors, as thorny as their stems.
Countless revolutionary ideas in watch-making revolved briefly—few
evolved, and capitalists, large and small, learned the sobering lessons
of experience, as capitalists ever have and ever will.

[Illustration: "QUANTITY PRODUCTION" IN 1850

_When P. S. Bartlett boasted that his company was making seven watches
a day, his friends laughed, "Why, where could you SELL seven watches a
day?"_]

With it all, certain points seem to stand out as clearly defined—among
them the fact that watch-production appealed strongly to the public
mind at a time when the nation, galvanized into intense activity by the
great conflict, was entering an era of extraordinary self-organization.
This is, of course, significant. The nation's time as well as its
forests, mines, and other resources, must be a factor in the growth
of public wealth, and this could not be unless it were widely and
accurately measured, which, in turn, implied the universal use of the
watch.

The later history of American watch-making is, therefore, a story of
the formation of many companies, the failure of most, and survival
in the case of comparatively few. In the sense of being founded by
men whose experience had been gained at Waltham, the Waltham Company
was more or less the parent of the majority. Of the failures, it may
roughly and broadly be stated that the general trouble was most often a
lack of cooperation between technical watch-making skill and business
management.

Of the occasional successes due, on the other hand, to perfect
harmony between these two factors, the Elgin National Watch Company,
established at Elgin, Illinois, in 1864, was one of the first. Its
officials and promoters were not watchmakers but business men—a group
of Western capitalists who organized the company at the suggestion
of a few trained men from Waltham, to whose technical experience and
knowledge they gave entire liberty of action from the first. This
combination of Western enterprise and Eastern mechanical skill was a
great and immediate success. Within six years from its incorporation,
the Elgin Company had built its factory, designed and made its own
machinery, and marketed forty-two thousand watches. It is said to be
the only American watch company which has paid dividends from the
beginning. And yet this achievement cannot be traced to anything
strikingly distinctive either in the policy or in the product. It was
a case of doing rapidly and easily, with vast previous experience to
build upon, what the parent company had so long strived to accomplish,
and of doing this honestly and well. In a small way, it was like the
rapid growth of democratic principles in America, having, as it were,
the British commonwealth of a thousand years on which to base itself.

The period of the development of American watch-making was also the
period of the rapid and enormous expansion of railroads. The two were
naturally related, in that railroading demands the constant use of a
great number of watches, while its progress in punctuality and speed is
in direct proportion to the supply of reliable timekeepers. Precision
is here the great essential; every passenger must have the means of
being on hand in time in order not to miss his train. But what is of
far greater importance, railroad men must know and keep the exact time
not alone for their own protection but in order that they may protect
and safeguard the lives of those who are entrusted to their care.

Most of our great inventions and improvements can be traced to some
pressing human need. Many of them, unfortunately, are delayed until
some great catastrophe shows the need. It required a disastrous wreck
to bring home to the railroads and make clear the necessity for
absolute accuracy in the timepieces of their employees.

In the year 1891 two trains on the Lake Shore Railroad met in head-on
collision near Kipton, Ohio, killing the two engineers and several
railway mail-clerks. In the investigation which followed, it was
disclosed that the watches of the engineers differed by four minutes.
The watch which was at fault had always been accurate and so its owner
took it for granted that it always would be. But tiny particles of
dust and soot find ways of seeping into the most carefully protected
works of a watch, and every watch should be examined and cleaned
occasionally. So it was with the engineer's watch. A speck of coal
dust, perhaps, had caused his watch to stop for a few minutes and then
the jolting of the engine had probably started it running again. That
little speck of dust and those few lost minutes cost human lives.

This wreck occurred not many miles from Cleveland, Ohio, then and now
the home of Webb C. Ball, a jeweler, who as a watch expert, was a
witness in the investigation which followed. His interest thus aroused,
he worked out a plan which provided for a rigid and continuous system
of railroad watch inspection. The plan which he then proposed is now in
operation on practically every railroad in the country.

A railroad watch must keep accurate time within thirty seconds a week,
and is likely to be condemned if its variation exceeds that amount
in a month; it must conform to certain specifications of design and
workmanship which are only put into movements of a fairly high grade.
And the railroad man must provide himself with such a timepiece and
maintain it in proper condition, subject to frequent and regular
inspection by the railroad's official inspector. There is thus a
compulsory demand for watches of a definite quality and performance at
a reasonable price.

Expressly to meet this, the Hamilton Watch Company, of Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, was organized in 1892, the year after the wreck which
started this reform. This company therefore represents an enterprise
founded for a specific purpose and concentrating upon a certain
specialized demand, although this does not mean that it is the only
company which caters to the needs of the railroad man. All of the great
companies produce timekeepers of the highest precision for railroad
use, but the Hamilton Company has devoted itself more particularly to
supplying this one field.

The Gruen Watch Company, of Cincinnati, Ohio, is typical of still
another line of endeavor—the beautifying and refining of watch-cases
and watch-works. Its founder, Dietrich Gruen, was a Swiss master
watchmaker. He came to America, as a young man, in 1876, married here,
and established the international industry which bears his name.
It might be said that his watch is not an American product, as the
Gruen movements are made at Madre-Biel, in Switzerland, and then
sent over to America to be cased, adjusted, and marketed. Perhaps the
most notable contribution of this company to the watchmaking industry
was to inaugurate the modern thin type of watch. This was evolved by
Frederick, the son of Dietrich Gruen, and was made possible by the
inverting of the third wheel of the watch, so that the whole train runs
in much less space than was previously required.

These four companies are by no means the only successful ones, but
they do typify the general trend of development of the American watch
industry from 1850 until near the end of the nineteenth century, when a
new and even greater era in the history of timekeeping was inaugurated.
The story of this development will be considered in later chapters.
In the period then closed, however, the ideal of Dennison and Howard,
which most people then regarded as an impossibility, was realized to
a degree which they themselves would never have thought possible.
Dennison died in 1898 and Howard in 1904.

Although watch-making is the creation of European genius and was
rooted in European experience, with boundless capital at its command
and carried on in communities trained for generations in the craft,
it is in this country that it has been brought to its fullest modern
development. The census figures, while incomplete and somewhat
misleading, are expressive of the amount of growth and of its
nature. According to these figures there were in 1869 thirty-seven
watch companies in the United States, employing eighteen hundred and
sixteen wage earners, or an average of less than fifty workmen; and
their combined product was valued at less than three million dollars.
In 1914, the last normal year before the Great War, there were but
fifteen such companies; the law of the survival of the fittest had
been operating. But these fifteen employed an average of over eight
hundred people, or twelve thousand three hundred and ninety in all,
and the combined value of their product was stated as over fourteen
million dollars. These figures are far below reality in that they do
not include the large volume of watches produced in clock factories.

American watch-making is typical of the difference between the American
and European industry in the nineteenth century. Here a complete watch
is produced in one factory, while in England, Switzerland and France
most establishments specialize in the manufacture of particular parts
and these parts are then assembled in other factories. Some fifty
different trades there are working separately to produce the parts.
And the manufacturer, whose work is chiefly that of finishing and
assembling, takes a large profit for inspection and for the prestige of
his name.

By the American system, a thousand watches are produced proportionately
more cheaply than a dozen; and a thousand of uniform model more
cheaply than a like number of various sizes and designs. Automatic
machines tend to economy of labor and uniformity of excellence. The
saving begins with the cost of material and ends with the ease and
quickness of repairs due to the standardization of parts.

Lord Grimthorpe said: "There can be no doubt that this is the best as
well as the cheapest way of making machines which require precision.
Although labor is dearer in America than here, their machinery enables
them to undersell English watches of the same quality."

It now remained for American ingenuity and enterprise to level the
ramparts of special privilege in the world of time-telling by producing
an accurate and practical watch in sufficient quantity and at a price
so low as to place it within the reach of all.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"_The Watch That Wound Forever_"


The most important development in any affair is naturally the one which
concerns the greatest number of people. In the United States, it is the
people who count and nothing can be considered wholly American which
does not concern the mass of the population. We have already seen how
watch-movements were brought to a high degree of accuracy, and have
followed some of the steps by which the industry was developed in the
United States, but there remained one great step to be taken, and
that was the putting of an accurate watch within the financial reach
of almost every person. The way in which this was brought about was
thoroughly American.

In 1875, Jason R. Hopkins, of Washington, D. C., after many months of
patient labor, perfected the model of a watch which he thought could
be constructed in quantities for fifty cents each. He secured a patent
on his model, and with Edward A. Locke, of Boston, and W. D. Colt, of
Washington, sought to interest the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing
Company, of Waterbury, Connecticut, in its manufacture.

Failing in this, Locke abandoned further effort so far as the Hopkins'
model was concerned. Hopkins, however, continued, and finally succeeded
in enlisting the active support and financial resources of W. B.
Fowle, a gentleman of wealth and leisure, who owned a fine estate at
Auburndale, Massachusetts. This led to the formation of the Auburndale
Watch Company. Within a few years, Fowle had sunk his entire fortune of
more than $250,000 in the enterprise, and the Hopkins watch had proved
a complete failure. In 1883 both Fowle and the Watch Company made
assignments.

There are many who still remember the great Centennial Exposition at
Philadelphia in 1876, celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the
declaration of American Independence. Those who were there may recall
the interesting exhibit of a huge steam-engine—at least, it seemed huge
at that time—and, in a glass case near by, a tiny engine—so tiny that
it could be completely covered by a small thimble. This midget steam
engine, with its boiler, governor, and pumps, was just as complete in
all of its parts as was the big engine. Three drops of water would fill
its boiler. It was a striking example of mechanical skill and fineness
of workmanship, for it had been made under a watchmaker's microscope
with jeweler's tools.

The most interesting thing about this little engine was that, unknown
to its designer, it heralded the dawn of Democracy in the Kingdom of
Time-telling, just as it then was helping to celebrate the birth of
American freedom. In the spring of 1877, Edward A. Locke, of Boston,
who two years before, as we have seen, had been interested in the
Hopkins' watch, visited the neighboring city of Worcester, and while
strolling along the main street, in a leisurely manner, he chanced
to glance in the window of a watch-repairer's shop. There he saw the
tiny engine which had excited so much wonder and admiration at the
Philadelphia exposition the year before.

For many months, Locke and his friend George Merritt, of Brooklyn, New
York, had been thinking and dreaming of the possibility of supplying
the long-felt and rapidly-growing need for a low-priced watch—a
pocket-timepiece that could be sold for three or four dollars. The
cheapest watch in America at that time cost ten or twelve. They had
searched in vain for a watchmaker who was ingenious or courageous
enough, or both, to attempt the making of such a timepiece.

Fascinated by the marvelous little engine, Locke stepped into the
shop and spoke to the lone workman at the bench near the window. This
obscure and humble watch repairer was D. A. A. Buck, the proprietor of
the shop and designer of the engine, who was soon to gain renown as the
inventor of the famous Waterbury watch.

For the sum of one hundred dollars Buck agreed to study the problem,
and, if possible, design for Locke a watch which would meet his
requirements. Day and night, for many weeks, he labored at this task,
and finally submitted a model. It was not satisfactory.

Worn by his labors and disappointed by his failure, he fell ill. Some
days later, Mrs. Buck sought out Locke and joyfully told him that her
husband had worked out a new design which he believed would correct
the defects of the former model and that, as soon as he recovered, he
would begin work upon it. Within a few months he had completed a second
model. This time he was successful.

Then began the struggle of Locke and his associates to interest capital
in the new enterprise. Most of the preliminary funds and factory space
were provided by the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company, a brass
manufacturing concern at Waterbury, Connecticut, and the predecessor
of the present Waterbury Clock Company. Thus the new watch came to be
known as the _Waterbury_.

Within the next twenty-eight months many thousands of dollars had been
raised and expended before a single watch could be turned out for sale.
It was not until 1880 that the Waterbury Watch Company was finally
incorporated and ready for business. Then the factory proudly produced
its first thousand watches. They were perfectly good-looking watches,
but they had one important weakness—they would not run, because, as
it was found, the sheets of brass used in stamping out the wheels had
an unfortunate grain, and the wheels would not remain true. Another
thousand were made with this defect corrected. This time most of the
watches would keep time, but there still was a large percentage of
"stoppers." After more study, experiment, and expense, the product was
improved until only about ten per cent of the watches refused to run,
and the Waterbury watch was really on the market.

It was a wonderfully simple piece of mechanism, very different from
the ordinary watch. The whole works turned round inside of the case
once every hour, carrying the hour-hand with them. The mainspring was
coiled round the outside of the movement, so that the case formed a
barrel, and was wound by the stem. It had the old duplex escapement of
the days of Tompion and the dial was printed on paper, covered with
celluloid and glued to the plate. It had only fifty-eight parts, kept
time surprisingly well, was not much to look at, but was sold at the
then unheard-of low price of four dollars.

It was put on the market with real Yankee ingenuity. Some of us
remember when Waterbury watches were given away with suits of clothes,
and the pride with which, as youngsters, we exhibited our first watches
thus obtained to our playmates who were less fortunate. The nine-foot
mainspring required unlimited winding, which was one of its chief
joys, and our friends often solicited the privilege of helping in the
operation. Some of the more ingenious among us held the corrugated
stem against the side of a fence and made the watch wind itself by
running along the fence's length, while other children looked on
enviously.

In spite of the disadvantage of the time necessary for winding, perhaps
in part because of it, the Waterbury watch became famous the world
over and reached a very large sale for its day. It was more or less
of a freak contrivance. People spoke of it with a smile. Minstrels
opened their performances by saying, "We come from Waterbury, the
land of eternal spring"; and there is a story of a Waterbury owner in
a sleeping-car, winding until his arm ached and then passing it to a
total stranger, saying, "Here, you wind this for a while," with the
result that the stranger placed a large order for Waterbury watches to
be sold by his agency in China.

At the time that the Waterbury watch was well established, the world
had advanced to a point fairly approximating the life of to-day. All
the marvels of invention which had lifted so much of the earth's
manual labor from the shoulders of mankind and which had been expected
to shorten working-hours and to cheapen products until the standards
of living of all classes would be raised through the possession of
beneficial products inexpensively produced—these had gone far toward
establishing the factory system. Machinery had come into vogue in place
of hand labor. The steam-engine, the sewing-machine, the railway, the
steamboat, the cotton-gin, the threshing-machine and the harvester,
were indispensable aids. Photography and typewriting were novelties no
longer, and the phonograph was becoming familiar. Electricity had taken
its place as one of man's most valuable servants, able to transmit his
messages, furnish him with power, and turn his night into day. These
are but a few of the countless improvements that had contributed to the
rapid rise of this country as a manufacturing nation instead of one
chiefly agricultural.

Millions had already found employment in the factories, the
transportation systems, and other collective-labor establishments.
Schools had multiplied throughout the country. Trains, for the most
part, were run on schedule time. Business offices, accompanying the
development of the great industrial concerns, employed thousands. The
department store was beginning to appear. Public-utility organizations
and government departments were growing complex and extensive.

Thus, in every direction a stirring impetus was being given toward
those intricate modern conditions which depend upon the watch. The
lives of nearly all people were beginning to be touched by affairs that
demanded common punctuality a number of times every day—the hour of
opening factory, school, office or store, the keeping of appointments,
the closing of banks and of mails, and the departure of trains.
The times were bursting with need for a closer watch on time. From
the industrial president to the common laborer and school-child the
pressure of modern life, with its demand for punctuality, was making
itself increasingly felt.

Yet, strangely enough, watches were still regarded as luxuries. It was
not yet realized that they belonged among the implements which the
daily life required of all. The notion still held that the watch was
the mark of the aristocrat—a piece of jewelry rather than an article
of utility, a thing more for display than for use. And the prices of
good watches, according to the standards of the day, were such as to
perpetuate the idea.

It is no wonder then that, in spite of its crude characteristics, the
low-priced Waterbury watch attained a considerable sale. A watch was
a novelty, an uncommon possession among average people, and anything
approximating a real watch was assured of a large sale if within
reach of the ordinary purse. Therefore, the commercial failure of the
Waterbury Watch Company involves something more than a mere business
failure. Here is something which textbook economists may well undertake
to explain, since the article was good, the need unsupplied, the
competition feeble, and the profit satisfactory. The Waterbury watch
enjoyed an initial success but, in spite of satisfactory quality, its
sale gradually fell away, until, notwithstanding several refinancings
and changes of management, undeserved failure ultimately overtook the
first low-priced watch-venture. It was not the manufacturing problems,
such as had overcome Howard and had sorely tried Dennison, but the
problems of distribution which were the undoing of the Waterbury
Company, and here the importance and power of the middleman stand out
in an instructive way.

The conditions of the age demanded a cheap watch. Things to come could
not eventuate except through the ability of everyone to measure his
minutes. Almost from its first announcement, the Waterbury sprang into
demand, but later succumbed to false policies of sales. Eagerness
for the large and easy orders, which were momentarily attractive but
finally fatal, spelled ruin.

When first put out, the watch was sold through stores at a very
moderate price and proved to be such a sensation that it suggested
itself to ingenious merchants as a trade-bringer when offered as a
premium with other goods.

Sam Lloyd, the famous puzzle-man, was among those who saw this
possibility and he devised a scheme which resulted in the giving-away
of hundreds of thousands of Waterburys; it consisted of puzzles printed
on cards. These puzzles were so simple and yet so cleverly designed
that while anyone could solve them, each thought himself a genius for
his success in doing so. Lloyd's idea was to take his puzzles to
clothing stores all over the country and sell them with watches, in
order that those dealers might distribute the puzzles all over town,
together with an announcement of a guessing-contest. Each successful
contestant, upon return of the puzzle with its solution, was privileged
to buy a suit of clothes and get a Waterbury watch with it free of
charge.

Such was the magic of a watch in those days that the Waterbury
boomed the business of hundreds of clothiers, who, as in nearly all
something-for-nothing schemes, were careful to add more than the cost
of the watch to the price of the suit. Nevertheless the idea took
so well that Lloyd spread it into Europe, China, and other parts of
the world. Thus, the Waterbury watch became a familiar object in
many lands. Adaptations of the scheme, applied to other wares, were
carried out by him and by others until giveaway propositions became
the main channel of distribution for these watches. For a time, such
methods flourished and the regular trade of ordinary watch-dealers
correspondingly languished. But, finally, the scheme-idea lost its
novelty and pulling power. People would not forever buy clothes in
order to get watches. In the process, the Waterbury name had become a
byword for tricks in all trades. Shoddy clothes at all-wool prices had
become associated with it in people's minds. They stopped buying these
watches in ordinary stores because others "gave" them away. Regular
dealers cut the prices to get rid of their stocks, and this led to
further demoralization because customers never knew whether or not they
were buying at the bottom price. Dealers could make no money on them
under such market conditions and, because of this and of their shady
association with give-away deals, the Waterbury name became a stench in
the nostrils of the legitimate trade.

Thus, when the scheme-trade died away and the company again turned
its attention to the watch-dealers whom it had forgotten in the flush
of its easy success, it found no welcome. It had forsaken its source
of steady customers and was now forsaken in return. After floundering
about in several further reversals of trade policy and causing the
loss of further investment for its backers, the Waterbury name was
abandoned and the company reorganized as the New England Watch Company.
As such it ventured into new fields of watch manufacture and offered an
elaborate variety of small and fancy watches and cases, and numerous
models, sizes, and styles of movements sold on vacillating marketing
policies. Never did it attain a genuinely sound footing, however, for
it vacated its field of fundamental and distinctive usefulness, viz.,
the production of a reliable, low-priced, simple watch, to meet the
advancing requirements of its day; it had gone back to the view-point
of the watch as an ostentatious or ornamental bit of vanity. Hence
the old Waterbury business was compelled to close its doors, and in
the fall of 1914, the first year of the Great War, was bought out at a
receiver's sale by a firm who had replaced it in the field of supplying
watches for the masses. This firm rededicated the organization to its
original mission, modernized its mechanical equipment, and revived the
Waterbury name after a lapse of twenty years, until to-day, through the
employment of judicious sales-methods, the factory is more successful
than ever it was in its earlier days.



CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"_The Watch That Made the Dollar Famous_"


The next development is so typically American that it is difficult to
picture it as occurring in any other country.

Heretofore, the history of timepieces had been that of an easily
traceable evolution, for each of its steps had grown naturally out
of those before it, and the various improvements had been made by
mechanics trained in the craft. Yet now, strange to relate, two
young men from a Michigan farm, with no mechanical training, entered
the field almost in a casual manner, and in less than a generation
not only became the world's largest manufacturers of watches but
effected the most radical development in the whole story of telling
time—involving, as it did, the introduction of interchangeable parts,
quantity-production, and a low price.

These results might seem at first, to be due to a matter of accidental
good fortune. On the contrary, they were an example of evolution
quite as logical as any that had preceded and were perhaps even more
significant. The whole development came as the direct product of
observation, analysis, initiative, perseverance, and hard work—the
element of good luck being conspicuously absent.

All history gives evidence of the occasional need of a new impulse
derived from outside, and bringing with it a fresh view-point. There
seems to be a tendency in human enterprise for any development after
a time to lose its original rate of speed and to spend itself in
complexities. The people who have brought it about appear to lose their
power to see things simply and in a big way; and, on the contrary, they
grow technical and occupy themselves with minor details. Whereupon
the progress of development becomes slower and slower, and threatens
to stop entirely. Then over and over again, there is the record of
the advent of some fresh new force from an unexpected direction which
restores youth and vigor.

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.

In a sense, therefore, the industry was unconsciously waiting the
coming of a non-technical man who knew the public at first hand and
understood people's requirements, who was not fettered by tradition,
who had a vision of universal marketing and distribution, and who was
not held back by a fore-knowledge of difficulties. It was exactly this
vision which Robert H. Ingersoll had of the industry and he developed
it with the assistance first of his brother, Charles H. and later of
his nephew, William H. He did not "discover" the dollar watch, as many
think, but grew toward it during the course of a dozen years.

It came about, as already stated, in a manner that was typically
American. Young Ingersoll left his father's farm near Lansing,
Michigan, in 1879, at the age of nineteen, and went to New York to
seek his fortune. He was entirely without technical training save
in farming, but he had a considerable first-hand knowledge of the
needs and desires of what Lincoln called the "common people." Finding
employment for a time, he saved One Hundred and Sixty Dollars, and,
with this large capital, started in business for himself in the
manufacture and sale of rubber stamps. Before long he was able to
send back to Michigan for his younger brother, Charles H. Being of an
inventive turn of mind, he devised a toy typewriter which attained a
considerable sale as a dollar article. This was followed by a patented
pencil, a dollar sewing-machine, a patent key-ring and other novelties
of his own creation.

In the course of time, the products of other manufacturers were added
to the list. Thus the brothers soon found themselves with an embryo
manufacturing and wholesale jobbing business. The business grew,
and the next development was that of a mail-order department. In
this branch they were pioneers and preceded by some years the famous
mail-order houses of Chicago and elsewhere. Their catalog ran into
editions of millions of copies. Next, the Ingersolls became pioneers in
another sales-plan. They developed the chain-stores idea, starting with
a retail specialty store in New York, and following it with six others.
Incidentally, they found themselves among the largest wholesale and
retail dealers in the country in bicycles and bicycle supplies.

All of this was a strange but none the less effective preparation
for watch-making and the marketing of watches by millions. Robert
Ingersoll, who had remained in the selling and promoting end of the
business, knew little about watches, but since he was constantly
engaged in traveling about the country and in talking with merchants
and others, he was gaining a great fund of knowledge as to human needs
and market possibilities.

Presently he became convinced that his business, in spite of its
prosperity, lacked something vital. He grew dissatisfied with handling
a succession of unimportant novelties. It began to dawn upon his mind
that these things were hardly worth while as a subject for a business,
since they satisfied only passing fancies on the part of the public.
He must find something which was really worth while, something which
filled a real human need on a large scale and yet in a new way. If this
something could be found, and the incredibly large buying power of the
great American public could be focused upon it, there was hardly any
limit to the business which would result.

When this belief had crystallized in the form of a definite conclusion,
he began at once to search for the "big idea." The "big idea" had long
been waiting for him to reach this state of mind. It had been looking
him in the face for many days had he but been ready to perceive it.

On the wall of his room in a Brooklyn boarding-house there hung a very
small "Bee" clock. It was unobtrusive and apparently unimportant. He
had glanced at it hundreds of times with no thought beyond that of
learning the time. Suddenly, it ceased to be a clock and became an open
door into the future. Its ticking became articulate with a new meaning.

[Illustration: 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
pocket. That man has a chance to be efficient; but good watches
cost money, and most people cannot afford them. Here am I, a tiny
little ticking clock; I am a good timekeeper and I am cheap. Make me
a little smaller, sell me for a dollar, and you can put the time into
everyone's pocket."

At this point, the non-technical man, who knew nothing about watches,
but who understood human needs, realized that something had happened;
he pondered deeply and began to investigate. He took the little clock
to a machinist in Ann Street, New York, and together they studied the
possibility of reducing it in thickness and diameter. Presently it was
discovered that both the New Haven and the Waterbury Clock Companies
had already produced articles that embodied these conditions. This
somewhat checked enthusiasm until it was recalled that neither of
these products was an especial factor in the time-telling field. The
manufacturers had merely made mechanisms; they had not grasped the Big
Idea of universal service.

The timepiece of the Waterbury Company was the smaller, and Robert
Ingersoll decided to test his mail-order market, buying first, one
thousand clock-watches at eighty-five cents each, and afterward
contracting for ten thousand more. These articles were offered in
the mail-order catalog for 1892 at a dollar each, for the sake of
price-uniformity with the other dollar specialties upon which the firm
was concentrating. This was done, however, in a small way. It was not
desired to sell too many on such an unprofitable margin, but merely to
test the dollar-watch idea, hoping that manufacturing charges might
ultimately be brought down through quantity production.

These so-called "watches" must not be confused with the Waterbury
watch; that, as already described, had been the output of another
company. The "watches" marketed by the Ingersolls and bearing their
name were in reality thick, noisy, sturdy little pocket-clocks, wound
from the back. They were crude and clumsy affairs compared with
present-day styles but were, nevertheless, reliable timekeepers.

The public responded to the idea of dollar watches, although these
proved to sell faster in gilt cases than in nickel, and still faster
when a five-cent gilt chain was added. The next year, came the World's
Fair in Chicago and the odd little mechanism with an appropriate design
stamped upon its cover attracted some attention from the visitors.

Thus was born the Ingersoll watch, although it bore slight resemblance
to the watch of to-day. This is due to the fact that an immediate
policy of experiment and improvement was inaugurated. During these
changes, however, several points remained fixed. One of these was that
the watch must be in no respect a plaything, but a practical accurate
timekeeper, not liable easily to get out of order. The second was the
definite association with the price of one dollar, so that it became
possible to refer to it humorously as "the watch that made the dollar
famous;" and the third was that it should have a sturdy ruggedness of
construction that would defy ordinary hard usage.

Each of these points had its social value—that of the last-named being
the fact that the dollar price put the possession of a real timepiece
within the reach of multitudes who were engaged in forms of activity
wherein a delicate timepiece would be apt to get out of order.

The Ingersolls soon became convinced that they had a worthy object
for promotion, and they did not entertain the slightest doubt as to
the existence of a waiting public. There passed before their minds a
picture of the millions of farm-boys who did not know when it was time
to come into dinner, of the millions of working-men who had nothing
to guide them in reaching the factory on time, of millions of clerks
and school-children and of still other millions comprising the bulk of
American homes where more good timepieces were needed.

Their problem, therefore, resolved itself into two main divisions—those
of manufacture and those of sale. The manufacturing end involved a
contract with the great plant of the Waterbury Clock Company, by which
this factory was to produce the goods according to the specifications
and under the name, trade-mark, and patents of the Ingersolls. This
arrangement continues to this day, but has been supplemented, as the
line has become more extended, by the acquirement of two factories
of their own, one in Waterbury, Connecticut, and one in Trenton, New
Jersey. To-day the three plants produce an aggregate of about twenty
thousand watches a day. Before such manufacturing results could be
obtained, however, there were many structural problems to be solved. It
was not so easy as it sounds to build a practical and accurate watch
within the narrow limits of a dollar and still leave a profit for both
the manufacturer and dealer.

The solution began with the adoption of the "lantern-pinion," but
the principal difficulty was that which had baffled both Howard and
Dennison—the problem of producing the extremely minute separate
watch-parts in large quantities by machinery, and yet with such
exquisite precision that all parts of one kind should be absolutely
interchangeable. By dint of unwearied patience and much scientific
research, this problem was finally solved, and it is said that
Henry Ford got his idea of quantity-production from the manufacture
of the Ingersoll watch. Incidentally, it was demonstrated that
low production-costs carry with them high wages. In the field of
watchmaking, no element was more necessary than the skill of well-paid
workers.

In the meantime, the public was waiting, but it did not know that
it was waiting. It was going about its business quite unaware that
mechanical and manufacturing problems were being solved in its behalf.
There were no eager millions standing about demanding watches in order
that their lives might be run more closely upon an efficient schedule.
Therefore, simultaneously with the consideration of mechanical and
manufacturing problems came those of sale, which will be discussed in
the next chapter.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

_Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service_


If this were purely a story of the development of timepieces as
mechanisms, there would be little to add to the preceding chapter, save
to detail the refinements and improvements by which a cheap, clumsy,
but reliable watch gradually discarded its defects, while retaining
its virtues, and the manner in which it developed into a variety of
styles and sizes. Essentially, however, this is a story of _Man_ and
_Time_, of human needs as served by timepieces. The most perfect piece
of mechanism in a showcase is like a stove without a fire; it is a mere
possibility of service, whose value does not begin until it is set to
work.

We have arrived, then, at a time when a small percentage of the total
population carried accurate timepieces and was able to profit by the
more efficient adjustment of its actions thus secured. We have seen how
the promising experiment of the Waterbury Watch Company failed in an
attempt to equip the masses with watches, principally through defects
in its system of distribution, and we have noted the appearance of
another low-priced watch dedicated to a similar experiment.

It is obvious, therefore, that if the Ingersoll firm has already
been able to place fifty million separate watches in the service
of humanity, something unprecedented must have taken place in the
all-important field of distribution. It is significant that Robert
H. Ingersoll first called his watch the "Universal;" indeed, his
chief contribution to the development of the watch is the idea of
_universality_, a word that makes us think more of people than of
manufacturers' methods. Having, then, a watch that was universal in
its possibilities as well as in name, and being keenly aware, through
his own tastes and experiences, of the needs of the vast mass of the
public, his greatest problem became that of universal distribution; in
short, it was a selling-problem. At first, there could be no definitely
formulated plan; various methods must first be tried out. From these
experiences there gradually arose an adequate system of reaching the
millions of people who needed watches.

In this, Mr. Ingersoll had effective cooperation. He was the pioneer,
the salesman, the promoter, the one who knew men in the widest sense
and had the faculty of getting results. His brother, Charles H., was
the internal administrator and constant counselor. Later, there was
added to the firm a nephew, William H., who was both a student and an
analyst. He scrutinized trade-tendencies, deduced theories from what
he saw, and gave them wide application in actual tests. Together the
members of the firm worked out sales-principles of equal opportunity
and equal treatment—words that had long constituted a slogan in
politics but were something of a novelty as applied to business. In
other words, they based their plans upon the _consumer_ rather than
upon the _factory_, and upon the idea of goods sold _through_ the trade
rather than _to_ the trade. It took some time, however, to perfect
their system of distribution but, when finally developed, it was the
outgrowth of wide and varied experience.

The firm made its first sales-efforts on the watch through its own
mail-order catalog. The results brought some encouragement, but proved
that in itself this method could never bring the volume of sales
necessary for a high-geared, uniform quantity of production.

The next recourse was to the so-called "regular trade-channels"—the
jobbers and retailers. But these dealers displayed little interest.
They were not promoters of new lines, but distributors of those for
which a market already existed. The jobber sold what the retailers
required; the retailers what the public demanded. Robert Ingersoll's
original loud-ticking watch impressed them more in the light of a
curiosity than as a trade-possibility. In particular it failed to
appeal to the jewelers, since they felt it to be out of keeping with
the beauty and value which characterized their stocks of jewelry and
silverware. They reasoned, also, that sales of the new timepiece
would interfere with those of their higher-priced watches, thus failing
to grasp the fact, since proved to be true, that its use would greatly
enlarge the sphere of their sales through cultivating a general
watch-carrying habit.

[Illustration: Waltham Thin Model Type of the Finest American Watch

Ingersoll Waterbury Radiolite "Tells Time in the Dark"

Elgin Lady's Wrist Watch

The Hamilton Famous as a Railroad Watch

Ingersoll Yankee The Modern Low-Priced Watch

Swiss Man's Wrist Watch


TWENTIETH CENTURY WATCHES

_Here is represented the final stage in the development of modern
timepieces. Though of graceful lines, they are designed for accuracy
and utility, and are ranged in price to fit every purse._]

Some effort was made with outside trades, but these generally
considered watches to be out of their line. Nevertheless, in the course
of time, persistent effort began to bring results. Occasionally jobbers
made purchases, and here and there a jeweler or hardware dealer offered
the watches for sale. When the firm felt justified in spending some
money for advertising, the public began to learn at first hand of
the Ingersoll watch, and the sales gradually increased. Many people,
however, expressed doubt as to the quality of a timepiece that could be
sold for a dollar, and the Ingersolls replied with a guarantee that has
since become famous.

Then, in the natural course of business, competition developed from
the marketing of inferior goods, and the firm found it necessary to
place its name on the dial for purposes of identification. In spite of
all difficulties, there grew up in course of time a very considerable
public demand. Whereupon certain dealers undertook privately to raise
the price in order to increase their profits. This situation was met
by emphasizing the price more prominently on the boxes and in the
advertising, a policy which soon put an end to price-raising but led,
in some instances, to the even greater difficulty of price-cutting.
The better known became the price, the greater became the temptation
to dealers of a certain class to advertise its reduction in order to
bolster up "bargains" upon other goods. This naturally demoralized the
sales of neighboring dealers and caused them to lose interest in the
line. Thus, instead of increasing the sales, the reduced price proved a
serious selling obstacle.

The same difficulty has been encountered by other manufacturers of
widely advertised goods, and some of them have sought through the
courts to compel adherence to their prices, the argument being, as in
the case of the Ingersoll watch, that price-cutting does not serve the
interests of the public but tends to interfere with sales since it
obstructs the channels of distribution. At this writing, the question
in its legal phase has not yet reached a final decision in the courts,
but the Ingersolls have solved it in a practical way, since their
trade-policies have brought about the voluntary cooperation of the
retailers.

Such cooperation, however, was not to be attained at once. It came
about through much study and after much experience. It involved the
assembling of a large amount of data upon commercial economics and a
deep inquiry into the fundamental principles of retail distribution.
It proved necessary to weigh and compare recent and important factors
in the retail situation. For example, because of the fact that so
many manufacturers were giving indiscriminate discounts for quantity
purchases, it had become profitable to establish huge department
stores, chain-stores, and mail-order houses whose scale of operation
made it possible to handle goods in large amounts.

For a time, the Ingersolls, in common with other manufacturers, gave
discounts for purchases in quantity; later, as the business grew and
its distribution problems were more scientifically studied, they saw
more clearly the way in which the principles of equal opportunity and
equal treatment could be applied.

It was in this spirit that the firm began to ask itself whether the
large distributors were really more efficient than the small retailers;
whether they actually earned the extra amount which they were paid
for selling each watch, and whether it would be a healthful thing
for the country if all retail business were transacted through such
organizations—in short, whether restrictions to such a system were
really consistent with the theory of commercial democracy.

Approached from this standpoint, the answer was found to be in the
negative. A careful research among stores in all sections of the
country showed unmistakably that the cost of selling in a small store
was actually less than in the department store, the chain-store, or
the mail-order house. Viewing the sale of each watch as an individual
transaction, it was seen that a small store in some far-off country
village gave quite as valuable service as did a large store in a
metropolis, and therefore should be paid as much. Consequently, the
Ingersolls introduced a selling-plan which, under the conditions, was
as revolutionary in the field of retail distribution as the discovery
of Galileo had been in that of clock mechanism. Yet it was merely that
of a flat-price schedule; in other words, it was a provision that the
dealer buying one dozen watches, or even one single watch, should pay
exactly the same price as the dealer who bought ten thousand. Quantity
discounts were definitely abandoned.

Naturally, this plan met with cordial response from the countless small
retailers scattered throughout the length and breadth of the country,
and the close relationship thus established led to other logical
developments in the way of cooperation, such as that of display devices
suited to the needs of these dealers, a simplified accounting system to
increase their efficiency, and various measures of a similar nature.

In the meantime, a constantly increasing advertising appeal resulted
in a rapidly growing demand from the public, and this, in turn, made
possible the assuring a uniform quantity of output, which was in itself
the basis necessary for maintaining uniform quality. Thus practical
experience and scientific trade-study were formulated into what has
come to be recognized as a definite commercial philosophy, namely, that
of uniform quality, uniform quantity, uniform demand, uniform price to
the dealers and uniform price to the consumer—a statement of principles
in which, as in the works of a watch, each part must be geared to every
other to insure effective operation.

During the time that these business principles were being formulated,
the line of watches was also in process of development with the goal
of universality in view. Thus, it was presently realized that while
the dollar watch was essentially a man's timepiece, watches were also
needed by women and by children. Accordingly, smaller models were
developed to meet these needs. At a later date, the Ingersoll business
principles were extended into the field of jeweled watches, when the
factories of the Trenton Watch Company and the New England Watch
Company were acquired. At the date of the present writing, there are
more than a dozen models, each of which is adapted to a different need
and use, but the manufacture of no model is undertaken unless there is
a market for at least a thousand watches a day.

And the latest development as this is written is the time-in-the-dark
watch.

Do you recall a soldier in the "foreword" waiting in the darkness for
the perilous moment to go "over the top" with his eyes fixed upon
the luminous hands and figures of the watch strapped to his wrist?
This watch may now be named; it was the "Radiolite." How it came into
existence in time to go into the Great War is a story in itself.

This story is the latest step in that steady progress of
democratization by which accurate timetelling, once a privilege of the
few, became the possession of the many.

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. This equal service
at any moment was finally made possible in a somewhat extraordinary
manner.

In the year 1896, Monsieur and Madame Curie startled the world with the
discovery of radium. They found that certain substances emitted rays
that would pass through solid matter as light passes through glass or
as the wind blows through a screen. They were finally able to secure
tiny quantities of a whitish powder, salt of radium, which gave forth
an energy that acted upon everything brought near to it and this energy
they calculated, would be protected uninterruptedly for three thousand
years. Up to the present time, radium and radioactivity are subjects
of constant study and research, but radium exists in such small
quantities and is so enormously costly that comparatively few have had
a chance to experiment with it.

It seems a little strange to think of using the most precious substance
in the world—many times more costly than diamonds—in order to bring
time-telling-in-the-dark within the reach of every person, but this is
exactly what has been done.

People had long been experimenting with paint made from phosphorous
in order to give off a glow in the darkness which would be sufficient
for time reading, but phosphorus has its limitations; it must first
be exposed to light before it is taken into the darkness, and if a
watch-dial treated with phosphorus is buried in the pocket it cannot
absorb enough light in the daytime to be luminous at night. With
radium, however, the problem was solved. It was found that this amazing
substance would affect certain other substances, causing them to shine
for years in the darkness by means of their own light.

Thus it became possible to develop a luminous coating which the
Ingersolls applied to the hands and figures of their "Radiolite"
watch and, presto! the problem of telling time in complete darkness
was mastered to the advantage of every buyer. The inexpensive watch
revealing the hour with equal visibility in inky darkness as in
bright daylight had become a reality. In passing, it is interesting
to note that the experiments with the watch-face led to many other
developments, such as luminous compasses, gun-sights, airplane guides,
and the like.

Then came the World War, and the wrist-watch which had been often
ridiculed as effeminate (although it is hard to explain why, since it
was first adopted as an obvious convenience in the Army and on the
hunting-field—two of the most masculine spheres of activity it would
be possible to imagine) was seen at once to be the most easy means of
knowing the time in actual warfare. Millions of watches, consequently,
were strapped to wrists of soldiers and sailors, and the obvious
advantages of the luminous dial placed it in enormous demand. Thus it
came about that the scene described in the opening pages was typical of
countless instances upon various fronts.

Although a matter of surprisingly few years, considered
chronologically, there is a long distance, measured by the scale of
progress, between the moment when a young man, glancing casually at the
clock on his bedroom wall read wonderful possibilities in its face,
and the time when the firm he founded was able to take note of such
achievements as these:

[Illustration: TELLING TIME BY DARKNESS

_Many a soldier waited in the darkness for the perilous moment to go
"over the top," with his eyes fixed upon the luminous hands and figures
of his Ingersoll Radiolite._]

Factory facilities producing an average of twenty thousand accurate
watches a day; distribution facilities including the cooperation of a
_voluntary_ "chain-store system" of more than one hundred thousand
independent retailers, all operating upon a common plan and under
common prices; a product that has come into the most wide-spread use
not only throughout the United States but in the farthest regions of
the inhabited earth—which has, in fact, in itself served to turn back
the tide by which watches formerly flowed from Europe into America, so
that it now proceeds from our shores toward those of Europe and other
lands; a name which has become as well known as any in commercial
and industrial life, and better than all, the appreciable raising of
the efficiency of the human race through universally promoting the
watch-carrying habit and putting fifty million timepieces into service.
It is altogether an Aladdin tale of modern business.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

_The End of the Journey_


Did you ever, at the end of a journey—perhaps across water, or up to
the top of some high hill—look backward to the place from whence you
came, and wonder that it seemed so far away?

Now as we have completed our journey together through the history
of man's struggle to gain knowledge and control over time, we are
impressed with the great contrast between Time as it was to mankind in
the beginning, and Time as it is to us to-day.

The caveman, with whom we began this story, lived close to nature,
taking his sense of time from her as he took all else. Morning was when
the light came, and he waked and was hungry; noon was when the sun was
highest, and night was the time of lengthened shadows and the state of
darkness. We see these same things, but, for us, they have not the same
meanings. We count the time by hours and minutes, and we reckon these
by machines which we have made, called clocks and watches. These mean
so much more to us that, when we set all the clocks forward another
hour to save daylight, it seemed to us as if we had changed the actual
time. It was practically as if we had performed the miracle of Joshua,
who in Bible story, made the sun stand still, or the miracle of Isaiah,
who made the shadow go back ten steps on the dial of Ahaz. After a few
days, we did not feel as if we had set the clocks; we felt as if we had
made the sun wait for us, and the very day come earlier.

And so it is with the seasons. The caveman called it spring when the
swallows came, and autumn when the leaves changed their color. But we
judge of these things by the calendar; we say that the spring "is very
late this year," or that the "leaves are beginning to turn early." We
have a proverb that one swallow does not make a summer; no, nor do all
the swallows, so far as we moderns are concerned. It is summer for
us upon a certain day, no matter what the swallows do, but for the
caveman, summer was when the swallows came, whenever that might be.

It is like that to-day among primitive peoples. The Turk who listens
for the crowing of a cock or the braying of an ass to tell him of the
hour, or calls the cat to him to look at its eyes and judge the time by
the shape of their pupils—he is more like the caveman in this than like
ourselves. So is the South Sea Islander, who knows the season of the
year from the direction of the trade-winds. So is the patient savage,
who cares little as to how long he must wait for the creature he is
hunting to come near the spot where he lies hidden.

How different it all is with ourselves! We rise at a certain hour, and
so many minutes later we have our breakfast. At such a time, we must be
at work. Our work itself is all made of appointments one after another,
or of tasks to be finished within a certain time. Our meals, our hours
of rest, our meetings with our friends, our recreations, and our
pleasures—all these, until, again, at a certain time we go to bed, in
order that so many hours of sleep may make us fit for the next day, are
measured by the clock and counted out by the tick of a toothed wheel or
the regular swing of a pendulum.

We say that the savage has no sense of the value of time. We have, and
it is by that fact largely that we are better off than he. Value means
measure; you cannot value a thing unless you can measure it exactly.
And so because we can measure time, we can see what time is worth to
us, and make it worth more. The savage keeps an appointment—when he
happens to make one. But we, because we know how long it takes to reach
a certain place, or how long a time we need or wish to spend with a
certain man, can make and keep many appointments. We can travel like
the wind from place to place, because in measuring time we can measure
speed, and therefore we can make speed safe and possible. We can talk
to a friend a thousand miles away, or signal by electric waves around
the world. We do these things because our sense of time has told us
that the old way of sending letters and messages was too slow. And so
we have set to work to invent ways that should be quicker. We should
never have had the telephone, the cable, or the wireless, unless we had
cared about time and been able to measure it.

The caveman lived, perhaps, as many years as we—but how much did he
do in those years? We, who have learned to measure years and to allot
each day or hour to sundry tasks, have made ourselves able to do far
more in a life-time—many times more. We do not live a greater number of
years, but it is as if we lived many lives in one. We speak of time as
we speak of money, of saving and wasting and spending. Well, Time is
Money, as Ben Franklin said, but it is something more—Time is Life. And
we think of our lives as so much time at our command, and therefore we
can make the most of them. The gulf between us and the primitive men is
a contrast of living less or more, and our _more life_ comes in great
measure from our having learned to _measure time_.

Everyone has read the story of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. You will
remember that the poor boy came into possession of a lamp which quickly
made him the richest and most powerful person in the world, since,
through owning it, he could control the service of a mighty _genie_,
able to perform the most incredible tasks.

The modern man—every man—is something like Aladdin, only he is much
more powerful. He has the _genie_ of steam to work for him when he
pulls the lever, and the _genie_ of electricity ready to serve him if
he but press a button. He has many other mighty servants that modern
science has given to him, but greatest of all, most useful of all, is
the _Slave of the Watch_ which lies in his pocket—mighty Time himself.

This ability to record time and therefore, to control it, is perhaps
the greatest of all man's triumphs. Only see what it has done for
him! Have you ever thought of yourself as a person of no special
importance?—why, you have far more actual power than was possessed by
Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, or Charlemagne!

You can command forces and can accomplish results that would have made
any of these proud autocrats stare in wonder. If you do not stand out
above your age, as they did above their ages, it is simply because
millions of other people besides yourself also possess these powers.
It is undoubtedly true that we are to-day a race of giants, and it is
also true that each of our powers is directly or indirectly due to the
common fact that we all can keep track of time. For consider that what
mankind can accomplish to-day depends upon the ability of people to
work together, and that working together would cease if people had no
accurate means for telling time.

For example, you make a railway journey upon a matter of importance to
you. The first thing that you do is to examine a time-table on which
is shown the minute when the train is due to leave. You calculate to
yourself how many minutes you must allow for reaching the station, and
then look at your watch to see how long you will still have for other
work. If you had not watch or clock, or you were dependent merely upon
the position of the sun, you might go to the station several hours
ahead of time in order to be "on the safe side." During the hours thus
saved you can accomplish a great deal of work. It is as though your day
had been made several hours longer.

Unseen in your pocket, your watch ticks steadily. You trust it
absolutely, and you know that it will be faithful to its trust.
Occasionally you glance at it and, when the hand reached the limit of
safety, you start for the train. You reach the station three or four
minutes before train-time and find the tracks clear; no train is in
sight.

This however, does not cause you the least uneasiness. You merely take
your watch from your pocket and look expectantly up the line. Perhaps
a minute before the train is due, you hear a distant whistle, then the
approaching roar of wheels upon the rails, and, just as the watch-hand
reaches the proper moment, the train itself whirls round the curve and
draws up to the station, exactly on time.

As you proceed upon your way, you notice how other people at other
stations are also meeting their schedules and conserving their time.
You see the conductor glance at his watch as he gives the engineer the
starting-signal. You realize that the whole transportation system is
merely an enormous piece of clockwork and that it, in turn, is a part
of the vaster clockwork of modern civilization.

Turn where you will, there is nothing that you can do and nothing that
you can use which is not dependent upon the ticking of clockwork. The
locomotive which pulls your train, the cars in which you ride, the
rails over which you pass, all of these are products of factories, but
the factories are run upon the time-basis; there is no other way in
which they could be run.

The workmen in these factories leave their records upon time-clocks
when they come and when they go. If the workmen were not there at
the same time, the work could not be done, since most of modern work
depends upon the ability of people to work together at the same task.
Even if one man were late, it might lose time for many. The clothes
that you wear come from other factories where other workmen have
time-clocks and watches. The buildings that you see from the windows
were put up on the time-basis and were paid for according to the
movement of the hands upon watch dials.

[Illustration: TIME PIECES VITAL TO INDUSTRY

_Without the ability to record time, and, therefore, to control it, the
complex web of human activity would become hopelessly tangled._]

You buy a newspaper, making sure that you are getting the latest
edition, and it is at once as though you looked into a great mirror
reflecting the activities of all the world, but all of the
dispatches bear a date-line, and many of them are also marked with the
hour.

Before the days of newspapers, people felt themselves to be a part of
the lives of their own immediate neighborhood and knew only vaguely
of what went on at a distance, but now each day one feels himself to
be a part of the great human family and can sometimes make his plans
with reference to things that may be occurring thousands of miles away.
But the newspaper itself is a product of clockwork; there is perhaps
no institution whose workers keep closer track of the passage of the
minutes.

In view of all these things, does it seem too much to claim that if
all the timepieces in existence were destroyed and men were given no
other means for telling time, civilization would swiftly drop to pieces
and man would find himself traveling backward to the conditions of the
caveman?

But there is one thing in our modern timekeeping which we still have in
common with the first men who ever kept the time. We still go by the
sun and the stars and refer all our measure to that apparent revolution
of the heavens which we know to be really the motion of our world
itself. As did those wise men of old Babylon, so do we even now, spying
upon the mighty master clock of the universe to correct all our little
timepieces thereby. A man sits alone in an observatory, with his eye to
a telescope. That telescope is of a certain kind, called a "transit."
It is fixed upon the meridian, the north-and-south line in the sky
over that place. And a thread of spider-web across the lens marks for
him the exact position of the line, in the very middle of his field of
view. So as he watches, he can see one star after another come into
view at one side of the glass and pass across it to the other side and
disappear. He is watching the world go round.

A certain star appears, one which his calculations have told him will
cross the meridian at a certain particular instant. Beside him is an
electrical device connected with a clock, which marks off seconds at
intervals round a revolving drum. The star draws nearer to the center
of his field. As it crosses the hair-line, the observer touches a key,
and the precise instant of its crossing is recorded upon the drum, to
within a fraction of a second. Since the clock has marked its record of
the seconds there, the clock can be corrected by the star.

Now, if that man had been a priest in Babylon, he would have kept his
knowledge as a means of power to himself and to his equals. If he
had been a dweller in a somewhat later age, he would have kept it to
himself no less, either because people would not believe, or because
the claim of too deep knowledge of the secrets of nature might put his
life in danger. But he is a modern, and so his knowledge is for all who
seek it.

On some tall building in a distant city, a time-ball hangs suspended
at the top of its pole, and people pause to look up at it. They hold
their watches in their hands. Upon the tick of noon, an impulse will
come from the observatory, and the ball will drop. Then those who have
been looking will set the hands of their watches and pass on. At the
same instant, the news of noon will be flashed by telegraph across the
land, and by wireless to ships at sea. The whole Western Union system
will suspend business for a little, while the lines are connected and
the observatory at Washington ticks off the seconds. Everywhere there
are electric clocks, automatically controlled by some master clock,
which, in its turn is governed by the observatory time. So we all, as
a matter of course and without thinking, set our watches by the star.
Civilization every day catches step with the heavenly bodies.

Back of all that we see of life, therefore, stands the great fact
of measuring time, and those who are engaged in giving to man the
instruments for this purpose have a special responsibility. Perhaps the
ancient peoples were not so far wrong when they permitted time-telling
to be a privilege of the priests. It is far more than a matter of
moneymaking; it is a fixing for humanity of the standards of daily
life; it is a duty which lies at the foundation of modern efficiency;
it is even a sacred trust.

Therefore, the man who makes or sells unreliable timepieces is false
to his trust. Through his action people are thrown out of adjustment
with the world about them, and they, in turn may seriously interfere
with the plans of many others. It is hard to believe that there are
some people who still look upon a watch as "jewelry," or that there
are some dealers who are more interested in the watch-case than in the
movement it contains.

The watchman of olden times was a public officer. He was chosen for
his reliability, and people felt confidence when he called the hours.
The watch-dealer of to-day is in a somewhat similar position; he has
a serious duty to his community. He is not chosen by the public, and
yet, even more than the watchman, he is a public servant since the
watches that he puts into people's pockets are their principal means of
adjustment to the busy affairs of life. In a sense, he supplies them
with the basis of their efficiency. His duty is that of supplying the
largest practicable degree of accuracy to the largest possible number
of people. The _Slave of the Watch_ will not obey the owner of an
inaccurate timepiece.

Time itself is elemental; it had no beginning, it can have no ending.
It is like a great ocean which flows round all of the earth, and
neither begins nor ends in any one place. But time for any man is
exactly according to his use of it. It is as though a man were to go
to the shore of the boundless ocean, with a tin cup in his hand. If he
could get no more than a cupful of water, it would not be because of
any limit in the amount available, but merely in his means for carrying
it away. Should he have a pail, a barrel, or any larger receptacle,
then the water would belong to him in a correspondingly larger amount.

Thus, time each day presents itself equally to everyone upon the earth,
but some receive it in cups, some in pails, and some in barrels. Some
make of their day a thing of no results, while others fill it with real
achievement. Those who achieve are they who have learned to value time,
and to make it serve them as the mighty _genie_ that it is.

These are the wonders which Kipling had in mind when he wrote:

    _If you can fill each unforgiving minute
      With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
    Yours is the earth and everything that's on it,
      And, what is more, you'll be a man, my son!_



APPENDIX A

_How It Works_


Having traced out the history of the clock and watch mechanism all
the way from De Vick's first clock and the clumsy old Nuremberg Egg
down to the perfect time-keeping device which we have today, it may
be interesting to look a little more closely at the result of so many
years and so many inventions—to see what its parts are, and how they
are put together, and to observe how the wonderful little machine does
its work.

Modern clocks and watches are nearly enough alike in their structure
and way of working, so that if we understand the one, we shall
easily understand the other also. The differences between them are
few and slight and easy to explain. So let us take for our example a
typical modern watch movement, which is easily the more beautiful and
interesting mechanism of the two.

First of all, as we saw in the days of De Vick and Henlein, a watch,
or a clock, is a _machine for keeping time_. So it must have three
essential parts: first, the power to make it go; second, the regulator
to make it keep time; and third, the hands and face to show plainly the
time it keeps. Each of these three parts is itself made up of several
others.

The power or energy which runs the watch is put in to it by the winding
which coils up the mainspring. The outer end of this spring is attached
to the rim of the main wheel (1) and after the spring is wound this
wheel would whirl round and let the spring run down instantly if
there was nothing to stop it. The teeth on this wheel, however, are
geared into the second or center pinion (as shown in illustration at
"A") which makes it run the entire movement while running down slowly
instead of flying round and uncoiling at once.

As we will see later, the spring-power is transmitted through the
train of wheels and the lever (7) to the balance wheel (8) which lets
the escape wheel (5) turn a little each time it swings, while it
simultaneously receives, by means of the lever from the escape wheel,
the "impulse" or power which keeps it running. Thus the swinging of
the balance lets the mainspring down gradually while drawing its power
from it. The spring is made as thin as it can be and still have power
enough to make the watch go. For a modern watch, this is about one
flea-power. One horse power, which is only a small fraction of the
power of the average automobile, would be enough to drive all the
millions of watches in the world.

The center pinion into which the mainspring is geared is attached to
its staff to which is also fastened the large center-wheel (2) so that
the spring cannot turn this pinion without also turning the center
wheel. But the center wheel is, itself, geared into the third pinion,
which is attached to the third wheel (3), and this again is geared into
the fourth pinion attached to the fourth wheel (4). The fourth wheel
gears into the escape pinion which revolves with the escape wheel (5),
so that none of these wheels or pinions can turn except when the escape
wheel does. But there is a constant pressure from the spring on all of
these wheels, which together constitute what is called the train.

The escape wheel, therefore, wants to turn continually and if it was
not restrained it would revolve rapidly, letting the movement run
down. But it is retarded and can only turn from one tooth to the
next, each time the balance (8) turns. This action is secured by
connecting the balance and the escape-wheel by means of the lever (7),
one end of which forms an anchor shaped like a rocking-beam, called
the pallet (6). In the pallet are two jewelled projections called the
pallet-jewels which intercept the escape-wheel by being thrust between
its teeth, letting it turn a distance of only one tooth at each swing
of the balance as the pallet rocks back and forth.

The other end of the lever is fork-shaped, having two prongs. On the
staff with the balance instead of a pinion as all the other wheels
have, is a plain, toothless disc called the roller, from the lower
side of which projects a pin or rod made of garnet. This is called
the jewel-pin or the roller-jewel. The roller being fastened to the
balance-staff, of course, turns just as the balance turns and with
it the jewel-pin. And the lever is just long enough and is so placed
that every time the balance turns, the jewel-pin fits into the slot
between the prongs of the lever-fork carrying it first one way, and
then, as the balance comes back, the other way. Thus the lever is kept
oscillating back and forth, rocking the pallet and withdrawing one
pallet-jewel, releasing the escape-wheel just long enough to let it
run to its next tooth before the other pallet-jewel is thrust in to
stop it. It is a beautiful thing, to watch, like the beating of a tiny
heart, or the breathing of a small quick creature. The hairspring (9)
almost seems to be alive. And indeed, it is in a way, the very pulse of
the machine.

[Illustration: _A Modern Watch Movement_]

There is only one more important point to understand. You know how the
power gets as far as the escape wheel from the mainspring, and how
the motion of the balance lets the escape-wheel revolve a tooth at a
time, but you have still to learn how the power which keeps the balance
rotating reaches it from the escape-wheel through the lever. Here is
the most interesting feature of a watch movement.

After the balance has been started, its momentum at each turn starts
the lever when the jewel-pin strikes it, but unless the balance was
constantly supplied with new power it would soon stop, and the watch
would not run. It will be noticed, however, from the illustration, that
the teeth of the escape-wheel are peculiar in shape and very different
from those of the other wheels. The ends of the pallet-jewels are also
cut at a peculiar angle.

Now, each time just before the jewel-pin starts to shift the lever from
one side to the other, the latter is in such a position that one of the
pallet-jewels is thrust in so that its side is against that of one of
the teeth of the escape-wheel, keeping it from turning. But the instant
the lever commences to move it begins to draw this pallet-jewel outward
from the tooth until the corner of the jewel passes the corner of the
tooth. Then the escape-wheel is released and the power that is behind
it makes it turn quickly, and on account of the shape of the tooth,
it gives the pallet-jewel a sharp push outward, swinging the lever,
causing it at the other end to impart a quick thrust to the jewel-pin,
thereby accelerating the speed of the balance and renewing its momentum.

Thus the balance receives the power to keep it in motion, swinging
it as far as the hairspring allows. The hairspring then reverses it
and swings it until the jewel-pin again starts the lever in the other
direction, releasing the escape-wheel from which it receives another
"impulse" and so on as long as the mainspring is kept wound. A watch in
perfect time ticks five times to the second. That means 18,000 swings
of the balance every hour, or 432,000 in a day. And in that time, the
rim of the balance travels about ten miles.

A clock is essentially only a larger and stronger watch, just as a
watch is a clock made small enough and light enough to be carried about
conveniently. But the working of the two is practically the same. They
are but different members of the same family, varying types of one
time-keeping machine which is among the most ingenious and valuable
things that man has made.

One interesting thing to know about a watch is that if it is keeping
good time, it will serve for a fairly accurate compass. So if you are
ever lost in the woods, your watch may help you out again. Lay it flat
face upward, and point the hour hand toward the sun. Then South will
be in the direction half way between the hour hand and the figure 12,
counting forward as the hands turn in the morning hours, and backward
in the afternoon. This is because the hour hand moves around the dial
just twice as fast as the sun moves around the sky, making a full
circle in twelve hours while the sun makes its half circle from horizon
to horizon.

Now, the sun is always to the southward of you as you are anywhere
north of the equator. At noon, the sun is practically due South. At
that hour, both hands of your watch are together on the figure 12 and
the hour hand pointing at the sun points in that direction. At 6 a.m.
the sun is nearly East, so if the hour hand, now on the figure 6 is
pointed eastward toward the sun, then South would be in a line just
over the figure 9. At 6 p.m., the sun being in the west and the hour
hand pointed at it, South would be half-way back toward the figure 12,
or just over the figure 3. For other morning or afternoon hours, the
same reasoning holds true.



APPENDIX B

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      York City, 1892.



APPENDIX C

_American Watch Manufacturers_

(CHRONOLOGY)


Judged by the number of failures which have marked the development
of the American watch industry, watch manufacturing might well be
characterized as a perilous business. While it has proved profitable
for a few, it also has swallowed many fortunes.

There were no watch companies in America until 1850, although a few
attempts were made to manufacture watches in the United States prior to
that time—by Luther Goddard, who established the first American watch
factory at Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, in 1809 and made several hundred
watches from 1809 to 1815, when he finally abandoned the business; by
Henry and James F. Pitkin at East Hartford, Connecticut, from 1838 to
about 1845 and by Jacob D. Custer at Norristown, Pennsylvania, from
1840 to 1845.

Except for a few companies whose organization and speedy dissolution
had small, if any, effect upon the industry as a whole, the following
briefly outlines the history of American watch manufacturing companies
from the real beginning in 1850 to the present day:


_1850_

The American Horologe Company of Roxbury, Massachusetts, organized;
name changed same year to The Warren Manufacturing Company; in 1853
name was again changed to The Boston Watch Company, the principal
stockholders of which organized The Waltham Improvement Company to
buy land and buildings for The Boston Watch Company at Waltham,
Massachusetts; moved into the new factory at Waltham in 1854; failed in
1857 and company's business was bought in by Royal E. Robbins, watch
importer of New York City and Tracy & Baker, watch case manufacturers
of Philadelphia; in 1858 The Waltham Improvement Company increased
its capital and purchased the business and property of The Boston
Watch Company and re-incorporated under the name of The American Watch
Company; in 1885 the name was changed to The American Waltham Watch
Company and in 1906 the name was again changed to The Waltham Watch
Company, its present name; in 1913 the Company purchased the business
of the Waltham Clock Company.


_1857_

E. Howard & Company of Roxbury, Massachusetts, was organized by Edward
Howard; in 1861 the name was changed to The Howard Clock & Watch
Company; in 1863 the company practically failed and was reorganized
under the name of The E. Howard Watch & Clock Company; in 1881 the
Company again practically failed and was again reorganized under the
name of The E. Howard Watch & Clock Company, with Edward Howard as
President, as he had been in the preceding organizations; in 1882
Howard withdrew as President and severed his connection with the
Company. From that time forward the Company gave increasingly greater
attention to the manufacture of clocks, although it continued to
manufacture the Howard watch until about 1903 when it entered into a
contract with The Keystone Watch Case Company of Philadelphia, under
which The E. Howard Watch & Clock Company transferred to The Keystone
Company all rights to the use of the name "E. Howard" in connection
with the manufacture of watches and also changed its own corporate
name to The E. Howard Clock Company. Later the company failed and
was operated by receivers until 1910 when a new company of the same
name was organized and purchased the property of the old concern. The
Keystone Company purchased the factory of The United States Watch
Company at Waltham, Massachusetts, and began the manufacture of watches
under the name of The Howard Watch Company.


_1859_

The Nashua Watch Company of Nashua, New Hampshire, was organized; it
failed in 1862 and was bought in by the American Watch Company—now The
Waltham Watch Company.


_1863_

The Newark Watch Company of Newark, New Jersey, was organized; it sold
out to The Cornell Watch Company of Chicago in 1870.

The United States Watch Company of Marion, New Jersey, was organized;
it failed in 1872 and was operated by creditors for a short time under
the name of The Marion Watch Company, but again failed; machinery of
the company was sold to E. F. Bowman of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who
manufactured a few watches and then sold the business to The J. P.
Stevens Watch Company of Atlanta, Georgia.


_1864_

The National Watch Company was organized and erected a factory at
Elgin, Illinois; in 1874 the name was changed to its present name of
The Elgin National Watch Company.

The Tremont Watch Company of Boston was organized, with Aaron L.
Dennison, one of the founders of the original Waltham Watch Company as
superintendent; it ceased business in 1868 because of lack of capital;
machinery of the company was sold to an English syndicate which
organized in England The Anglo-American Watch Company, the name of
which was later changed to The English Watch Company.

The New York Watch Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, was
organized by Don J. Mozart and others; it practically failed in 1866
and was reorganized under the same name; again failed in 1870 and the
business was taken over by a new company known as The New York Watch
Manufacturing Company. This Company survived only a few months and the
property and business were taken over by a new group in January 1877
under the name of The Hampden Watch Company, which company, in turn,
was later purchased by John C. Deuber and associates in control of The
Deuber Watch Case Manufacturing Company of Canton, Ohio, which was
originally organized at Cincinnati about 1888.


_1867_

The Mozart Watch Company of Ann Arbor, Michigan, was organized by
Don J. Mozart after leaving The New York Watch Company; in 1871 the
property and business were sold to The Rock Island Watch Company of
Rock Island, Illinois.


_1869_

The Illinois Springfield Watch Company was organized; in 1875 it was
reorganized under the same name; in 1879 it was again reorganized and
the name was changed to The Springfield Illinois Watch Company, which
was later changed to The Illinois Watch Company, under which name it
now operates.


_1870_

The Cornell Watch Company of Chicago was organized and took over the
business of The Newark Watch Company of Newark, New Jersey; in 1874
it sold its business and property to The Cornell Watch Company of San
Francisco, California.


_1871_

The Rock Island Watch Company of Rock Island, Illinois, was organized
and purchased the business of The Mozart Watch Company of Ann Arbor,
Michigan; it failed the same year without producing any watches and
passed out of existence.


_1872_

The Washington Watch Company of Washington, D. C., was organized, but
failed after two years.


_1873_

The Rockford Watch Company of Rockford, Illinois, was organized; in
1896 the company failed and the business was operated by assignee until
1901 when it was sold and reorganized under the name of The Rockford
Watch Company, Ltd.; it discontinued business in 1915, since which
time the remaining stock has been marketed by The Illinois Watch Case
Company of Elgin, Illinois.


_1874_

The Adams & Perry Watch Manufacturing Company of Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, was organized; it failed in 1876 without producing any
watches; the property was purchased by a syndicate in 1877 which
organized under the name of The Lancaster Pennsylvania Watch Company;
in 1878 it was reorganized under the name of The Lancaster Pennsylvania
Watch Company, Limited; in 1878 it was again reorganized under the name
of The Lancaster Watch Company. In 1884 control of the company passed
to Abram Bitzner, who, with Oppenheimer Bros. & Vieth, selling agents
of New York City, began to operate the company and assumed the name of
"Keystone Watch Company" as a trade mark; they failed in 1890 and in
1892 the property was purchased by The Hamilton Watch Company.

The Freeport Watch Manufacturing Company of Freeport, Illinois, was
organized, but before producing any watches the company's factory
burned and the business was discontinued in 1875.


_1874_

The Cornell Watch Company of San Francisco, California, was organized
and took over the business of the Cornell Watch Company of Chicago; in
1875 the company was reorganized under the name of The California Watch
Company and in 1877 the business was sold to the Independent Watch
Company of Fredonia, New York.


_1875_

Fitchburg Watch Company of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, was organized, but
discontinued, for lack of funds, a few years later without producing
any watches.


_1877_

The Hampden Watch Company, now of Canton, Ohio, was organized at
Springfield, Massachusetts and took over the business of the New
York Watch Company; later, the Company's business and property were
purchased by the interests in control of the Deuber Watch Case
Manufacturing Company of Canton, Ohio.

The Independent Watch Company of Fredonia, New York, was organized and
purchased the business and property of the California Watch Company
of San Francisco; in 1885 the business was sold to the Peoria Watch
Company of Peoria, Illinois.


_1879_

The Auburndale Watch Company, of Auburndale, Massachusetts, was
organized and purchased the machinery of the United States Watch
Company of Marion, New Jersey. In 1883 the company made a voluntary
assignment.


_1880_

The Waterbury Watch Company of Waterbury, Connecticut, was
incorporated; in 1898 the name of the company was changed to the New
England Watch Company; in 1912 the company failed, and in 1914 the
property was sold to and is now operated as one of the factories of
Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro. of New York City.

The E. Ingraham Company of Bristol, Connecticut, founded by E. Ingraham
in 1835 for the manufacture of clocks, was incorporated; in 1912 the
company purchased the business of The Bannatyne Watch Company of
Waterbury, Connecticut.

The Western Watch Company of Chicago was organized but failed the same
year without producing any watches, the machinery being sold to The
Illinois Watch Company.


_1882_

The Columbus Watch Company was organized at Columbus, Ohio; it was the
outgrowth of a private enterprise started in 1876 by D. Gruen and W. J.
Savage, who imported watch movements from Switzerland and sold them in
American-made cases. In 1903 the business of the company was purchased
by The South Bend Watch Company of South Bend, Indiana.

The J. P. Stevens Watch Company of Atlanta, Georgia, was organized and
failed in 1887.


_1883_

The New Haven Watch Company of New Haven, Connecticut, was organized;
in 1886 the company moved to Chambersburg, New Jersey, then a suburb
of Trenton; in the same year the name of the company was changed to
The Trenton Watch Company; in 1907 the company failed and in 1908 the
business and property were acquired by Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro. of New
York City. The factory at Trenton has since been operated as one of the
plants of the Ingersolls.

The Manhattan Watch Company of New York City was organized but did not
long continue.

The Cheshire Watch Company of Cheshire, Connecticut, was organized and
continued in operation for about ten years.

The Aurora Watch Company of Aurora, Illinois, was incorporated but did
not begin operations until 1885; failed in 1886; machinery sold in 1892
to The Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.


_1884_

The Seth Thomas Clock Company of Thomastown, Connecticut, founded by
Seth Thomas in 1813 and incorporated in 1853, began the manufacturing
of watches in 1884, but discontinued their manufacture in 1914. Seth
E. Thomas, Jr., great-grandson of the founder, is now president of the
company.

The United States Watch Company of Waltham, Massachusetts, was
organized as an outgrowth of The Waltham Watch Tool Company. Later it
failed and its plant was purchased by The Keystone Watch Case Company,
which operates the factory under the name of The Howard Watch Company.


_1885_

The New York Standard Watch Company of Jersey City, New Jersey, was
organized; in 1902 it was purchased by The Keystone Watch Case Company,
which continues to operate it under the original name.

The Peoria Watch Company of Peoria, Illinois, was organized and took
over the business of The Independent Watch Company of Fredonia, New
York, but did not long survive.


_1887_

The Wichita Watch Company of Wichita, Kansas, was organized, but
continued in operation only a few years.


_1888_

The Western Clock Manufacturing Company was incorporated with factory
at Peru, Illinois, and general offices at La Salle, Illinois; began
manufacturing watches in 1895; in 1895 the name of the company was
changed to Western Clock Company; manufacturers of "Big Ben" alarm
clock and low-priced nickel watches.


_1890_

D. Gruen Sons & Co., of Cincinnati, originally incorporated under laws
of West Virginia; in 1898 re-incorporated under laws of Ohio. Prior to
original incorporation the business was operated as a partnership under
the name of D. Gruen & Sons. Present company also operates under the
trade name of Gruen Watch Case Co. The company manufactures its watch
movements in Switzerland, assembling and casing them in the United
States.


_1892_

The Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was organized;
made only movements until 1909, but since then, both cases and
movements.


_1893_

Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro., of New York City, first introduced the
original Ingersoll watch to the public at the World's Columbian
Exposition; in 1892 the Ingersolls had contracted with the Waterbury
Clock Company of Waterbury, Connecticut for the manufacture of the
low-priced watch, which was first sold for $1.50 and later for
$1.00; in 1908 the Ingersolls purchased the factory and business of
the Trenton Watch Company of Trenton, New Jersey, and began watch
manufacturing on their own account; in 1914 they purchased the plant of
The New England Watch Company, formerly The Waterbury Watch Company of
Waterbury, Connecticut.


_1894_

The Webb C. Ball Company of Cleveland, Ohio, founded in 1879 and
incorporated in 1891, began the manufacture of watches.


_1899_

The Keystone Watch Case Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
was organized. It controls The Howard Watch Company of Waltham,
Massachusetts, The New York Standard Watch Company of Jersey City, New
Jersey, The Crescent Watch Case Company, Inc., of Newark, New Jersey,
and The Philadelphia Watch Case Company of Riverside, New Jersey.


_1902_

The South Bend Watch Company of South Bend, Indiana, was incorporated
in New Jersey under the name of The American National Watch Company,
but immediately thereafter changed to its present name; in 1903 it
purchased the business of The Columbus Watch Company of Columbus, Ohio;
in 1913 it was re-incorporated under Indiana laws.


_1904_

The Ansonia Clock Company of Brooklyn, New York, incorporated in 1873,
began the manufacture of low-priced nickel watches; its principal
business, however, is that of clock manufacture.


_1911_

The Leonard Watch Company of Boston, Massachusetts, was incorporated
for the purpose of selling and distributing watches.



APPENDIX D

_Well-Known Watch Collections_

(From list compiled by Major Paul M. Chamberlain, of Chicago in 1915.)


  ABBOTT—George E. H. Abbott, Groton, Massachusetts.

  ADDINGTON—S. Addington, Esq., purchaser at Bernal sale.

  ASHMOLEAN—Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England.

  AUGSBURG—Maxmillian Museum, Augsburg, Germany.

  BAKER—Edwin P. Baker, referred to by Britten.

  BAXTER—James Phinney Baxter, Portland, Maine.

  BLOIS—Musee de la ville, Blois, France.

  BOSTON—Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.

  BOURNE—T. W. Bourne, referred to by Britten.

  BRITISH—British Museum, London, England.

  BULLEY—Edward H. Bulley, referred to by Britten.

  BURKHARDT—M. Albert Burkhardt, Basle, Switzerland.

  CHAMBERLAIN—Paul M. Chamberlain, Chicago, Illinois.

  CHESAM—Lord Chesam, referred to by Britten.

  CLUNY—Musee de Cluny, Paris, France.

  CLARKE—A. E. Clarke, London, England.

  COCKEY—Edward C. Cockey, New York City.

  COINTRE—La Famille Cointre, of Poitiers, France.

  COPENHAGEN—Horological Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark.

  COOK—E. E. Cook, Walton-on-Thames, England.

  CZAR—Imperial collection, Hermitage Gallery, Petrograd, Russia
      (1915).

  CUMBERLAND—Duke of Cumberland, England.

  DEBRUGE—Debruge collection, catalogue published in 1849,
      referred to by M. E. Deville in Les Horlogers Blesois.

  DENNISON—Franklin Dennison collection, Birmingham, England.

  DEVOTION—The Edward Devotion House, Brookline, Massachusetts.

  DICKSON—R. Eden Dickson, London, England.

  DITISHEIM—Henri Ditisheim, Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.

  DRESDEN—Green Vaulted Chambers, Dresden, Germany.

  DUPLESSIS—Family of Duplessis of Blois, referred to in Les
      Horlogers Blesois.

  DOVER—Dover Museum, Dover, England.

  DUNWOODY—Dr. W. J. Dunwoody, mentioned by Britten.

  ESTREICHER—Dr. Tad. Estreicher, Fribourg, Switzerland.

  ESCHENBACH—Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Vienna,
      Austria-Hungary.

  FAWKES—J. H. Fawkes of Farnlet Hall, England.

  FELLOWS—Collection of Sir Charles Fellows, of Westbourn, Isle
      of Wight, bequeathed by widow to British Museum.

  FITZWILLIAM—Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England.

  FLEISHER—Collection of Moyer Fleisher, exhibited in the
      Pennsylvania Museum, Memorial Hall, Philadelphia,
      Pennsylvania.

  FOULC—M. Foulc, Paris, France.

  FRANCK—B. Bernard Franck, Paris, France.

  FREEMAN—Charles Freeman, referred to by Britten.

  FROIDEVAUX—M. Froidevaux, Blois, France.

  GARNIER—M. Paul Garnier, Paris, France.

  GELIS—M. Edouard Gelis, Paris, France.

  GEYER—H. F. Geyer, mentioned by Britten.

  GEORGI—M. Georgi, Paris, France.

  GLYN—George Carr Glyn, referred to by Britten.

  GOTHA—Museum of Gotha, Germany.

  GREENE—T. Whitcomb Greene, referred to by Britten.

  GUILDHALL—Guildhall Museum, London, England.

  HARTSHORNE—Albert Hartshorne, referred to by Britten.

  HEARN—George Hearn collection, presented by widow to
      Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

  HECKSCHER—Martin Heckscher collection in Vienna,
      Austria-Hungary.

  HEINZ—Collection of Henry J. Heinz, exhibited in the Carnegie
      Museum, Pittsburg.

  HODGKINS—Collection of J. E. Hodgkins, London, England.

  HUMPHREYS—Miss M. Humphreys, mentioned in Britten.

  JENKINS—Collection of Jefferson D. Jenkins, Decatur, Illinois.

  KING—C. King, Newport, Monmouthshire, England.

  KENSINGTON—South Kensington Museum, London, England.

  KIRNER—B. A. Kirner, Chicago, Illinois.

  LAMBERT—Messrs. Lambert, referred to by Britten.

  LAZERUS—Collection of Moses Lazerus, Philadelphia, bequeathed
      to Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  LAMBILEY—Compte de Lambiley, France.

  LAURANCE—E. A. Laurance, mentioned by Britten.

  LEBENHEIM—Mentioned in Morgan catalogue.

  LECOINTRE—Family of Lecointre, Poitiers, France.

  LEICESTER—Leicester Museum, Leicester, England.

  LEROUX—M. E. Leroux, Paris, France.

  LILJIGREN—L. O. Liljigren, Chicago, Illinois.

  LONDESBORO—Lord Londesboro, London, England.

  LOUVRE—Musee de Louvre, Paris, France.

  MARFELS—Collection of Carl Marfels, Berlin, Germany.

  MASSEY—Edwards Massey, London, England.

  MELDRUM—Robert Meldrum, referred to by Britten.

  METROPOLITAN—Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

  MIRABAUD—M. G. Mirabaud, Paris, France.

  MOORE—Bloomfield Moore collection in Pennsylvania Museum,
      Philadelphia.

  MORGAN—J. Pierpont Morgan collection at Metropolitan Museum of
      Art, New York City.

  O. MORGAN—Octavius Morgan collection in British Museum.

  MORAY—Lord Moray, London, England.

  MOSS—Rev. J. J. Moss, purchaser at Bernal sale, London,
      England, 1855.

  MUNICH—National Bavarian Museum at Munich, Germany.

  NELTHROPP—Collection presented by Rev. H. L. Nelthropp to the
      Worshipful Company of Clockmakers of the City of London
      and exhibited at Guild Hall Museum.

  NEWINGTON—Newington Free Library, Newington, England.

  OLIVIER—M. Olivier, Paris, France.

  PARR—Edward Parr, London, England.

  PARTRIDGE—R. W. Partridge, London, England.

  PONSONBY—Hon. Gerald Ponsonby, referred to by Britten.

  PROCTOR—Frederick Towne Proctor, Utica, New York.

  PROCTOR, T. R.—Thomas Redfield Proctor, Utica, New York.

  PURNELL—J. B. Purnell, purchaser at Bernal sale in 1855.

  RANKEN—William Ranken, London, England.

  REEVES—R. F. Reeves, St. Louis, Missouri.

  RENOUARD—Family of Renouard, Belois, France.

  ROBERTS—Evan Roberts, London, England.

  ROBERTSON—J. Drummond Robertson, London, England.

  ROBLOT—Ch. Roblot, Paris—Passy, France.

  ROTHCHILD—Baroness Alphonse de Rothchild collection.

  ROSENHEIM—Max Rosenheim, referred to by Britten.

  ROUX—Edward Roux, mentioned by Britten.

  SALTING—Collection now in the South Kensington Museum.

  SAUSSURE—M. Th. de Saussure, mentioned by Britten.

  SAUVE—M. Sauve, Belois, France.

  SCHLICHTING—Baron von Schlichting, Petrograd, Russia, (1915).

  SHAPLAND—Charles Shapland, London, England.

  SHAW—Morgan Shaw, London, England.

  SIDEBOTTOM—Collection of Mrs. H. Sidebottom, in South
      Kensington Museum.

  SIVAN—M. Charles Sivan, Paris, France.

  SMYTHIES—Major R. H. Raymond Smythies, London, England.

  SOANE—Soane Museum, London, England.

  STAMFORD—Stamford Institution, England.

  STROEHLIN—Stroehlin collection, referred to in J. P. Morgan
      catalogue.

  SUDELL—Edward Sudell, mentioned by Britten.

  SUTTON—Rev. A. F. Sutton, England.

  THOMPSON—Mrs. G. F. Thompson, Ottawa, Canada.

  TORPHICON—Lord Torphicon, referred to by Britten.

  TURRETTINI—Turrettini collection referred to by Dr. Williamson
      in Morgan catalogue.

  VAUTIER—M. L. Vautier, Belois, France.

  VENDOME—Calvaire de Vendome, France.

  VIENNA—Imperial Treasury, Vienna, Austria-Hungary.

  WALLACE—Lord Wallace collection, bequeathed by his widow to
      the British Museum.

  WEHRLE—Eugene Wehrle, Brussels, Belgium.

  WHEELER, H. L.—Horace L. Wheeler, Boston, Massachusetts.

  WHEELER—Collection of Willard H. Wheeler, Brooklyn, N. Y.,
      exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum, New York City.



APPENDIX E

_Encyclopedic Dictionary_


ABRASION—Wearing away by rubbing or friction.

ADAMS, J. C.—A promoter instrumental in organizing the Elgin,
Illinois, Cornell, and Peoria Watch Companies, and the Adams & Perry
Manufacturing Company. He invented and patented the "Adams System"
of time records in use on most of the railroads in the West. He last
appeared in prominent connection with the watch and clock business as
the organizer of the Swiss horological exhibit at the World's Columbian
Exposition.

ADDENDA—Tips of the teeth of a wheel beyond the pitch circle. Sometimes
of circular outline; sometimes ogive—that is, of a shape patterned
after the pointed arch. The addendum is also known as the "face" of the
tooth.

ADJUSTMENT—The manipulation of the balance with its spring and staff to
secure the most accurate time-keeping possible. Three adjustments are
usually made, viz.: for isochronism, temperature and position. Much of
the difference in value and cost of watches depends on this operation.

ADJUSTMENT TO ISOCHRONISM—Strictly speaking this would cover all
adjustment; but it is technically understood to mean an adjustment of
the balance spring so that the time of vibration through the long and
short arcs of the balance is the same.

ADJUSTMENT TO POSITIONS—The manipulation of the balance and its spring
so that a watch keeps time in different positions. Good watches are
usually adjusted to five positions. They are pendant up; III up; IX up;
dial up; and dial down.

ADJUSTMENT TO TEMPERATURE OR COMPENSATION—The adjustment of the balance
and spring so that the time-keeping qualities are affected as little as
possible by changes in temperature. See _Compensation_.

AHAZ—King of Judea, 742-727 B. C. See _Dial of Ahaz_.

ALARM—Sometimes spelled "alarum." A mechanism attached to a clock
whereby at any desired time a bell is struck rapidly by a hammer.

ALUMINUM-BRONZE—An alloy of aluminum and pure copper, usually in the
proportion of 10 parts of the former and 90 of the latter. It is
considerably lighter than brass and highly resistant to wear.

ANAXIMANDER—Greek astronomer to whom the Greeks ascribed the invention
of the sun-dial in the sixth century B. C.

ARBOR—The axle or axis on which a wheel of a watch or clock turns. Also
applied to a spindle used by watchmakers.

ARC—Any section of the circumference of a circle.

ARCHIMEDES—A famous Greek philosopher and scientist sometimes credited
with the invention of the clock. About 200 B. C. he made a machine with
wheel work and a maintaining power but having no regulator it was no
better as a time teller than a planetarium turned by a handle. It may
have furnished the suggestion for later time-keeping machines.

ARNOLD, JOHN—Born 1736. An English watchmaker of note. He invented the
helical form of the balance spring and a form of chronometer escapement
much like Earnshaw's. Died 1799. Arnold's devices have been most useful
and permanent.

ASSEMBLING—The putting together of the finished parts of a watch. In a
three-quarter plate watch this is done on the lower plate. In a full
plate movement it is easier and more satisfactory to assemble on the
top plate.

ASTROLABE—1. An instrument of various forms formerly used especially
in navigation to measure the altitudes of planets and stars. 2. A
projection of a sphere upon any of its great circles.

ASTRONOMICAL TIME—Means solar time, as computed from observing the
passage of the sun across the meridian from noon of one day to noon
of the following day. It is counted continuously up to 24—not in two
12-hour divisions.

ASTRONOMY—The science which treats of the motions, real and apparent,
of the heavenly bodies. Upon this science, through its determination
of the length of the year, is founded the science of horology—or
time-keeping.

AUTOMATA—FOR STRIKING—Very common on old clocks and very
complicated, such as: Indian King hunting with elephants, Adam and Eve,
Christ's flagellation, and many others. See _Clocks, Interesting Old_.

AUTOMATIC MACHINERY—The second great contribution of America
to watchmaking after the establishment of the principle of
interchangeability of parts, and making possible the effective
execution of that principle.

AUXILIARY—A device attached to a compensation balance to reduce what is
known as the "middle temperature error." Some are constructed to act
in high temperatures only—as Molyneux's; and some in low temperatures
only—as Poole's.


BALANCE—The vibrating wheel in a watch or chronometer which with the
aid of the balance spring (hair-spring) regulates the rate of travel
of the hands. The balance is kept in vibration by means of the escape
wheel. See _Compensation Balance_.

BALANCE ARC—In detached escapements, that part of the vibration of
the balance in which it is connected with the train. The remainder is
called the drop.

BALANCE-CLOCK—A form of clock built before the pendulum came into use.
The regulating medium was a balance on the top of the clock made with a
verge escapement. See _Foliot_.

[Illustration: BALANCE COCK]

BALANCE COCK—The standard which supports the top pivot of the balance.
In old watches often elaborately pierced and engraved.

BALANCE SPRING—In America usually called the "hair-spring." A long
slender spring that governs the time of vibration of the balance. One
end of the balance spring is fastened to a collet fitted friction-tight
on the balance staff, the other to a stud attached to the balance cock
or to the watch plate. The most ordinary form is the volute, or flat
spiral. The other form used is an overcoil. See _Bréquet Spring_. The
principle of the isochronism of a balance spring was discovered by
Hooke, and first applied to a watch by Tompion. The name hair-spring
comes from the fact that the first ones are said to have been made from
hog bristles.

BALANCE SPRING BUCKLE OR "GUARD"—A small stud with a projecting tongue
attached to the index arm and bridging the curb pins so as to prevent
their engaging two of the balance spring coils. Used chiefly in Swiss
watches.

BALANCE STAFF—The axis of the balance. The part of a watch most likely
to be injured by a fall.

BALANCE WHEEL—A term often incorrectly applied to the balance itself,
but properly it is the escape wheel of the verge escapement.

BAND—Of a Watchcase—The "middle" of the case to which the dome, bottom
and bezel are fastened; the last sometimes screwed, sometimes snapped.

BANK—Banking-pin.

BANKING—In a lever watch the striking of the outside of the lever
by the impulse pin due to excessive vibration of the balance. In a
cylinder or verge movement the striking of the pin in the balance
against the fixed banking-pin.

BANKING-PIN—A pin for restricting the motion of the balance in verge
and cylinder watches.

BANKING-PINS—1. In a lever watch, two pins which limit the motion of
the lever. 2. In a pocket chronometer, two upright pins in the balance
arm which limit the motion of the balance spring. 3. In any watch,
the curb pins which confine the balance spring are sometimes called
banking-pins.

BARLOW, EDWARD (BOOTH)—A clergyman of the Church of England, born
in 1636. He devoted a great deal of time to horological pursuits.
He invented the rack repeating striking works for clocks, applied
by Tompion in 1676. He invented also a repeating works for watches
on the same plan. And he invented the cylinder escapement which he
patented with Tompion and Houghton. When he applied for a patent on his
repeating watch he was successfully contested by Quare, who was backed
by the Clockmakers' Company. He died in 1716.

BAR MOVEMENT—A watch movement in which bars take the place of the
top plate and carry the upper pivots. Sometimes termed a "skeleton"
movement. Not generally adopted because its many separate bearing parts
promote inaccuracies where large quantities are to be produced.

BARREL—A circular box which confines the mainspring of a watch or clock.

BARREL ARBOR—The axis of the barrel around which the mainspring is
coiled.

BARREL HOLLOW—A sink cut either into the top plate or the pillar plate
of a watch to allow the barrel freedom.

BARREL HOOK—A bent pin in the barrel to which the mainspring is
attached.

BARREL RATCHET—A wheel on the barrel arbor which is prevented by a dog
from turning backward while the mainspring is being wound and which
becomes the base against whose resistance the train is driven.

BARTLETT, P. S.—One of the early watchmakers of America. Connected
with the Waltham factory at first and later with the Elgin Company. It
is said that he first proposed the formation of the company at Elgin.
His name became familiar as a household word throughout the country
from being inscribed upon a full-plate model which attained widespread
success.

BEAT—The strike or blow of the escape wheel upon the pallet or locking
device.

BEAT PINS—The pins at the ends of the pallets in a gravity escapement
which give impulse to the pendulum.

BECKETT, SIR EDMUND—See _Denison, Edmund Beckett_.

BEROSUS—A Chaldean historian who lived at the time of Alexander the
Great, about 200 B. C., and was a priest of Belus at Babylon. Said
to have been the inventor of the hollow sun-dial. He was the great
astronomer of his age.

BERTHOUD, FERDINAND, 1727-1807— An eminent French watchmaker and
writer on horological subjects. Among his books are: "Essai sur
l'Horlogerie," "Traite des Horloges Marines," and "Histoire de la
mesure du Temps." He was a Swiss by birth, but lived most of his life
in Paris.

BEZEL—The ring of a watch or clock case which carries the glass or
crystal in an internal groove.

BIG BEN—The great bell which strikes the hours on the clock at
Westminster.

BIZZLE—A corruption of Bezel. See _Bezel_.

BLOW HOLES—Places where the brass and steel of a compensation balance
are not perfectly united, when they are put together with silver or
solder.

BOB—The metal mass forming the body of a pendulum.

BOETHIUS, ANCIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS, A. D. 480-524—A Roman philosopher
and statesman to whom is sometimes attributed the invention of the
clock. He did make a sun-dial and a water clock which latter may have
contained a germ of the idea later developed into our modern clock.

BOSS—A cylindrical prominence or stud. The minute hand is carried on
the boss of the center wheel.

BOTTOM—Of a Watchcase—The cover outside the dome of the case. Commonly
called the "back."

BOUCHON—The hard brass tubing of which pivot holes in watch and clock
plates are made; known commonly as "bushing wire." The short sections
cut off for a pivot being called the "bushing."

BOW—The ring of a watch case to which the guard or chain is attached;
also known as "pendant bow."

[Illustration: BOW AND BUTTON]

BOX CHRONOMETER—A marine chronometer.

BOXING-IN—Fitting the watch movement in its case; applied chiefly to
the encasing of stem-winding movements.

BRÉQUET, ABRAHAM LOUIS—A celebrated Swiss mechanician and watchmaker
born at Neufchatel in 1747. He made several improvements in watches,
the most notable being the Bréquet hairspring still in use in the best
watches. He died in 1823.

[Illustration: BRÉQUET SPRING]

BRÉQUET SPRING—A form of balance spring which is a volute with its
outer end bent up above the plane of the body of the spring and carried
in a long curve towards the center near which it is fixed. Like all
other springs in which the outer coil returns towards the center, it
offers opportunities of obtaining isochronism by varying the character
of the curves described by the outer coil and thus altering its
resistance. So-called from its inventor, Abraham Louis Bréquet (q.
v.). Its advantage over the flat spring is that the overcoil allows
expansion and contraction in all directions, thereby avoiding a good
deal of side friction on the pivots as well as insuring more nearly
perfect isochronism in changes of temperature.

BRIDGE—A standard fastened to the plate, in which a pivot works.

BRIDGE MODEL—The term given to watch movements in which plates or
bridges carrying the upper pivots of the train rest firmly on the lower
or dial plate and are held rigid by steady pins on lower side of the
plate; the bridge being secured direct to the dial plate by screws
termed plate or bridge screws. This is the most common construction
of present-day manufacture and is utilized in three-quarter plate or
separate and combination bridges covering one or more pivots of train
wheels. Its alternate is "pillar model."

BUCK, D. A. A.—A watch repairer in Worcester, Mass., who designed a
model for the Waterbury watch. His first model was not successful, but
in 1877 he completed one which, a little later, the Waterbury Company,
with Buck as master watchmaker, started to make. He remained with the
company until 1884.

BUSH—A perforated piece of metal let into a plate to receive the wear
of pivots.

BUTTING—The engaging of the tips of the teeth of two wheels acting in
gear. The proper point of contact being in the line of the shoulders of
the teeth, butting is remedied by setting the wheels farther apart.

BUTTON—The milled knob used for winding and setting a keyless watch.


CALCULAGRAPH—Trade name for a device for automatically computing and
recording elapsed time in connection with factory jobs and other work
where it is necessary to show the amount of labor used.

CALENDAR—A system of dividing the year into months and days. The
principal calendars known to history are: the Julian calendar; the
Gregorian calendar; the Hebrew calendar; the Mohammedan calendar;
and the Republican calendar. None of them has been quite accurate in
dividing up the solar year, and frequent arbitrary corrections are
necessary to secure a practical approximation. See descriptive article
under each title.

_Julian_—Established by Julius Caesar, 46 B.C., to remedy existing
defects in the Roman calendar then in use. The Julian year was based on
the assumption that the solar year is 365¼ days—which was 11 minutes
and 14 seconds too long. The scheme adopted was to make the regular
calendar year 365 days, and to add one day every fourth year. The
Julian calendar is still in use by Russia and Greece, where the dates
now differ from those of most other countries by 13 days.

_Gregorian_—Established October 15, 1582, by Pope Gregory XIII, in
correction of the obvious errors of the Julian calendar. It is the
calendar now in use by nearly all civilized nations. The mean length of
the Gregorian year is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds—26
seconds longer than the actual solar year. Correction is made by adding
a 29th day for February every fourth year, excepting when the date of
said fourth year is divisible by 100. If, however, the date is also
divisible by 400, the extra day is added.

_Republican_—The calendar of the French Revolution (1793) declared to
begin at midnight on the meridian of the Paris Observatory preceding
the true autumnal equinox, September 22, 1792. There were 12 months of
30 days each and 5 or 6 "extra days" (as might be necessary) at the end
of the year to bring the new year nearest to the then position of the
equinox. Abolished January 1, 1806.

_Hebrew_—Composed of 12 lunar months, a thirteenth month being added
from time to time to secure correspondence of the months with
the passing seasons. The months are arbitrarily arranged to have
alternately 29 days and 30 days. The length of the calendar year varies
from 353 days to 385 days.

_Mohammedan_—Based on a lunar year of 354 days divided into 12 lunar
months which are alternately 29 and 30 days in length. During each
period of 30 years a total of 11 days are added one at a time at the
end of a year. The lack of co-ordination with the solar year results in
a total separation of the seasonal year and the calendar year. In use
in Turkey and some other Mohammedan countries.

[Illustration: CALENDAR CLOCK]

CALENDAR CLOCK, OR WATCH—A clock or watch which indicates days and
months as well as hours.

CALIPER—The scheme of arrangement of a watch train, or the disposition
of the parts of a watch.

[Illustration: CAM]

CAM—A rotating piece either non-circular or eccentric, used to
convert rotary into linear reciprocating motion, oftener irregular in
direction, rate, or time.

CANNON PINION—The pinion to which the minute hand is attached. It is
tubular in form (whence its name), the main arbor passing through it
friction-tight.

CANTON BERNE—The Swiss district which does the largest export business
in silver and base metal watches in Switzerland. The cantonal
government has done everything possible to promote the industry, among
other things: 1. Established information offices in the principal
watch-making centers. 2. Established a permanent exhibition of
articles used in the industry. 3. Established schools and associations
and protective territories. 4. Prepared statistics and means for
negotiating commercial relations.

CAP—The part of the case that covers the movement.

CAPPED JEWEL—A jewel having a protective end-stone.

CARILLON—Chimes frequently used in the earlier clocks for striking the
hours. Still used in some clocks.

CARON, PETER AUGUSTUS—A famous Paris watchmaker, afterward called
Beaumarchais, who made the first keyless watch of which we have any
account.

CASE—The metal box in which the movement of a watch is inclosed.

CASE-SPRINGS—The springs which cause the outer bottom of a watch case
to fly open when the lock spring is released.

CENTER OF GYRATION—That point in which the whole mass of a rotating
body might be concentrated without altering its moment of inertia.

CENTER OF OSCILLATION—That point in a pendulum at which, if the whole
mass of the pendulum were collected, the time of oscillation would be
the same.

CENTER SECONDS OR SWEEP SECONDS—A long seconds hand moved from the
center of a watch dial, as are the minute and hour hands.

CENTER STAFF—The arbor attached to the center wheel which carries the
minute hand.

CENTER WHEEL—The wheel in ordinary clocks and watches placed in the
center of the frame on whose arbor the minute hand is carried. It is
intermediate between the barrel and the third wheel.

CHAMFER—To cut away to a bevel the right angle formed by two adjacent
faces as of a jewel or stone. It is also occasionally used to signify
channeling or grooving.

[Illustration: CHAMFER]

CHASING—A form of ornament for metals which is made by punching or
pressing from behind to present the pattern in relief instead of by
cutting away the material.

CHOPS—In a pendulum clock the blocks, usually of brass, between which
the top of the pendulum suspension spring is clipped to prevent its
twisting as it swings.

CHRONOGRAPH—In general, a recording clock or watch. Specifically, a
watch with a center-seconds hand which may be stopped, started or
returned to zero at will by pressing a button. Used for timing races,
or measuring other short spaces of time with great exactness.

CHRONOMETER—Any very accurate time-keeper. Usually understood to mean a
time-keeper fitted with a spring detent escapement. They usually have a
fusee and a cylindrical balance spring.

CHRONOMETER, MARINE—Probably the most exact form of time-keeper,
especially for use on shipboard. The driving power is a mainspring
acting by a chain on a fusee, and governed by what is known as the
Chronometer or Detent Escapement, with, as a rule, the cylindrical
balance spring. The movement is mounted on gimbals in an air and
water-tight brass case, maintaining the dial constantly in a horizontal
position.

CHRONOSCOPE—A clock or watch in which the time is shown by figures
presented at openings in the dial.

CHURCH, DUANE H.—Credited with having contributed more to the automatic
features of watch machinery than any other man. He was born in Madison
County, N. Y., in 1849. At 16 he was apprenticed to a watchmaker of St.
Paul, Minn., and after working at the trade for 17 years, he became
in 1882 the master watchmaker for the Waltham Watch Company. Besides
his invaluable contributions to automatic machinery, he improved the
general design of watch movements and invented a form of pendant
setting which enables stem-winding movements to be set in cases not
especially adapted to them. He died in 1905.

CIRCULAR ERROR—The difference in time arising from the swinging of a
pendulum in a circular arc instead of its true theoretical path which
is a cycloidal arc. This caused much trouble in the early clocks.
Huyghens attempted to correct it (see _Huyghens' Checks_) but found
that his device caused greater error. With the heavier pendulum and
shorter arcs of vibration this error becomes negligible. The suspension
of the pendulum by a flat flexible spring instead of a cord, attributed
to Dr. Hooke, served to make the path practically cycloidal.

CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE—An Egyptian obelisk at whose base a dial was marked.
Now in London. Another similar obelisk from Egypt is in Central Park,
New York City.

CLEPSAMMIA—The sand-glass, more familiarly known as the hour-glass. See
_Hour-glass_; _Sand-glass_.

[Illustration: CLEPSYDRA]

CLEPSYDRA—A device for the measurement of time by the flow of running
water. Its simplest form is a vessel filled with water which trickles
or drops slowly from a small aperture into another vessel. One or the
other of the vessels is graduated and the height of the water in that
one at any given time indicates the hour. Sometimes a figure floating
on the water points to the hours. Later, falling, or running, water
was made to turn wheels or to move a drum, as in "Vailly's clock."
Clepsydras were made and improved up to the 17th century. The earliest
known example—one in China—is credited with having existed in 4000
B. C. The name indicates the stealing away of water and is derived
from two Greek words meaning "water" and "to steal." A common form of
clepsydra in India was a copper bowl with a small hole in the bottom
floating on water. When the bowl filled and sank the attendant emptied
it, struck the hour upon it and floated it again on the surface of the
water. Like the sun-dial, the clepsydra was invented so long ago that
there is no authentic record of its origin. Its evident advantages
are exactly those which the sun-dial lacked. It is quite independent
of day or night or other external conditions; it is conveniently made
portable; and by regulating the size of the aperture through which
the water flows, it can be made to work slow or fast so as, within
considerable limits, to measure accurately and legibly long or short
intervals of time.

The disadvantages of the clepsydra were, first, that the hole in the
container tended to become worn away so as to let the water out too
fast; and second, that the water ran faster from a full vessel than
from one nearly empty, because of the greater pressure. This latter
was in classic times corrected by a clepsydra consisting of two
vessels. The second and larger of these was placed below, the water
running _into_ it, out of the first. A float within this larger vessel
rose regularly as it filled, and carried a pointer which marked the
time. The first vessel from which the water ran into the second, was
provided with an overflow, and kept constantly full up to this level;
so that the flow of water into the larger vessel remained constant.

[Illustration]

Once well established and understood in principle, the clepsydra
became widely known over the ancient world, and underwent a variety
of improvements and modifications in form. These latter chiefly dealt
with making it more legible. Means were devised, for instance, to
make it ring a bell when the water reached a certain height. And
thus the alarm principle was very early brought into use. Later on,
after the development of mechanical devices like the pulley and the
toothed wheel or gear, the pointer was by these means constructed to
move faster or slower than the rate at which the water rose, or to
revolve upon a circular dial on which the hours were marked. And thus
we owe to the clepsydra the origin of the modern clockface as well as
of the alarm. Later still, by a more complex ingenuity, devices were
arranged to strike the hours or to move mechanical figures, in fact,
to perform all the functions of a clockwork which was both driven and
regulated by hydraulic power. The single hour hand, however, remained
in place of our two or three hands moving at different speeds, as in
the modern clock or watch. The clockwork also remained primitive in
construction compared with our own. Clepsydrae were always expensive,
because accurate mechanical work was never cheapened until modern time.
Rather they were made marvels of patient ingenuity and lavish ornament.
Cunning oriental craftsmen spent their skill upon elaborate mechanism
and costly decorations. The clepsydra thus became first what other
time-pieces later became—a triumph of the jeweler's craft—a gift for
kings. And the Greeks, who beautified everything that they touched,
made it at once more accurate and more artistic.

The clepsydra may thus fairly claim to have been the first _mechanical_
device for measuring time, as contrasted with the sun-dial which was
really an astronomical instrument; and thus the direct ancestor of
the mechanical clocks of later days. Some authorities, indeed, on the
strength of certain very ancient allusions to its use in China and
elsewhere, claim for it an antiquity prior to the sun-dial itself.
There seems, however, to be no reason for supposing that the discovery
of a mechanical law like the regular flow of water antedated so
obvious a discovery as the motion of a shadow upon the ground. The
explanation is probably that the invention of the clepsydra did precede
the scientific perfecting of the sun-dial by the inclinations of the
gnomon; which may have taken place about the time of the correction of
the Babylonian calendar in 747 B. C. Not long after this date we meet
with frequent references to the placing of a clepsydra in the public
square of some old city, or to its use in astronomical calculations.
To this, of course, its property of running by night was peculiarly
adapted.

Although the chief defects of the clepsydra were minimized by the use
of the two vessels and by making the aperture through which the water
ran of gold or some other substance which would wear away very slowly,
yet there remained certain minor imperfections. The water could not be
kept entirely from evaporating; it had to be emptied out at intervals
and the reservoir refilled; its accuracy was affected by the expansion
of the parts under change of temperature, or it might even freeze.
These faults were obviated in the sand-glass or hour-glass which for
short intervals of time was also more convenient.

The clepsydra remained in use until clocks became superior to it in
accuracy. See _Clocks, Interesting Old_; _Charlemagne_; _Vailly_.

CLERKENWELL—A district on the north side of the city of London within
the metropolitan borough of Finsbury. It is distinguished as one of the
great centers of the watchmaking and jewelers' industries in England
and long established there. The Northampton Polytechnic Institute,
Northampton Square, has a department devoted to instruction in all
branches of the trade.

CLICK—The click, pawl, or dog, is a necessary accessory of a ratchet
wheel. It is a finger, one end of which fits into the teeth of the
ratchet, while the other is pivoted on its tangent. The ratchet is thus
prevented from turning backward.

CLOCK—Specifically, a time-piece not made to be carried about but to
stand upon a shelf or table, hang upon a wall or as built into a tower.
Formerly the term signified particularly a time-piece which struck
the hours. The word has its origin in the word for _bell_ in Latin,
_gloccio_; Teutonic, _glocke_; French, _cloche_; and Saxon, _clugga_.
At one time the term was used to denote timekeepers driven by weights
as distinguished from those driven by springs.

CLOCK-WATCH—A watch which strikes the hours in succession, as
distinguished from repeaters. Popular in the eighteenth century.

[Illustration: CLOCK-BANJO]

CLOCK, BANJO--A wall clock, so called from its shape, designed by Simon
Willard, of Massachusetts and very popular in its time.

[Illustration: CLOCK, BIRD-CAGE]

CLOCK, BIRD-CAGE—An old form of English clock whose manufacture has
been discontinued—it is the oldest form of English clock still doing
service. Its main feature is the endless chain drive. These clocks run
thirty hours.

CLOCK, BRACKET—A form of clock very popular in England during the reign
of Charles II, made to stand on a bracket or table and intended to be
seen from all sides. These clocks had either a handle on top or one on
each side. They were very beautifully finished.

CLOCK, CANDLE—Wax or tallow candle, usually twelve inches long and
marked with circular lines one inch apart. The candle would burn one
inch every twenty minutes or three inches an hour. Invention credited
to King Alfred the Great.

CLOCK, GRANDFATHER'S OR LONG-CASE—A tall clock with an anchor
escapement popular thru-out the later 18th and early 19th centuries in
England and America. Its excellent timekeeping qualities are due to the
very long and heavy pendulum which allows a small arc of vibration. Not
often made at present.

[Illustration]

CLOCK, HOOD—A style of clock originating and very popular in Holland
during the late 17th century. Made of various woods, carved and
ornamented and named from the hood or dome on top.

CLOCK, LAMP—A long glass tube upright on a metal stand similar in shape
to the old Roman lamps. Figures were painted on the tube to indicate
the hours—"12" in the middle section, with "11" above and "1" below
the "12." The lamp was filled with oil up to the hour at which it was
lighted—then as the oil burned away the time was indicated. This form
of clock was used at night in Dutch and German rural homes until a
comparatively recent date.

[Illustration]

CLOCK, LANTERN—Same as Bird-Cage Clock.

CLOCK, LARGEST IN WORLD—The Colgate clock in Jersey City is claimed to
be twice as large as the next largest clock in the world. Its dial can
be read for four miles and weighs six tons. Its minute hand is twenty
feet long and the tip of it travels more than half a mile per day.

[Illustration]

CLOCK MYSTERIES—Glass Dial—A perfectly transparent dial behind which no
movement was visible. The hands were caused to revolve by watch works
and semi-circular weights in the counterpoise of the hands.

CLOCK, OLDEST IN AMERICA—A clock owned by the Philadelphia Public
Library—over two centuries old. It was made in London and is said to
have been owned by Oliver Cromwell.

CLOCK, SHEEP'S-HEAD—A clock similar to the bird-cage or lantern clock
in which the dial face projects an inch or two beyond the frame.

CLOCK, SKELETON—A clock whose works are covered with glass as a
protection from dust, but are without a case, the works being exposed
to view. There are eight skeleton clocks in the Charles Mifflin Hammond
collection at the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts.

CLOCK, TURRET—A large clock in which the dials are distinct from the
movement. Because of the exposure of the hands to the wind and snow,
of the clock to dust and dirt, and of the oil to freezing temperature,
turret clocks to keep time must be fitted with some device to obtain a
constant force on the pendulum. The first used was the remontoire but
since the invention of the gravity escapement for the Westminster clock
by Sir Edmund Beckett this has been used instead.

[Illustration]

CLOCK, "WAG ON THE WALL"—A wall clock typical of the North of Holland
in which weights and pendulum hung below the clock case, entirely
unenclosed.

CLOCK AND WATCH MAKERS, ENGLISH, EARLY—For extensive lists, dates,
places, and notes, see: Old Clocks and Watches & Their Makers, by
Frederick J. Britten; Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, London,
Published by E. J. Francis and Co., London, 1875; Old Clock Book, by
Mrs. N. H. Moore.

FRENCH, EARLY—See: Old Clocks and Watches and Their Makers, by F. J.
Britten.

SCOTTISH, EARLY—For extensive list with dates, places and notes, see:
Old Scottish Clock Makers, by John Smith.

CLOCK MAKERS, AMERICAN, EARLY—For lists, dates, places, and notes, see:
Old Clock Book, by Mrs. N. H. Moore; American Clockmaking—Its Early
History, by Henry Terry.

CLOCK MYSTERIES; TORTOISE IN WATER—Nicholas Grollier during the first
part of the eighteenth century made many mysterious timekeepers. One
was a metal dish filled with water in which floated the figure of a
tortoise always keeping his nose to the correct time.

BALL OF VENICE—This was a sphere—its upper and lower parts gold, and
about the middle a silver band bearing the numerals. As the band
revolved a Cupid's wing pointed to the hour. Its action was simple.
The cord which suspended it was wound about a cylinder. The weight of
the ball constituted the driving power. It had a verge escapement. The
maker is not known.

DOUBLE GLOBE—Constructed of two clear glass globes, the smaller one for
the minutes above the larger hour globe. The mechanism for the latter
was in the base, and for the minute globe, in the cap of the hour
globe. Made by Henri Cunge.

[Illustration]

CLOCKS, INTERESTING OLD: _Anne Boleyn's_—A clock said to have been
presented to Anne Boleyn by Henry VIII on their wedding morning. It is
about four inches square and ten inches high, of silver gilt "richly
chased, engraved, and ornamented." The weights are of lead covered with
copper, gilt and engraved. On one are Henry's and Anne's initials, and
true lovers' knots. On the other simply H. A. At the top of each weight
is "Dieu et mon droit," at the bottom "The most happye." On the top
of the clock is the figure of a lion holding the arms of England, the
same being engraved on the sides. The clock is now silent. There is no
record as to its maker.

_Canterbury_—This was the third of the large clocks in England. It was
constructed in 1292.

_Charlemagne's_—In 807 the King of Persia sent Charlemagne a bronze
water clock inlaid with gold. The dial consisted of twelve small doors
representing the hours. Each door opened at the hour it represented
and the correct number of balls fell out upon a brass bell. At twelve
o'clock twelve horsemen appeared and shut the doors.

_Coblentz_—At Coblentz in a tower on the Kaufhaus is a brazen head
which gnashes its teeth as the hours strike. For a Coblentzer to say
"How is the man in the Kaufhaus" means "How goes it with Coblentz and
the good people there?"

[Illustration]

_de Vick's_—In 1364 Henry de Vick set up a clock in the tower of the
palace for Charles V. It was regulated by a balance. The teeth of the
crown wheel acted upon two small levers called pallets which projected
from and formed part of an upright spindle or staff on which was fixed
the balance. The clock was regulated by shifting the weights placed at
each end of the balance. On the bell of this clock the signal for the
massacre of St. Bartholomew's was struck.

_Dondi's at Pavia_—Built in 1344, by James Dondi, similar to
Wallingford's clock.

_Exeter_—A clock built in Exeter Cathedral sometime in the 14th
century. One erected there in 1480 has the sun—a fleur-de-lis which
points out the hours as it revolves around a globe representing the
earth. A black and white ball represents the moon's phases by turning
on its axis.

_Frederick II_—The Saladin of Egypt presented Frederick II of Germany
with a clock in the year 1232. It resembled internally, a celestial
globe, in which figures of the sun, moon, and other planets moved
impelled by weights and wheels. There were also the twelve signs of the
Zodiac which moved with the firmament.

[Illustration]

_Hans von Jena's_—An old clock in Saxony at the top of which is a very
ugly head. As the clock strikes a pilgrim offers an apple on a stick
to the open mouth and then withdraws it. At the same time an angel
opposite the pilgrim raises her eyes from her book. The legend goes
that Hans von Jena, for a crime, was condemned to undergo such torture
for three centuries.

_Jefferson's_—An old weight clock in which the weights are carried over
a pulley and made to indicate the day of the week by their position.
This is in the hallway at Monticello.

_Lists and Descriptions of_—See Curiosities of Clocks and Watches, E.
J. Wood. Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers, F. J. Britten. Old
Clock Book, N. H. Moore.

[Illustration]

_Vase Clocks of Marie Antoinette_—The movement was inclosed in a marble
pedestal. About the beautifully tinted porcelain urn was a double band,
on which were marked the numerals and which revolved every twelve
hours. A serpent with head erect pointed to the hour.

[Illustration]

_Mary, Queen of Scots_—Skull Watch or Clock. A small clock in the
form of a skull said to have been given by Mary, Queen of Scots, to
Mary Seaton, one of her maids of honor. The skull is of silver gilt
and is engraved with figures of Death, Time, Adam and Eve, and the
Crucifixion. The lower part of the skull is pierced to emit the sound
when it strikes, being cut in the form of emblems of the Crucifixion.
The works occupy the brain's position in the skull fitting into a
silver bell which fills the entire hollow of the skull. The hours are
struck on this bell by a small hammer on a separate train.

POPE SIXTUS'—Built by Habrecht of Strasburg in 1589. It greatly
resembles the Strasburg clock which Habrecht also built. It was in
the possession of the Popes for more than two centuries and later
became the property of William I, King of the Netherlands. In 1850 it
was exhibited in England after which it became the property of Mr. O.
Morgan. It performs all the feats of the Strasburg clock.

_Rouen_—In the Rue de la Grosse Horloge in Rouen a clock made by Jehan
de Fealius in 1389 is built in a tower which surmounts an arched
gateway. Its dial is about six feet square. It shows the hours, days of
the week, and phases of the moon. It still keeps excellent time and is
the chief clock of the city.

[Illustration]

_St. Dunstan's_—Erected in 1671 above the gateway of the old St.
Dunstan's Church. The clock had two dials, back to back upheld by a
quaint bracket. In a little open belfry above were the gaily painted
figures of Gog and Magog which struck the quarters on bells suspended
near them. In 1830 the clock was sold to the Marquis of Hertford who
set it up at his home in Regent Park.

_St. Paul's_—A clock existed prior to 1298 in the tower of St. Paul's
Cathedral which struck the hours by means of mechanical figures called
Paul's Jacks. Later a fine dial was added.

_Strasburg_—Rebuilt twice after the first one which was begun about
1352. This first clock consisted of a calendar which showed the
principal movable feasts. It showed also the movements of the sun and
moon. On the upper part was a statue of the Virgin before which at noon
the figures of the three Magi bowed. At the same time a cock automaton
opened its beak, flapped its wings and crowed. 2. The second Strasburg
clock was erected about 1570. This was a very elaborate mechanism,
showing besides the time, a calendar for a century, the movements of
the sun and moon, eclipses of the same and other things. The striking
was done by an elaborate automatic arrangement. (See Old Clocks and
Watches & Their Makers—F. J. Britten.) 3. In 1842 the clock was again
thoroughly reconstructed. This, too, is a very elaborate system of
motions showing the movements of sun, moon, and planets, also sidereal
time, a calendar, etc. The hours and quarters are struck by automatic
figures.

_Ulm_—In the eastern end of the old Rathaus at Ulm is installed an
astronomical clock which dates from the beginning of the 16th century.
It was thoroughly repaired in 1549 by the builder of the Strasburg
clock—Isak Habrecht. Shows in addition to the hours, the diurnal and
annual revolutions of the earth and the movements and phases of the
moon. The clock is an artistic achievement as well as a mechanical
wonder.

_Vally's_—A scientific water clock. It consisted of a tin cylinder
divided into several small cells and suspended by a thread fixed to
its axis, in a frame on which the hour distances fixed by trial were
marked. It was so made that the water passed slowly from one cell to
the next and as it did so it changed the center of gravity of the
cylinder and set it in motion so as to indicate the time on the frame.
Made about 1690.

_Wallingford's_—Built in 1326 in St. Alban's Monastery. It showed
besides the hours, the apparent motion of the sun, the ebb and flow
of tides, changes of moon, etc. It continued to run until the time of
Henry VIII. Held by some to have been a mere planetarium.

_Wells Cathedral_—Clock built by Peter Lightfoot, A. D. 1340 at
Glastonbury and removed to Wells Cathedral during the Reformation,
after the dissolution of the Glastonbury monastery. In 1835 it was
again removed to the South Kensington museum. At that time the worn-out
works were replaced by a new train, but the dial and knights were
retained. The dial is divided into twenty-four hours and shows the
motion of the sun and moon. On its summit are eight armed knights
tilting at one another, lance at rest by a double rotary motion.

_Westminster_—A clock said to have been erected at Westminster with the
proceeds of a fine imposed upon one of the Chief Justices about 1288.
About 1365 Edward III had a stone clock tower erected at Westminster.
This tower contained a clock which struck the hours on a great bell.
It also contained other bells. This tower was razed by the Roundhead
mob about 1650. Later a dial with the motto "Discite justiam monite"
was placed on the site. The bell "Great Tom" was given to St. Paul's
about the beginning of the 18th Century. The present Westminster clock
is made after plans by E. B. Denison (Sir Edmund Beckett) and made by
E. J. Dent. The bell is called "Big Ben." It is claimed to be the best
timekeeper of its kind in the world. It was for use in this clock that
Denison invented his gravity escapement.

_Wimborne_—A very old clock at Wimborne in Dorsetshire, much like the
Wells Cathedral clock. By some authorities believed also to have been
planned by Peter Lightfoot.

CLOCK-SETTERS—During the early history of turret clocks, for each one
was employed a caretaker called the "setter." That such an official was
needed indicates that they were more or less undependable.

COCK—A horizontal bracket. See: _Balance Cock_; _Escape Cock_;
_Pendulum Cock_; _Potance_.

COLLET—A collar or flange on a cylindrical piece of metal. Any part of
such cylinder of greater diameter than the rest. Sometimes of the same
piece of metal; sometimes fitted friction tight upon it.

COMPENSATION—The provision made in a clock or watch to counteract the
expansion and contraction due to variations of temperature. In the
clock it is applied to the pendulum; in the watch to the balance.

[Illustration]

COMPENSATION BALANCE—A balance corrected for errors caused by
variations in temperature. The type in most general use was invented
by Thomas Earnshaw in the second half of the 18th century. The double
rim of this balance is constructed of brass and steel soldered together
in the form of a cut ring, the brass on the outside. When heat,
elongating the balance ring, causes it to vibrate more slowly, the
brass, expanding more than the steel, bends the free ends of the cut
rim toward the center, thus decreasing the diameter of the balance and
quickening the vibration. On the other hand, when cold, contracting the
ring tends to quicken the vibration of the balance, the contraction of
the brass rim draws the free end outward, making the diameter larger
and the vibration slower in consequence. The compensation balance is
also made with brass as the inner metal and aluminum outside.

COMPENSATION CURB—A laminated bar of brass and steel or aluminum and
brass fixed at one end, the free end carrying the curb pins that
regulate the length of the balance spring. Common in old watches but
not now in use.

COMPENSATION PENDULUM—A pendulum so constructed that the distance
between the point of suspension and the center of oscillation remains
constant in all temperatures. See: _Pendulum, Gridiron and Pendulum,
Mercurial Compensation_.

[Illustration]

CONTRATE WHEEL—A wheel whose cogs are parallel to its axis and whose
axis is at right angles to the axis of the wheel into which it gears. A
crown wheel.

CORROSION—The eating or wearing away of metals by slow degrees through
chemical action.

COUNTERSINK—To enlarge the outer end of a hole for the reception of the
head of a screw, bolt, etc. The term is also applied to the tool with
which the countersink is formed.

COVENTRY—A municipal, county, and parliamentary borough of
Warwickshire, England. One of the important watchmaking centers of
Great Britain.

CROWN WHEEL—A wheel whose teeth project at right angles to the plane of
the wheel. A contrate wheel. The escape wheel of the verge escapement
is an illustration.

CRUTCH—A light rod in a clock descending from the pallet arbor and
ending in a fork which embraces the pendulum rod. It transmits the
motion of the pallet to the pendulum.

CTESIBUS—A famous Greek mechanician who lived in Alexandria about 130
B. C. Although his was not the first clepsydra as is claimed by some it
was an ingenious and interesting one. Believed to have first applied
toothed wheels to clepsydrae about 140 B. C.

CURB PINS—See _Banking Pins_.

CUSIN, CHARLES—A watchmaker from Autun, Burgundy, who laid the
foundation for the Swiss watch industry in Geneva in 1587. It grew
very slowly at first—in 1687 having only one hundred watchmakers with
three hundred assistants. In 1760 there were at Geneva eight hundred
watchmakers with 5,000 to 6,000 assistants.

CUSTER, JACOB D.—(1809-1879.) A Pennsylvania clockmaker in 1831; he was
one of the early makers of watches in America in 1840. However, his
work was not important commercially, for he produced only about a dozen
watches. A very ingenious man, who, it is said, made everything from a
steam engine to his own shoes. He made hundreds of the clock movements
which at that period were used to revolve the lanterns in lighthouses.

CYCLE OF THE SUN—A period of twenty-eight years, after which the days
of the week again fall on the same days of the month as during the
first year of the former cycle. It has no relation to the sun's course
but was invented for the purpose of finding out the days of the month
on which the Sundays fall during each year of the cycle. Cycles of the
sun date from nine years before the Christian era.

CYCLOID—A curve generated by a given point in the circumference of a
circle which is rolled along a straight line always in the same place.
Example: The curve traced by any point in the rim of a wheel which
travels in a straight line along a level road.

CYLINDER ESCAPEMENT—See: _Escapement, Cylinder_.

CYLINDER PLUGS—Plugs fitted into the ends of the cylinder of a cylinder
escapement. Their outer extremities are formed into the pivots on which
the cylinder rotates.


DAMASKEEN—To decorate a metal by inlaying other metals or jewels, or by
etching designs upon its surface. To be distinguished from snailing,
with which it is often confounded.

[Illustration]

DAY—The time of one complete revolution of the earth on its axis.
The actual length of this day is continually changing owing to the
eccentricity of the earth's orbit and the angle of the ecliptic. The
mean solar day is 24 hours. The sidereal day is 23 hours, 56 minutes,
4.099 seconds.

DAY, NAUTICAL—The nautical day begins when the sun is on the meridian
and eight bells are struck. The day is divided into "afternoon watch"
or four hours, two "dog watches" of two hours each, then "middle
watch," "night watch," "morning watch" and "forenoon watch," each of
four hours, completing the day.

DENISON, EDMUND BECKETT—Sir Edmund Beckett—Lord Grimthorpe. Born 1816.
A lawyer by profession, and the inventor of the gravity escapement for
turret clocks; also an authoritative writer on horological subjects.
He designed and planned the Westminster clock said to be the best
timekeeper of its kind in the world. Died 1905.

DENNISON, AARON L.—Born in Freeport, Me., in 1812. Died Birmingham,
England, January 9, 1898. At eighteen he was apprenticed to a
watchmaker. Later in working at the trade, he was impressed with the
inaccuracies which existed in the best handmade watches. This, with
a visit to the Springfield Armory, gave him his idea of machine-made
watches with interchangeable parts. He interested Edward Howard in
the project, and having found the needed capital they started in the
business and laid the foundation of what is now the Waltham Watch
Company. Dennison has been called the "father of American Watchmaking"
tho there seems ground for the claim that he shares that honor with
Edward Howard.

DEPTHING—The technical name for the proper adjusting or spacing of the
gearing in a watch.

DETENT—The device which halts, and releases, at the proper instant the
escapement of a clock or chronometer. See: _Escapement_.

DE VICK, DE WYCK, OR DE WIECK, HENRY—A German clockmaker who, in
1364, made the first turret clock of which reliable information and
description remains. The clock was made for Charles V. See: _Clocks,
Interesting Old—De Vick's_.

DIAL—Commonly called the face of the watch—made of gold or silver or
other metal or of enamel, with the required figures—in the United
States one to twelve upon it in a contrasting color. See also,
_Sun-dial_.

DIAL FEET—Short wires soldered to the back of the dial of a watch or
clock which hold it in place by fitting into holes in the pillar plate.

DIAL OF AHAZ—A sun-dial belonging to Ahaz, King of Judea 742-727 B.
C., mention of which occurs twice in the Scriptures—II Kings, XX:
9-11, and Isaiah XXXVIII: 8. It is believed that one of his Babylonian
astrologers constructed it for him.

DIAL PLATE—See _Lower Plate_.

DIAL, SUN—See _Sun-dial_.

DIAL WHEELS—The wheels constituting the motion work of a watch.

DIURNAL—In an astronomical sense, pertaining to a period covering a
mean solar day. See: _Solar Time_.

DOG SCREW—A screw with an eccentric head used to attach a watch
movement to a dome case.

DOG-WATCH—A nautical term for two daily two-hour periods of watching
aboard ship. The first begins at 4 P. M., the other at 6 P. M.

DOLMEN—A sacred instrument used for astronomical purposes at certain
critical periods of the year; formed of four stones at the cardinal
points and a leaning stone crossing diagonally and forming with the
east stone a sacred "creep-way." The solar hours were indicated by the
shadow of the leaning stone touching various prominent points or edges.
One at Camp, England, is prehistoric.

DOME—The inner case of a watch which snaps on the band of a case.

DOME-CASE—A case in which the inner case or dome snaps to the band of
the case.

DONDI, GIACOMO—Born at Padua, Italy, in 1298. In 1344 he set up at
Padua a famous clock which became a model for later clocks and which
earned for him the surname, "Orologio."

DOUBLE BOTTOM CASE—A watch case in which the inner cover or bottom is
made solid with the middle. The vogue in English cases for a long time;
now almost obsolete.

DOUBLE-SUNK DIAL—A dial in which there are two sinks; one for the hour
hand, and a deeper one for the seconds hand.

DRAW—1. The force which holds the lever against its bank, due chiefly
to the angle of the locking face of the pallet stone. 2. The angle of
the locking faces of pallets in the lever escapement.

DRIVER—Of two wheels working together, the one which imparts the power.
The driven wheel is termed the follower.

DRIVING WHEEL—In a clock the wheel on the main arbor which drives the
whole train.

DROP—That part of the motion of the escape wheel when it is not in
contact with the pallet.

DRUM—The cylinder, or barrel, on the main arbor in a clock on which the
driving cord winds, raising the weight, when the clock is being wound.

DUMMY WATCH—(Fausse Montre.) About 1770 it became the fashion to wear
two watches. But because two real watches were too expensive for most
people, the custom grew up for having one sham watch—usually worn on
the right side. These were called "dummy watches" or "fausse montres."


EARNSHAW, THOMAS—1749-1829. An eminent English watchmaker who invented
the spring detent escapement and the compensation balance, both
essentially the same as are now used in chronometers. He first soldered
brass and steel together for the balance instead of riveting them.

EAST, EDWARD—Watchmaker to Charles I and an eminent horologist.
He was one of the ten original assistants named in the charter of
the Clockmakers' Company and at once took a leading part in their
proceedings. He was elected master in 1664 and 1682. He was the only
treasurer ever appointed by that company. He died probably about 1693.
East's watches were often presented as prizes by Charles in tennis
tournaments.

EDWARD VI—King of England from 1546 to 1553. Said to have been the
first Englishman to wear a watch.

ELECTRIC CLOCK—A clock in which the pallets moved electrically from a
distant mechanism drive the escape wheel and the hands.

ECLIPTIC—That plane passing through the center of the sun in which lies
the orbit of the earth. Also used to designate the apparent path of the
sun in the heavens.

ELGIN—A city in Illinois, U. S. A., in which is located the Elgin
National Watch Company—one of the largest factories in the United
States.

END-SHAKE—Freedom of pivots to move endways. Necessary in a watch or
clock because there is no force to spare and a tight pivot would stop
the movement.

END-STONE—A small disc of jewel against which the end of a pivot sets.
See _Capped Jewel_.

END-STOP—In a watch the same as end-stone.

ENGAGING FRICTION—Friction which results when the teeth of two
wheels gearing together come into action before reaching the line of
centers—that is, a line drawn from center to center of the gearing
wheels.

ENGINE-TURNING—A pattern of curved lines cut into metal for decoration.
Introduced about 1770 by Francis Guerint of Geneva. The earliest
specimens were cut very deep but shallower cutting soon became the rule.

ENGRAVING—A form of ornamenting metals in which the design is cut into
the metal. In "Champ-leve" engraving the ground is cut away leaving the
design in relief.

EPACT—The excess in time of the solar year over the period of 12 lunar
months, amounting to about 11 days. The new moons will thus fall about
11 days earlier in each succeeding year. In a calendar so arranged 30
days are taken off every fourth year, as an intercalary month, the moon
having revolved once in that time, and the three days remaining would
be the epact. The epact thus continues to vary until at the end of
nineteen years the new moons return as at first.

EPICYCLOID—A curve generated by any point in the circumference of a
circle as it rolls on the outside of the circumference of a fixed
circle. This curve is the best for the face of the teeth of a driving
wheel.

EQUATION CLOCKS—An obsolete form of clock which showed true solar or
sun-dial time instead of mean solar, or average time.

EQUATION OF TIME—The difference between true time and mean, or averaged
time. There are four days in the Gregorian year when the true time and
mean time agree, and the equation of time is zero: These are December
24, April 15, June 15, and August 31. Between the first two dates and
the last two dates, true time is earlier than mean time; for the other
two periods of the year it is later.

ESCAPE COCK—The bracket which supports the upper ends of the escape
wheel and pallet staff arbors.

ESCAPEMENT—The device in a watch or clock which regulates the motion
of the train thus distributing the power of the main-spring. It
communicates the motive power to the balance or pendulum. Escapements
are of three classes: recoil, dead, or dead-beat; and detached.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, ANCHOR—The recoil escapement, invented by Hooke, used in
most house clocks. A name also applied to one kind of Lever Escapement
with an unusually wide impulse pin. The recoil escapement is one in
which each tooth of the escape wheel, after it comes to rest, is moved
backward by the pallets. Altho one of the easiest escapements to
set out correctly the pallets are often improperly formed making an
escapement which gives indifferent service. As a timekeeper the anchor
escapement is inferior to the dead-beat escapement.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, CHRONOMETER—A detached escapement in which the escape wheel
is locked on a stone carried in a detent, and in which the teeth of the
escape wheel impart an impulse to a pallet on the balance staff with
every alternate vibration. Used in Marine Chronometers.

ESCAPEMENT, CROWN-WHEEL—Of the recoil type, and the earliest known
escapement; to be found in Henry de Wyck's clock. Not suitable for
watches. Practically the same principle as Verge or Vertical Escapement
used in watches for so many years.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, CYLINDER OR HORIZONTAL—Invented by Thomas Tompion in
1695—later improved and brought into general use by Graham. It
dispensed with the then common vertical crown-wheel—hence the term
"horizontal" and permitted thinner watches. This escapement is
frictional, the balance being carried on a hollow cylinder whose bore
is large enough to admit the teeth of the escape wheel. The cylinder is
cut away where the teeth enter and the impulse is given by the wedge
shaped teeth striking against the edge of the cylinder as they enter
and leave. Used at this time in the cheaper Swiss watches.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, DEAD-BEAT—Any escapement in which the pallet face is so
formed that the escape wheel remains dead or motionless during the
supplementary arc of the balance or swing of the pendulum. As invented
by George Graham, the wheel is much the same as the wheel in the anchor
escapement, the difference lying in the shape of the pallets. Each
pallet has a driving face and a sliding face. It is so arranged that
the impulse is given the pendulum at the midpoint of its swing thus
allowing the swing to adapt itself to the impulse and keep the time
constant. The pallets are faced with jewels so that there is slight
friction. Used in high grade clocks such as regulators and astronomical
clocks.

ESCAPEMENT, DETACHED—Any escapement in which the balance or pendulum
is for some time during each vibration free from the pressure of the
train. Detached escapements are used in chronometers, most watches and
in turret clocks. They are of value in any movement where the motive
power varies greatly—hence in turret clocks. Examples: Chronometer,
lever, and gravity escapements.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, DOUBLE THREE-LEGGED GRAVITY—Invented in 1854 by E. B.
Denison, Esq., for the great clock at the Houses of Parliament. It is
the best escapement for very large clocks where the hands are exposed
to the action of the wind and snow, because it admits of great driving
power in the movement without its sensibly affecting the escapement as
would be the case in the dead-beat type. The impulse to the pendulum
is given by the weight of the lever arms falling through a given
distance and is therefore constant. This escapement consists of two
gravity impulse pallets pivoted in a line with the bending point of the
pendulum. There is a locking wheel made of two thin plates of three
teeth each. Between these plates are the three pins that lift the
pallets. The locking is effected by blocks screwed to the front of one
pallet and the back of the other. Impulse is given by the pallets in
turn striking the pendulum rod. The pendulum rod serves to unlock the
wheel. The arrangement is such that the lifting pins have a little free
run each time. Since the pallets are always lifted the same distance
they give a constant impulse to the pendulum.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, DUPLEX—Invented by Hook; later improved by Tyrer. Very
accurate but as originally made was affected by any sudden motion,
and hence of little use in watches. The escape wheel has two sets of
teeth. Those farthest from the center lock the wheel by pressing on a
hollow ruby cylinder fitted round the balance staff and notched so as
to permit the passing of the teeth as the balance moves in a direction
opposite to the wheel's motion. The second set stand up from the face
of the wheel and one gives impulse to the pallet every time a tooth
leaves the notch. This is not a detached escapement, but there is
little friction. As improved this escapement was used in the famous
Waterbury watches.

ESCAPEMENT, FOLIOT—A form of escapement actuated by a foliot balance.
See _Foliot_.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, FOUR-LEGGED GRAVITY—Invented by E. B. Denison (Sir Edmund
Beckett). The same in principle as the Double Three-Legged escapement,
only it has but one escape wheel with four teeth or legs instead of two
wheels with three legs each. The wheel has two sets of lifting pins—one
acting on each pallet. Occasionally used in regulators and other clocks
with a seconds pendulum, but of doubtful, if any, advantage over the
Graham dead-beat escapement.

ESCAPEMENT, FRICTIONAL—Any escapement in which the balance is never
free from the escapement. Examples: The Cylinder, Duplex and Verge
types.

ESCAPEMENT, GRAVITY—An escapement which gives impulse to the pendulum
by means of a weight falling through a constant distance. Of use in
turret and other exposed clocks where the hands' movements are affected
by wind, rain, and snow. See subtitles under these headings: _Double
Three-legged Gravity_; _Single Three-legged Gravity_; _Four-legged
Gravity_; _Six-legged Gravity_.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT LEVER—Invented by Thomas Mudge about 1765. It is the
preferred escapement for watches because of the certainty of its
performance. Possibly inferior to the chronometer escapement as a
timekeeper. Its most noticeable defect is the necessity of applying
oil to the pallets, the thickening of which affects the action. There
are many other kinds of lever escapements. The Mudge escapement was
essentially like the modern Double Roller. The connection between the
balance and the escape wheel is made by a lever to which the pallets
are fastened, and into the forked end of which plays the ruby pin
which is carried on a roller on the same staff as the balance. Each
pallet has an impulse face and a locking face. The impulse is given
by the escape wheel tooth striking the impulse face of a pallet and
is communicated to the balance by the lever, raised by the pallet's
movement striking the ruby pin in the roller. This ruby pin also serves
to unlock the pallets by causing the lever to lift them in turn. This
escapement is of the detached type. The action of the lever is kept
within the desired limits by banking pins.

ESCAPEMENT, LEVER—CLUB TOOTH—An escapement like the Table Roller in the
action of the lever and roller, but differs in the pallet action. The
impulse planes are partly on the teeth and partly on the pallet. This
is the standard watch escapement of today.

ESCAPEMENT, CRANK LEVER—An escapement with a small roller having a
tooth like a pinion leaf projecting from its circumference. This tooth
acts in a square notch cut in the end of the lever. The lever is formed
like a fork the two points of which act as safety pins against the edge
of the roller to prevent the lever from getting out of action with the
roller. It necessitated very careful construction and was not so good
as the Double Roller or Table Roller.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, LEVER—DOUBLE ROLLER—This escapement has two rollers on the
balance staff, the large one carrying the balance staff and the small
one used for a safety roller only. The best form of lever escapement
but more delicate, expensive, and difficult to make than the Table
Roller; hence not so much used as the latter.

ESCAPEMENT, PATENT DETACHED LEVER—Introduced in 1766 by Thomas Mudge,
but neglected for years thereafter even by Mudge himself. It was in
some of its parts the model of the best form of lever escapement—the
Double Roller. The first pallets had no "draw" on the locking faces
which rendered the escapement peculiarly sensitive to jolt and jar.
This may have suggested to Mudge the addition of the small roller,
whose worth has been since unquestionably demonstrated.

ESCAPEMENT, LEVER—PIN-PALLET—A lever escapement with round pins for
pallets, and the inclines on the escape teeth. Used in alarm clocks.

ESCAPEMENT, RACK-LEVER—Invented by Abbe Hautefeuille in 1734. Afterward
made and improved by Berthoud and by Peter Litherland, who obtained a
patent for it in 1794. It consisted of anchor shaped pallets on whose
axis was fixed a rack, or segment of a toothed wheel which geared into
a pinion on the axis of the balance. The balance was thus never free
from the train and good timekeeping was made impossible. It is not now
in use.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, LEVER-RESILIENT—Invented by F. J. Cole about 1870. A form
of lever escapement designed to obviate the evils of overbanking. The
points of the escape-wheel teeth are bent toward the locking faces of
the pallets, the bend in the tooth acts as the banking and no pins are
required. It was abandoned because expensive to make and the danger of
overbanking is not considerable.

ESCAPEMENT, LEVER—TABLE ROLLER—Excellent and very simple and the most
common form today. It differs from the crank lever only in the action
of the roller. The impulse pin instead of projecting beyond the edge of
the roller is set within its circumference and raised above its plane.

ESCAPEMENT, LEVER—TWO PIN—A form of Lever Escapement in which the
unlocking and impulse actions were formerly divided between two small
gold pins in the roller and one in the lever. Later the two roller pins
were discarded, and one broad jewel pin substituted.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT—PIN WHEEL—Invented by Lepaute about 1750. Similar in action
to the dead-beat. A good and simple escapement for large clocks.
The impulse is given the pendulum through the pallets by pins which
stand out from the face of the escape wheel. Lepaute made these pins
semi-circular and had his pallets of equal length acting on opposite
sides of the wheel. Sir E. Beckett cut away part of the front of the
pins which allows the pallets to act as in the diagram. The resting
faces are arcs of a circle. It has been superseded by the gravity
escapement for large clocks and is inferior to the dead-beat for small.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, RECOIL—Any escapement in which the pallets actually force
the escape wheel to turn backwards a trifle with each beat of the
balance. Cheap and easy to make but inferior as timekeepers to the
detached or dead-beat types.

ESCAPEMENT, RIGHT-ANGLED—A lever escapement so set that lines drawn
between the centers of the balance, pallets, and escape wheel would
form a right angle. See _Escapement, straight-line_.

ESCAPEMENT, SINGLE-BEAT—An escapement such as the Duplex, or
Chronometer, whose escape wheel moves only at alternate beats of the
balance or pendulum.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, SINGLE THREE-LEGGED GRAVITY—Consists of two pallets and one
three-legged locking wheel. Instead of the three pins for lifting as in
the Double Three-Legged Gravity escapement there is a triangular steel
block which acts against large friction rollers, pivoted one on each
pallet.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, SIX-LEGGED GRAVITY—A modification of the three-legged
gravity escapement. The locking wheel has six teeth. One of the pallet
arms is neutral and gives no impulse, hence impulse is given only at
each alternate vibration. A much lighter driving weight than for the
Double Three-legged Gravity escapement will suffice for this, since the
rotations of the escape wheel required are only half as many.

ESCAPEMENT, STRAIGHT-LINE—An escapement of the lever type in which
the escape wheel, pallets and balance are all in a straight line; an
arrangement favored by the Swiss.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, VERGE—Also called "Crown-wheel," or Vertical escapement.
The earliest form of escapement on record. The inventor is not known,
but the escapement was used on de Vick's clock. (1364.) It was used
almost exclusively up to 1750 in spite of its manifest inaccuracy. The
verge is a frictional recoil escapement. It consists of a crown-wheel,
with eleven, thirteen, or fifteen teeth, shaped like those of a rip
saw, and with its axis set at right angles to the pallets axis, or
verge, which carries the balance. The verge is a slender cylinder as
small as compatible with the required strength, from which project the
pallets, two flat steel "flags"—at an angle to each other varying from
90° to 115°. The wheel runs in a watch in a plane at right angles to
the face. Any variation in the motive power causes a variation in the
arc of the balance swing. Therefore, since the time of oscillation
depends on the arc of the swing, the time-keeping qualities were
directly affected. This gave rise to the invention of the stack-freed
and fusee, both contrivances to equalize the power of the mainspring.
In spite of the many defects the verge escapement was one of the great
inventions because the first escapement, and was used for centuries
before superior kinds were devised. It necessitated thick and bulky
watches.

[Illustration]

ESCAPEMENT, VIRGULE—An early form of escapement invented about 1660
by Abbe Hautefeuille. Its action can be readily understood from the
diagram.

ESCAPE PINION—The pinion on the escape-wheel arbor.

ESCAPE WHEEL—The last wheel of a train: it gives impulse to the
balance, indirectly. Also called scape wheel. Easily identified by
teeth resembling those of a circular saw.


FACE—1. Of a watch or clock is the dial. 2. Of the tooth of a wheel,
that portion beyond the pitch line.

FACIO, NICOLAS—A Geneva watchmaker who invented the art of piercing
jewels for use in watches, and in May, 1705, obtained a patent therefor
in London. In December of the same year when he petitioned for a
more extended patent he was opposed by the Clockmakers' Company,
who produced in evidence proof that Facio was not first in this use
of jewels, in an old watch of Ignatius Huggeford's with an amethyst
mounted on the cock of the balance wheel. Facio's petition was denied.
It was later discovered that Huggeford's jewel had nothing to do with
the mechanism of the watch.

FAVRE, PERRET E.—In 1876 the chief commissioner in the Swiss Department
and a member at that time of the International Jury on Watches at the
Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia. On his return home he was very
emphatic in his endorsement of the American method of manufacture as
compared to the Swiss.

FITCH E. C.—Made president of the Waltham Watch Co., in 1886. His
long experience in watch case and movement making and his commercial
training made his judgment on matters relating to watchmaking of
value. He was the inventor of the screw bezel case.

FLANK—The flank of a wheel or pinion is the part lying between the
pitch circle and the center.

FLIRT—Any device for causing the sudden movement of a mechanism.

FLY—A speed regulating device or governor consisting of a fan or two
vanes upon a rotating shaft. Used in the striking part of clocks. By
some believed to have been used on the earliest clocks—before the verge
escapement—to check a too rapid descent of the weight.

FLY PINION—The pinion in a clock that carries the fly: a part of the
striking mechanism.

[Illustration]

FOB—Properly a watch pocket in the waistband of trousers. Commonly
applied to the end of a chain or ribbon which is attached to the watch
and hangs free from the pocket. One of the early examples was attached
to a watch made for Oliver Cromwell in 1625 by John Midwall in Fleet
Street.

[Illustration]

FOLIOT—A straight armed balance with weights used as one of the
earliest clock regulators. De Vick's clock is one example of it.

FOLIOT BALANCE—See _Foliot_.

FOLLOWER—Of two wheels geared together, the one to which the driver
imparts motion is called the follower.

FORK—The fork shaped end of the lever into which plays the roller jewel.

FOURTH WHEEL—The wheel in a watch that drives the escape pinion and to
whose arbor the seconds hand is attached.

FRAME—The plates or plate and bars of a watch or clock which support
the pivots of the train.

FREE SPRING—A balance spring not controlled by curb pins. Used in
chronometers and other fine time pieces where the spring is an overcoil.

FROMANTEEL, AHASUERUS—A clockmaker of Dutch extraction—maker of steeple
clocks in East Smithfield. The family of Fromanteels were celebrated as
having been the first to introduce the pendulum clocks into England.
Their claim has since been contested in favor of Harris and Hooke.

FULL PLATE—A model in which the top plate is circular in form—the
balance being above this plate. Used now in 18 size watches for
railroad and other hard usage. They are made only in limited quantities.

[Illustration]

FUSEE—Invented by Jacob Zech of Prague about 1525. Consists of a
specially grooved cone-shaped pulley interposed between the mainspring
barrel and the great or driving wheel of a watch or clock. The
connection between the barrel and fusee was first made by a cord or
catgut, later by a chain. In winding the spring the cord is drawn from
the barrel on to the fusee—the first coil on the larger end. Thus the
mainspring when fully wound uncoils the cord first from the smaller
end of the fusee; and as it runs down gets the benefit of increased
leverage by reason of the greater diameter of the lower part of the
fusee. An excellent adjustment of the pressure on the center pinion can
be made in this way. The fusee has been abandoned in watches to allow
of thinness, but is still used in chronometers and clocks.

FUSEE CAP—A thin steel plate with a projecting nose on the smaller end
of the fusee: a part of the mechanism to stop the fusee when the last
coil of the chain is wound thereon.

FUSEE CHAIN—A very delicate steel chain connecting the barrel with
the fusee of a watch, chronometer or clock. It replaced the catgut
originally used and was first introduced by Gruet of Geneva about 1664.

FUSEE SINK—The sink cut in the top plate of a watch to give space for
the fusee.


GALILEO, GALILEI—Commonly called "Galileo." A famous Italian scientist
born in 1564 who discovered, among many other things, the isochronism
of the pendulum vibrating through long or short arcs. The story goes
that he noticed that a swinging chandelier in a certain cathedral took
the same length of time to each vibration whether in long or short
arcs—timing them by his pulse. He seems never to have applied this
principle to clocks, although he issued an essay on the subject in 1639.

GALILEO, VINCENTIS—Son of the great astronomer, born about 1600. He
aided his father in experiments and gave special attention to the
application of the pendulum to clocks. He is claimed by some to have
been the first to so apply the pendulum, in 1649, but this is disputed
in favor of Richard Harris of London.

GENEVA—A city in Switzerland in which watchmaking was first established
in that country. It is the center of the "hand" industry, and the city
is honeycombed with garret-workers—so-called—making parts.

GERBERT (POPE SYLVESTER II)—Born in Belliac, Auvergne, in 920. In
990 Gerbert made some sort of a clock which attained wide fame. Some
authorities claim that it was a clock moved by weights and wheels
and some even claim for it a verge escapement. On the other hand,
other authorities state positively that that story is a myth and that
Gerbert's horologe was a sun-dial. It seems pretty well accepted that
there was no escapement used, however, until more than two centuries
after Gerbert's time.

GERMAN SILVER—An alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc—copper
predominating. Really a white brass.

GIMBAL—A contrivance resembling a universal joint permitting a
suspended object to tip freely in all directions. Marine chronometers
are supported in their cases or boxes by gimbals. It was first applied
to chronometers by Huyghens.

[Illustration]

GNOMON—A simple and probably the most ancient instrument for marking
time consisting simply of a staff or pillow fixed perpendicularly in a
sunny place—time being reckoned by the changing length of the shadow
or by its angular movement. In more recent times the title "gnomon" was
applied to the style of the sun-dial.

GNOMONICS—The art of constructing and setting sun-dials taught
especially in the seventeenth century.

GODDARD, LUTHER—Born at Shrewsbury, Mass., February 28, 1762—Died 1842.
He was the first American to manufacture watches. He began in 1809 but
unable to compete as to price with cheap foreign watches, retired after
making about five hundred.

[Illustration]

GOING-BARREL—The Swiss early abandoned the fusee in watches and cut
teeth around the outside of the main-spring barrel so as to drive the
train direct. Such an arrangement is called a going-barrel. It made
possible a thinner and much simpler watch. American makers quickly
adopted this device, but the English long clung to the fusee. It
is sometimes claimed that the French were the first to adopt the
going-barrel.

GOING FUSEE—A fusee with maintaining power attachment, so that the
watch does not stop while being wound. Invented by Harrison.

GOLDEN NUMBER—Meton, an Athenian astronomer, discovered about 432 B.
C. that every nineteen years the new and full moons returned on the
same days of the month. This period is the cycle of the moon, called
the Golden Number because the Greeks, to honor it, had it written in
letters of gold. Anno Domini, the year of our Lord, fell on the second
year of a lunar cycle. Hence, to find the Golden Number for any year,
add 1 to the date (A. D.) and divide by 19. The remainder is the Golden
Number for the year.

GOLD-FILLED—A sheet of brass sandwiched between two thin plates of gold
and all brazed together. Gold-filled watch cases were introduced in
America. They give very good wear.

GRAHAM, GEORGE, F. R. S.—An English watchmaker and astronomer, born
in Cumberland in 1675. Died 1751. He was an apprentice of Tompion
and succeeded to Tompion's reputation as the best watchmaker of his
time. He invented the mercurial compensation pendulum, the dead-beat
escapement, and perfected the cylinder escapement of Tompion and left
it in practically its present form. He made ornamentation distinctly
subsidiary to use. He was master of the Clockmakers' Company in
1722-23. He was buried with Tompion in Westminster Abbey.

GREAT TOM—The great bell which struck the hours on the first clock at
Westminster. It was afterwards transferred to St. Paul's.

GREAT WHEEL—In a fusee watch the toothed wheel which transmits the
power from the fusee to the center pinion. In a going-barrel watch it
is represented by the toothed portion of the barrel drum.

GREENWICH OBSERVATORY—(England) Royal observatory founded 1675 to
promote astronomy and navigation. There is at this observatory a
standard motor clock which is the center of a system of electrically
controlled clocks scattered over the Kingdom, and which thus keeps
official time as our Naval Observatory clock does for the United States.

GRIMTHORPE—See _Denison, E. B._

GRUEN, DIETRICH—A Swiss watchmaker who with his son Fred first
succeeded in making a very thin watch. The Gruen watch factory at
Cincinnati, Ohio, is unique in this country. The buildings and
surroundings resemble those of Switzerland, and the method of
manufacture embodies more handwork than is common in the American
system.

GRUET—A Swiss who introduced chains for the fusee instead of catgut
cord, in 1664. They are still used for marine chronometers, some
clocks, and the few fusee watches now made.

GUARD PIN—A pin in a lever escapement which prevents the pallets
leaving the escape wheel when the hands of a watch are turned back.
Also known as the "safety pin."

GUILD OR GILD—An association of people occupied in kindred pursuits
for mutual protection and aid. Watch and clockmakers belonged to the
Blacksmiths' Guild in England until 1631, when the Clockmakers'
Company was formed. In France the Clockmakers' Guild was powerful in
1544.


HAIR-SPRING—Said by some to be a distinctly American term for
the balance spring of a watch. But Wood (English) uses it in his
"Curiosities of Clocks and Watches," 1866. However, it is not in common
use outside of America. It is thought to have originated from the fact
that in early times attempts were made to utilize hog-bristle for the
balance spring.

HALF PLATE—A watch in which the top plate covers but half of the pillar
plate, the fourth wheel pinion being carried in a cock to allow the
use of a larger balance. Now obsolete or nearly so. Replaced by the
bridge-model.

HALL MARK—A stamp placed upon gold and silver articles by government
officials after the metal therein has been assayed.

HANDS—The metal pointers which, moved by the train, indicate the time
by pointing to the figures on the dial. At present there are always
two, the hour and minute hands and frequently a seconds hand also.
Clocks at first were made with only the hour hand; the minute hand was
introduced when the use of the pendulum made timekeeping sufficiently
accurate for the indication of such small divisions.

HANGING BARREL—A going-barrel with its arbor supported only at the
upper end.

HARRIS, RICHARD—An English clockmaker for whom it is claimed that he
made the first pendulum clock—set up at St. Paul's, Covent Garden,
in 1641. Most authorities agree, however, that this honor belongs to
Huyghens.

HARRISON, JOHN—An English mechanician born at Faulby in Yorkshire
in 1693. He made many improvements in the mechanism of clocks, the
greatest of which was the compound pendulum. He won in 1761 a reward
offered by Parliament in 1714 for an instrument that would determine
longitude within thirty marine miles. Harrison's chronometer gave
it within eighteen miles. He invented the going fusee, the gridiron
compensation pendulum and suggested the idea for the compensation
balance, afterward worked out by other watchmakers. Died 1776.

HAUTEFEUILLE, JOHN—(Abbe.) Born 1647. Died 1724. He disputed
successfully Huyghens' claim to a prior invention of the steel balance
spring. He is also credited with the invention about 1722 of the
rack-lever escapement.

[Illustration]

HEART-PIECE—The heart-shaped cam on the center-seconds wheel of a
chronograph, which causes the hand to fly back to zero.

HELE, PETER—(See _Henlein, Peter_.) Some historians credit invention
of first watch to Peter Hele. There is no doubt, however, that Hele
and Henlein were one and the same. Preponderance of authority favors
"Henlein" as the correct spelling of the name.

HELICAL—Following the course of a helix or spiral.

HELIOTROPION—See "_Polos_."

HEMICYCLE—Form of sun-dial in which the shadow of a vertical pointer
or "gnomon" is cast upon and moves around the inner surface of a half
globe or sphere. Supposed to have been invented about 350 B. C. (See
_Sun-Dial_). Vitruvius, the Roman Engineer, ascribes invention to the
Babylonian priest and astronomer, Berosus.

HENLEIN, PETER—Sometimes called Peter Hele. A clockmaker of Nuremberg,
who is believed to have made the _first_ portable (pocket) clock or
_watch_ sometime early in the sixteenth century. Born 1480. Died about
1540. His clock was round, driven by a spring and had small wheels of
steel. It was much larger than present day watches.

HOLLOW PINION—A pinion bored through the center. The center pinion in
many watches is hollow.

"HON-WOO-ET-LOW" OR COPPER JARS DROPPING WATER—A form of clepsydra at
Canton, China, said to be between 3000 and 4000 years old. It consists
of four copper jars arranged on steps. Each jar drops water into the
one below it until the last one, in which a bamboo float, indicates the
time in a rude way.

HOOKE, ROBERT, M. D.—An English physician-philosopher born on the
Isle of Wight in 1635. His accomplishments were numerous. He claimed
to have discovered the isochronism of the balance spring and its
application to watches, though this was also claimed by Huyghens.
He invented a pendulum timekeeper for finding the longitude at sea;
devised the first wheel-cutting engine about 1670; and he invented the
anchor escapement for clocks. His studies and inventions covered a wide
field. He died in 1702.

HOROLOGE, (OROLOGE), (HOROLOGIUM)—A general term applied
indiscriminately in old writings to any mechanism for measuring time.

HOROLOGICAL INSTITUTE—BRITISH—An association of watchmakers founded in
1858 for the purpose of advancing the horological arts.

HOROLOGICAL PERIODICALS, AMERICAN—American Jeweler, (Monthly), Chicago,
Ill.; Goldsmith and Silversmith, (Monthly), New Haven, Conn.; Jeweler's
Circular, (Weekly), New York,; Keystone (Monthly), Philadelphia, Pa.;
Manufacturing Jeweler, Providence, R. I.; Mid-Continent Jeweler, Kansas
City, Mo.; National Jeweler, (Monthly), Chicago, Ill.; Northwestern
Jeweler, St. Paul, Minn.; Pacific Goldsmith, (Monthly), San Francisco,
Cal.; Trader and Canadian Jeweler, Toronto, Canada.

HOROLOGIUM—See _Horologe_.

HOROLOGY-The science of time-measurement or of the construction of time
pieces.

HOUR—Now consisting of sixty minutes or one twenty-fourth of an
equinoctial day. Formerly one twelfth of the time between sunrise and
sunset, and one twelfth of the time between sunset and sunrise; hence
of different lengths for day and night in the different seasons. This
required much adjustment of clocks; and automatic devices for such
adjustment were in great demand. A standard hour of uniform length
for all times and seasons was not adopted in Paris—the last place to
change—until 1816.

HOUR-GLASS—A device for measuring hours. It has two cone-shaped
superimposed glass globes connected at their apexes through a small
opening. The glass contains just that quantity of sand, or mercury,
as will flow in one hour through the opening from the upper globe
to the lower. When it has run through the glass is reversed. See:
_Sand Glass_. Like the sun-dial and the clepsydra, the hour-glass is
older than we know. Its use probably followed close upon that of the
clepsydra, or may even have preceded it in dry countries like Egypt
and Babylonia, where sand was all about and water was not a thing to
waste. Of its original forms there is no authentic record. Dry sand
does not, like water, run faster or slower through a given opening
according to the pressure from above; its rate is the same whether
the upper glass is full or nearly empty. Also the hour-glass never
needs to be refilled, but only to be reversed, and the same sand used
over and over again. On the other hand, its convenience diminished as
its size increased. It was too clumsy for use if made large enough
to run without attention for more than an hour or two; and in so
large a glass there was more danger that the sand, however dry, might
cake up and stop running. It must somehow have been transparent for
convenient reading, because sand can register the time only by its
flow: it cannot be made to raise a float or work a pointer. But the
Egyptians very early learned to manufacture glass, and there were
other substances. A legend ascribes the invention of the sand-glass to
Luitprand, a Carthusian monk of the Eighth Century A. D. But this, if
there is any truth in the story at all, must have been some improvement
or reinvention after the forgetfulness of the Dark Ages. The device
is plainly shown in Greek sculptures antedating the Christian era.
Nowadays the sand-glass has pretty much disappeared, except as a
kitchen timepiece for boiling eggs and the like.

[Illustration]

HOUR HAND—The hand of a watch or clock which indicates the hour: for
long after clocks were first made, the only hand provided.

HOUR WHEEL—The wheel which revolves on the minute wheel or cannon
pinion and carries the hour hand.

HOWARD, EDWARD—Born at Hingham, Mass., October 6, 1813. Having served
a regular apprenticeship in clockmaking he entered into partnership
with D. P. Davis, at the age of 29, to make clocks. He was a clever
mechanic and invented many pieces of mechanism, among them the swing
rest. In 1849 he and Davis with A. L. Dennison and others organized the
American Horologe Company for the manufacture of watches by machinery,
and with the parts interchangeable—the American principle of today.
Though they were not financially successful the American watch industry
owes its present day success largely to this beginning by Edward Howard
and Aaron L. Dennison. The first company developed into the present
Waltham Company, and later Mr. Howard established the E. Howard Co., at
Roxbury, but severed his connection with them in 1882 and retired from
business. He died March 5, 1904.

HUGGEFORD, IGNATIUS—An English watchmaker, one of whose watches was
used to defraud Facio of his patent on the use of jewels in watches.
See _Facio, Nicolas_.

HUNTER, OR HUNTING-CASE—A watch case which has a solid metal cover over
the dial.

HUNTER, GEORGE—Identified with watchmaking in America since about
1860—in the Waltham and Elgin Companies. He was general superintendent
of the latter from 1872 to 1903, after which he was made consulting
superintendent.

HUYGHENS, CHRISTIAN—A celebrated Dutch astronomer and mathematician
born at The Hague, April 14, 1629. Although the honor is claimed
for Richard Harris in 1641 and for Vincent Galileo in 1649 it seems
historically established that Huyghens in 1657 was the first to apply
to clocks the theory of the isochronism of the pendulum which the
great Galileo had discovered. In 1669 he published his important work,
"Horologium Oscillatorium." In 1673 he made the first clock with
concentric hour and minute hands. He died in 1695.

HUYGHENS' CHECKS—The arc of a swinging pendulum is a segment of a
circle. For perfect isochronism it should be a cycloidal segment.
To accomplish this Huyghens fixed curved brass pieces called checks
for the cord to strike against but he caused thereby a greater error
than he remedied. This end was later accomplished by suspending the
pendulum by means of a flat steel strip instead of a cord; a device
credited to Robert Hooke.

[Illustration]

HYPOCYCLOID—A curve generated by any point in the circumference of a
circle which is rolled on the inner side of the circumference of a
larger fixed circle.


[Illustration]

IDLER, IDLE WHEEL, OR INTERMEDIATE WHEEL—A toothed wheel used to
connect driver and follower wheels so that both shall rotate in the
same direction.

IMPULSE—The push transmitted to the pallet by the escape wheel.

IMPULSE PIN—The jewel pin—usually a ruby—on the table roller of the
lever escapement, which playing into the fork of the lever transmits
the impulse to the balance.

INDEPENDENT CENTER-SECONDS—A watch peculiarly adapted to the use of the
medical profession. It carries on a separate train a long seconds hand
in addition to the hands of the ordinary watch which can be stopped
without stopping the watch.

INDEPENDENT SECONDS—A watch whose seconds hand is driven by a separate
train.

INGERSOLL, CHARLES HENRY—Secretary, Treasurer and General Manager of
Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro., watch manufacturers, of New York City.
Born at Delta, Eaton County, Michigan, October 29, 1865, a son of
Orville Boudinot and Mary Elizabeth (Beers) Ingersoll. At the early
age of fifteen years he left home and went to New York City, where he
entered the employ of his brother, Robert H., who was then engaged
in the business of manufacturing rubber stamps. Since 1880 he has
been continuously associated with his brother in various business
enterprises and in the direction and management of the Ingersoll
organization. Married Eleanor Ramsey Bond of Brooklyn, New York, July
5, 1898. Residence, South Orange, New Jersey.

INGERSOLL, ROBERT HAWLEY—Founder and President of Robt. H. Ingersoll &
Bro., watch manufacturers, of New York City. Born December 26, 1859,
of Orville Boudinot and Mary Elizabeth (Beers) Ingersoll, at Delta,
Eaton County, Michigan, he received his early education in the public
schools of his native town. In 1879, at the age of nineteen years,
he came to New York City, and in the following year engaged in the
business of manufacturing rubber stamps; later, he established a mail
order business, selling various "dollar" specialties and novelties.
While engaged in this business he conceived the idea and in 1892
commenced the manufacture of the "dollar watch," since which time
over 50,000,000 watches have been produced and sold by the Ingersoll
organization. Married June 20, 1904, to Roberta Marie Bannister of
Green Bay, Wisconsin. Residence, Oyster Bay, Long Island.

INGERSOLL, WILLIAM HARRISON—Marketing Manager of Robert H. Ingersoll
& Bro., watch manufacturers, New York City. Born March 22, 1879, near
Lansing, Michigan. He received a grammar and high school education
and three years' technical training for electrical engineer. In 1901
he entered business in the retail sporting goods store of Robt. H.
Ingersoll & Bro. in New York City and was soon placed in charge
of the Ingersoll watch advertising, over which he exercised close
supervision ever since, except for two periods prior to 1908, when he
sought and gained valuable outside experience in other capacities,
such as salesman and as manager of the Ingersoll watch business in
Canada; he then became advertising manager, later sales and advertising
manager and then general marketing manager for developing all markets
of all countries of the world for the Ingersoll products. Active in
the promotion of advertising research, Mr. Ingersoll was one of the
founders of Truth in Advertising work, assisted in establishing a
Fellowship in Advertising Research at Columbia University, New York
City, and has written and lectured extensively on salesmanship,
advertising, marketing and related subjects. His residence is at
Maplewood, New Jersey.

INGOLD, FRANZ—A Swiss watchmaker who had the idea of making watch
parts on the interchangeable plan long before it was put into practice
anywhere. He was ill-received by labor and capital alike when he
presented his plans in France, England, and America. In England he was
nearly mobbed. In 1842-43 he obtained patents on some machinery in this
line, but the machines were clumsy and for the most part impracticable.
There has been a tendency to credit Ingold as the source of Dennison's
ideas on this subject, though Dennison says he never heard of Ingold
until after he had started manufacturing.

INTERCALARY—Introduced or added arbitrarily to a calendar; for example,
the 29th day of February is an intercalary day.

INTERCHANGEABILITY—America's greatest contribution to watchmaking has
been the standardizing of parts and the manufacturing of each of them,
exactly alike, in great quantities. So that repairing an American watch
is largely a matter of obtaining a new part similar to the damaged one,
and simply putting it in place.

INVAR—An alloy of nickel and steel claimed to be non-magnetizable. Used
for certain parts of watches at the time when non-magnetizable watches
were desirable. Invar is practically non-expansible when the nickel in
it is about 37%.

ISOCHRONISM—That property of a pendulum or balance spring by virtue of
which its vibrations, of whatever length, are all made in exactly equal
periods of time.


JACKS; OR JACK O' THE CLOCK—Figures on the old turret clocks which
automatically struck the hours. They preceded dials tho were usually
left when the dials were added. There are Jacks on the clock at St.
Mary Steps, Exeter; Norwich Cathedral, South Aisle; and St. Dunstan's
in Fleet St., among others.

[Illustration]

JACQUEMARTS—Figures of man and woman which struck the hours on the
clock set up by Philip of Burgundy at Dijon, prior to 1370. G. Peignot
says they are so named from Jacquemart, a clock maker of Lille,
employed by the Duke of Burgundy in 1442. The lack of co-ordination in
the dates tends to controvert the claim.

JEROME, CHAUNCEY—Originator of the one-day brass clock movement which
enormously increased the American clock business and opened a market
for American clocks in Europe. Born in Canaan, Connecticut, in 1793.
Established the Jerome Clock Company at New Haven, Connecticut. This
was the predecessor of The New Haven Clock Company.

JEWELLED—Fitted with precious stones to diminish wear as distinguished
from precious stones for ornament. In the best watches ruby and
sapphire are used. In lower grade watches quartz, amethyst and garnet.

JEWELS—Used in watches as bushings at the ends of pivots and in other
places which sustain much wear. They:

  1. Provide smooth bearings for the
  pivots.

  2. Obviate corrosion.

  3. Reduce the wear from abrasion.

Sapphire is the best of the jewels in use and ruby second. Chrysolite
is also used and garnet, tho the latter is too brittle for most
service. This use of jewels was invented by Nicolas Facio—a Swiss
watchmaker about 1705.

JULIAN PERIOD—A period of 7980 years obtained by multiplying 28, 19 and
15—the numbers representing the cycles of the sun and moon, and the
Roman Indiction. It will end 3267 A. D., until which time there cannot
be two years having the same numbers for three cycles.

JURA MOUNTAINS—A watchmaking center in Switzerland. The industry grew
rapidly following the success of Daniel Jean Richard in 1679. This
section is the center of the system of watch-manufacturing most nearly
like the American system. See _Geneva_.

JURGENSEN, JULES—One of the most famous watchmakers of the 19th
century; a son of Urban Jurgensen, born in 1808. He studied physics,
mechanics and astronomy in Paris and London and finally settled in
Locle, Switzerland, specializing in pocket chronometers, which have
become famous as the Jurgensen watches. He died in 1877; and was
succeeded by his son, Jules F. U. Jurgensen.

JURGENSEN, URBAN—A Danish mathematician and watchmaker born in 1776.
He practiced his trade for a time in Switzerland, worked in Paris
under Breguet and Berthoud, and then in London, before returning
to Copenhagen to enter into partnership with his father, the court
watchmaker. He was made superintendent of all the chronometers of the
Danish navy and received several decorations. He died in 1830.


KEW OBSERVATORY—The central meteorological observatory of the United
Kingdom. Established at Richmond in 1842 and afterward transferred to
the Royal Society. Since 1900 it has been a department of the National
Laboratory. Important to the watch business because of the famous Kew
tests of timekeepers and awards for accuracy of performance.

KEYLESS WATCHES—Watches winding without a key. Such watches were made
as early as 1686 but did not come into general use until 1843, when
Adrien Phillipe (Geneva) introduced the "shifting clutch" type, and
when the "rocking bar" mechanism was introduced in 1855. These are the
types in use today. Self-winding watches have been made from time to
time. Napoleon is said to have had one which wound automatically from
the motion of being carried. The abandonment of the key nullified the
usefulness of the fusee, although some keyless fusee movements were
attempted.

KNUCKLES—The rounded parts of a watchcase that form the hinges or
joints. Usually two on the cover.


LA CHAUX DE FONDS—A watchmaking center in Switzerland which, in 1840,
with a population of 9678, had 3109 watchmakers. At present it is the
leading exporter of gold watches in Switzerland. In this section the
system of manufacturing is much like the American system.

LAMINATED—Made up of tin sheets of beaten, rolled or pressed metal. In
the compensation balance—the sheets are of brass and steel, or brass
and aluminum.

LANCASTER, PA.—A town where there have been watch factories for upwards
of fifty years.

LANGE, ADOLPH—An eminent Dresden watchmaker born there in 1815, famous
for his astronomical clocks, chronometers, and fine watches. Under the
direction and with the assistance of his government he established the
extensive watchmaking industry of Glashutte. He died in 1875.

LANTERN PINION—A pinion consisting of two circular metal end plates
usually of brass joined by short steel wires which act as cogs in a
gear.

LATITUDE—1. In astronomy, the angular elevation of a heavenly body
above the ecliptic. 2. In geography a distance measured in degrees,
minutes and seconds north or south from the equator. 3. In dial work,
the elevation of the pole of the heavens; the angle at which the plane
of the horizon is cut by the earth's axis.

LEAD—The continuous action of a wheel tooth which impels the leaf of a
pinion or the pallet of a balance.

LEAP-YEAR—See _Calendar, Gregorian_.

LEAVES—The name applied to the teeth of a pinion wheel.

LEPAUTE, J. A.—1709-1789. A French clockmaker famous for his turret
clocks; the inventor of the pin-wheel escapement and an authoritative
writer on horological subjects. He wrote "Traité d'Horlogerie" which
was afterward revised and added to by Lalaude.

LEPIRE, JEAN ANTOINE—Born 1720. Died 1814. A celebrated watchmaker of
Paris in the 18th century. About 1770 he introduced bars to take the
place of a top plate, omitted the fusee, used a cylinder escapement and
supported his mainspring barrel arbor at one end only. He attempted to
establish a watch factory for Voltaire at Ferney but with no success.
He is sometimes credited with making the first thin watch.

LE ROY, JULIEN—1686-1759. A French scientist and watchmaker. He
invented the horizontal movement for turret clocks, a form of repeating
mechanism. He constructed the first compensation balance.

LE ROY, PIERRE—1717-1785. Son of Julien Le Roy. Esteemed the greatest
of all French horologists. He invented a form of duplex escapement
and an escapement which formed the basis for the present chronometer
escapement.

LEVER—That part of a lever escapement to which are attached the pallet
arms, and which thus transmits motion from the escape wheel to the
balance.

LIFT, OR LIFTING ARC—That portion of the oscillation of a balance
during which it received its impulse. The remainder of the turn is
called the supplementary arc.

LIGHTFOOT, PETER—A Glastonbury monk, maker of the Glastonbury and
Wimburne clocks, 1335.

LIPS—In a cylinder escapement, the rounded edges of the cylinder
through which the escape wheel gives impulse to the balance.

LOCKING—1. The stopping of the escape wheel of a watch or clock. 2. The
portion of the pallet on which the teeth of the escape wheel drop. 3.
The depth to which the escape tooth laps upon the pallet at the moment
it leaves the impulse face.

LOGAN, JOHN—Born in Lowell, Mass., 1844. Invented a new method of
tempering springs and made superior main and balance springs. He was
connected for several years with the Waltham Watch Company, during
which time he invented many labor-saving machines. Died 1893.

LONGITUDE—The circular distance east or west subtending the angle which
two meridional planes make at the axis of the earth, one of them being
a standard reference meridian.

LONGINES—A watch factory at St. Imier in the Jura Mountains, near La
Chaux de Fonds, established in 1874. Here all parts are made under one
roof and the work is done by machinery.

LOWER PLATE—The plate in a watch nearest the dial. Also called the
"dial plate." It carries the lower pivots of the movement.

LUITPRAND—A monk of Chartres who revived the art of glass-blowing at
the end of the 8th century. To him is sometimes ascribed the invention
of the sand-glass.

LUMINOUS DIAL—A watch dial whose hands and figures are so treated as
to be visible in the dark. Formerly accomplished by a phosphorescent
paint which required frequent exposure to sunlight to be effective and
retained its luminosity only an hour or two. Now effected by means of a
compound absolutely independent of the sunlight and of a lasting glow.
See _Radiolite_.

[Illustration]

LUNETTE—The usual form of rounded watch crystal.


MAINSPRING—The long steel ribbon used for driving a clock or watch. The
spring is coiled into a circular metal box called the barrel and the
outer end of the spring is fastened to the barrel; the inner end to the
arbor of the great wheel. First applied, replacing weights, by Peter
Henlein of Nuremberg, about 1500.

MAINTAINING POWER—The device for driving the train while a watch or
clock is being wound.

MARSH, E. A.—An important figure in watch manufacturing in America
for a number of years. Born at Sunderland, Conn., in 1837, in 1863
he entered the employ of the Waltham Watch Company and rose to the
position of General Superintendent. In 1908 he retired from active
service but retains his connection with the company as consulting
superintendent. Besides his practical services to the watchmaking
industry Mr. Marsh wrote "The Evolution of Automat Machinery," in 1896.

MASSEY, EDWARD—An English watchmaker of the early nineteenth century.
He invented the "crank roller" escapement, a kind of keyless winding
for watches, and many other watch parts.

MEAN SOLAR DAY—The average length of all the solar days in a year. This
period is divided into 24 parts, or hours.

MEAN TIME—Clocks, watches, etc., are made to measure equal units of
time instead of the apparent time indicated by the sun. Mean time and
true solar time agree only four times in a year. See _Equation of Time_.

MERCER'S BALANCE-A balance of the ordinary kind fitted with an
auxiliary—a laminated arm of brass and steel fixed at one end to
the central bar of the balance and on its free end carrying two
adjustable screws. This auxiliary may be arranged for either extreme of
temperature with great accuracy.

[Illustration]

MERIDIAN DIAL—A dial for determining when the sun is on the meridian.
It is very simply constructed. For directions see "Watch and
Clockmakers' Handbook," by F. J. Britten.

MERIDIAN WATCH—A watch which shows the time in a number of places in
different parts of the world. It is set to Greenwich time and marks
the difference between this and the time of all the great metropolitan
cities in both hemispheres.

[Illustration]

METRONOME—An instrument for indicating and marking exact time music.
It consists of a counterbalanced, or reversed, pendulum, which may be
regulated to swing at any desired number of vibrations per minute.

MIDDLE TEMPERATURE ERROR—The compensation balance does not exactly
meet the temperature error. The rim expands too much with decrease of
temperature and contracts too little with the increase. Hence a watch
or chronometer can be correctly adjusted for two points only. The
unavoidable error between is the middle temperature error.

MINUTE—The sixtieth part of a mean solar hour.

MINUTE HAND—The hand on a clock or watch which indicates the minutes.
In the earlier days clocks had no minute hand. It was first concentered
with the hour hand in 1673.

MINUTE WHEEL—The wheel which carries the minute hand and is driven by
the cannon pinion.

MINUTE WHEEL PIN OR STUD—The stud fixed to the plate on which the
minute wheel pinion turns.

MINUTE WHEEL PINION OR "NUT"—The pinion in watches on which the minute
wheel is mounted and which drives the hour wheel.

MOMENT OF INERTIA—The resistance of a body in motion (or at rest) to a
change in the velocity or direction of its motion. In a rotating body
the sum of the products formed by multiplying the mass of each particle
by the square of its distance from an axis.

MONTH—An arbitrary division of the year, varying in the number of days
it contains, according to the calendar in use. See _Calendar_.

MORTISE—A slot or hole into which a tenon of corresponding shape is to
be fitted.

MOSELEY, C. S.—A pioneer in the field of designing and building
automatic watchmaking machinery. He invented some of the most delicate
and complicated tools and mechanisms used in watch manufacture. He was
early connected with the Waltham Co., master mechanic for the Nashua
Co., during its brief history; and later general superintendent of the
Elgin National Watch Company.

MOTION—The wheels that carry the hands: cannon pinion, horn wheel and
minute wheel and pinion.

MOTION WORK—The wheels in a watch which make the motion of the hour
hand one twelfth as rapid as that of the minute hand.

MOVEMENT—The watch or clock complete, without dial or case—the
mechanism of the watch or clock.

MUDGE, THOMAS—An English watchmaker of the 18th century. Born at Exeter
in 1716, died 1794. In 1793 he received from Parliament three thousand
pounds as a recompense for his improvements in chronometers. His work
was celebrated for its excellence.


NAME BAR—The bar which carries the upper end of the arbor of a watch
barrel.

NAVAL OBSERVATORY—The United States Naval Observatory at Washington, D.
C. There is there a superlatively accurate clock from which the time is
flashed electrically to all parts of the United States.

NEUCHATEL—A town in the Jura Mountains' watch manufacturing district of
Switzerland. A Cantonal Observatory at Neuchatel helps establish the
reputation for the accuracy of Swiss watches.

[Illustration]

NON-MAGNETIC WATCH—A watch in which the quick-moving parts—lever,
pallets, balance spring, etc., are made of some other metal besides
steel—as aluminum bronze, invar, etc.

NUREMBERG—A German city where Peter Henlein made the first watch. It
was one of the chief clock centers of the 16th and 17th centuries and
with Augsburg and Ulm supplied the markets of Europe with the first
small clocks.

NUREMBERG EGGS—Watches made in Nuremberg in the shape of eggs. If not
the first watches at least very early examples.


OBELISK—A square shaft with a pyramidal top. The ancient Egyptian
obelisks are thought to have served as gnomons.

[Illustration]

OGIVE—A pointed arch—of the architectural type known as Gothic.

OIL SINK—The cavity around the pivot hole in watch and clock plates,
designed to hold a small particle of oil in contact with the pivot.

ORMOLU—Gilt or bronzed metallic ware, or a fine bronze which has the
appearance of being gilded. Used for ornamenting the cases of fine old
clocks.

OROLOGE—An obsolete form of horologe. See _Horologe_.

OROLOGIERS—An obsolete form of horologers, a term not now in use but
signifying men who constructed time-pieces.

[Illustration]

ORRERY—A planetarium; an instrument showing the relative motions,
positions and masses of the sun and planets. It was so named from Lord
Orrery, for whom the first modern planetarium was made in England.

OSCILLATION—The movement back and forward of a pendulum or the swing of
a balance spring. The vibration.

OVERBANKING—Pushing of the ruby pin past the lever, caused by excessive
vibration of the balance. In a cylinder escapement the turning back of
the cylinder until an escape wheel tooth catches and holds it. In a
chronometer escapement the second unlocking of the escape wheel from
the same cause.

OVERCOIL—The outermost coil of a Breguet spring which is bent back
across the coil toward the center.


PACIFICUS—Archdeacon of Verona, died about 850 A.D. It is claimed by
some that he made a clock furnished with an escapement. (Bailly.)
But this is not proved, and others believe it to have been merely a
water-clock.

PAD—The pallet of the anchor escapement for clocks.

PAIR CASE—At one time watches were made with two or even three separate
cases. The outer one of shagreen tortoise shell, or some other
ornamental material was sometimes for the protection of the delicate
enamel on the inner case. Sometimes as in the case of repeaters the
inner case was pierced to emit the sound. Then the outer one served as
dust protection to the works.

PALLADIUM—A soft metal formerly used in alloy with copper and silver
for the balance and balance spring of non-magnetizable watches. Too
soft to be as serviceable as steel, it has been superseded by a
platinum alloy.

PALLET—Has different meanings, even among watchmakers. Generally, the
part through which the escape wheel gives impulse to the balance or
pendulum.

PALLET STAFF—The arbor on which the pallet is mounted, and on which it
turns.

PALLET STONE—The jewel on the contact face of the pallet, where it is
struck by the teeth of the escape wheel.

PARALLAX—The apparent angular displacement of a heavenly body due to a
change of the observer's position.

PEDOMETER—An instrument which registers the number of paces
walked—hence if properly adjusted to the length of step of the wearer
it gives the distance traversed.

PENDANT—The small neck and knob of metal connecting the bow of a watch
case with the band of the case.

PENDULUM—A body suspended by a rod or cord and free to swing to and
fro; used in clocks to regulate the velocity with which the driving
power moves the wheels and hence the hands. The isochronism of a
pendulum vibrating in a cycloidal arc was first discovered by Galileo
but he did not apply it to clocks. Most authorities credit Christian
Huyghens with that adaptation to instruments for keeping time.
The pendulum was first suspended by a silk cord and thus vibrated
in a circular instead of cycloidal arc. "Huyghens' Checks" were an
unsuccessful attempt to remedy this. Dr. Hooke succeeded in remedying
it by suspending the pendulum by a flat ribbon of spring steel.

[Illustration]

PENDULUM, GRIDIRON—Invented by Harrison in 1726, and still with slight
improvements an effective timekeeper. The rod of this pendulum is
constructed of five steel and four brass rods so arranged that those
which expand most are counteracted by those of less expansion, and the
length of the pendulum remains constant.

PENDULUM, MERCURIAL COMPENSATION—A pendulum having for a bob a jar of
mercury which expands upward with the increase of temperature thus
counteracting the lengthening of the rod from the same cause. Invented
by Graham about 1720. With slight improvements still in use and keeps
time very accurately.

[Illustration]

PENDULUM, TORSION—A pendulum vibrating by the alternate twisting and
untwisting of an elastic suspension. The body is a horizontal disc
weighted around its edges, and its suspension a steel or brass wire.
The period of a torsion pendulum being much longer than a vibrating
pendulum of the same length, the time of running is longer. Clocks
fitted with torsion pendulums have run a year on one winding.

PENDULUM SWING—The short ribbon of spring steel which suspends the
pendulum of a clock.

PENETRATION OF GEARING—The depth of intermeshing of the teeth of pinion
and wheel.

PHILLIPS SPRING—A balance spring with terminal curves after rules laid
down by M. Phillips, an eminent French mathematician. A term seldom
used though his curves are generally followed.

[Illustration]

PILLAR—The three or four short brass posts which keep the plates at
their proper distance apart. In early days made in very artistic and
elaborate shapes. Later they became plain straight cylindrical columns.

PILLAR MODEL—A type of movement in which the works are hung between two
plates supported and separated by posts or pillars and forming all the
principal bearings of the movement. Only average adjustment is possible
in this model. In this model the plate is sometimes cut away to imitate
a "bridge model." The opposite extreme in construction to the "bridge
model."

PILLAR PLATE—The lower plate of a watch movement—the one nearest the
dial—to which the pillars are solidly fixed, in a "pillar model."

PINCHBECK, OR "PINCHBECK GOLD"—An alloy of three parts zinc to four of
copper which "resembles gold in color, smell and ductility." So called
from its inventor Christopher Pinchbeck (1670-1732) who during his life
guarded the secret of its composition very jealously.

PINION—The smaller of two toothed wheels that work together. The teeth
of a pinion are called leaves. See also _Lantern Pinion_.

[Illustration]

PINION, LANTERN—A pinion consisting of two circular metal plates joined
by short steel wires.

PITCH—The length of the arc of the circumference of the pitch circle
from center to center of two adjacent teeth.

PITCH CIRCLE—The geometrical circle traced with the center of the
wheel as its center and at which the curved tips of the teeth begin.
The diameter is proportional to the number of teeth determined upon.
The proportion of the pitch circles of a wheel and a pinion gearing
together is determined by the ratio of revolutions desired.

PITKIN, HENRY—With his brother, James F., he started at Hartford,
Conn., in 1838, the first factory for machine-made watches in the
United States. They made their own machinery, which was very crude.
After making about 800 watches they were forced to abandon the project,
being unable to compete with cheap foreign watches. He died in 1845.

PIVOTS—The ends of the rotating arbors in a watch that run in bearings.

PLANETARIUM—An astronomical clock which exhibits the relative motions
and positions of the members of the solar system. Has no regulating
system and usually no driving power but is run by turning a crank by
hand.

PLATES—In watches and small clocks the circular discs of brass to which
the mechanism of the watch is supported. In large clocks the plates are
usually square-cornered oblong. See _Pillar Plate_, _Top Plate_, _Half
Plate_, _Full Plate_, etc. In half-plate, and three-quarter-plate types
of watches part of the disc is cut away.

POCKET CHRONOMETER—A watch with a chronometer escapement.

POLOS—A basin in the center of which the perpendicular staff or gnomon
was erected, and marked by lines for the twelve portions of the sun-lit
day. Herodotus ascribes its invention to the Babylonians, Phavorinus
claims it for Anaximander and Pliny for Anaximenes. Also called
"Heliotropion."

POTANCE OR POTENCE—A vertical or hang down bracket, supporting the
lower end of the balance staff in full-plate watches.

PRESCOT—A town in a remote part of Lancashire for years the center of
the movement trade in England.

PUSH PIECE—1. The milled knob pushed in from the pendant to open the
case. 2. The boss pushed in when the watch is to be set.


QUARE, DANIEL—1649-1724—Claimed the invention of the repeater, and
backed by the Clockmakers' Company obtained the patent against Barlow
from James II. Also credited with the invention of equation clocks.
He was master of the Clockmakers' Company in 1708. He first used the
concentred minute hand in England, but Huyghens had preceded him in
this in the Netherlands.

QUARTER—1. A term in common use for the period of three months—a
quarter of the year. 2. The fourth part of an hour—15 minutes.

QUICK TRAIN—A watch movement balance vibrates 18,000 times per hour.
Unequal mainspring pull is less felt in the quick train. Used
generally in Switzerland and America, and a feature of practically all
modern watches.


RACK—A straight bar, or segment of a circle, with teeth along one edge.
It has a reciprocating motion.

"RADIOLITE"—Trade name adopted by Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro. for their
watches having black faced dials with luminous hands and numerals.
Composed of a substance in which genuine radium is used in minute
proportions.

RADIUS OF GYRATION—The distance from the center of gyration to the axis
of rotation.

RAMSEY, DAVIS—One of the earliest British watchmakers of renown. He was
appointed "keeper of clocks and watches" to James I, and appears to
have retained his appointments after the death of the latter. He was
the first master of the Clockmakers' Company tho he seems to have taken
little active part in the management thereof. Scott introduces him into
his story—"The Fortunes of Nigel" as a Keeper of a shop a few yards
east of Temple Bar. Without doubt he was the leading clockmaker of his
day. He died in 1655.

RATCHET—The pawl, or dog, which engages in the teeth of a ratchet wheel
and prevents it from turning backward. It is held lightly against the
periphery of the ratchet wheel by a small spring known as the ratchet
spring.

[Illustration]

RATCHET WHEEL—A wheel with triangular teeth fixed on to an arbor to
prevent the latter from turning backward. The fronts of the teeth are
radial, the backs straight lines running from the tip of one tooth to
the base of the next. In going-barrel, keyless watches the ratchet has
epicycloidal teeth. By "the ratchet" in a watch, chronometer or clock
with mainspring is meant the ratchet fastened to the barrel arbor to
prevent the mainspring from slipping back when it is being wound.

RECOIL—In recoil escapements the pallets not only stop the escape wheel
but actually turn it backward a slight distance. This backward motion
is called the recoil.

REGULATOR—1. A standard clock with compensated pendulum with which less
accurate movements are compared. 2. The lever in a watch by which the
curb-pins regulating the swing of the hairspring are shifted.

REMONTOIRE—An arrangement in the upper part of the going train by
which a weak spring is wound up or a small weight is lifted that
gives impulse to the escape wheel at short intervals. Its use is to
counteract the irregularities in impulse due to the coarse train, etc.
They are delicate and complicated and now superseded by the Double
Three-legged Gravity Escapement.

REPEATER—A striking watch or clock which by the pulling of a string
or the pressing of a button could be made to repeat the last hour and
part hour, struck. In vogue during the 18th century. Credit for the
invention was disputed by Daniel Quare and Edward Barlow. James II gave
the decision in favor of Quare whose mechanism was a trifle simpler.

REPOUSSE—A kind of chasing in which the metal is punched or pressed
from the back bringing the design into higher relief than by the usual
method of indenting.

[Illustration]

RING-DIAL—See _Sun-dial_, _Portable_.

RICHARD, DANIEL JEAN—A Swiss watchmaker, born at La Sagne in 1665. At
fifteen a watch having come into his hands, he constructed a similar
one unaided. That was the first watch made in Neuchatel. After a
time in Geneva he set up business in La Sagne, afterwards moving to
Locle. He created the watch industry of Neuchatel and saw it grow to a
neighborhood of five hundred workers. He died at Locle 1741. In 1888 a
bronze statue was erected to him there.

ROBBINS, ROYAL E.—Born in Connecticut 1824. He was essentially one
of the "fathers" of American watchmaking because it was through his
financing and clever management that the first watch company finally
succeeded in making a financial success.

ROLLER—The circular plate in a lever escapement, into which the ruby
pin is set.

ROLLER-JEWEL—Same as "impulse pin."

ROMAN INDICTION—A period of fifteen years appointed by the Emperor
Constantine 312 A. D. for the payment of certain taxes.

ROSE ENGINE—A lathe in which the rotary movement of the mandrel is
combined with a lateral, reciprocating movement of the tool rest; used
for ornamenting the outside cases of watches with involved curved
engraving.

RUBY PIN—The impulse pin in a lever escapement, made of a ruby.

RUBY ROLLER—The roller in a duplex escapement against which the teeth
of the escape wheel are locked.

RUN—In the lever escapement, the extent of the movement of the lever
toward the banking pins after the "drop" on to the locking.


SABINIANUS—Pope from 604 to 606. Said to have invented a clock in 612
A. D., but the clock he is supposed to have built was probably only
another of many forms of clepsydrae, or water clocks.

SAFETY PINION—A center pinion in a going-barrel watch which allows the
recoil of the barrel if the mainspring breaks.

[Illustration]

SAND-GLASS—(CLEPSAMMIA)—A dumb-bell-shaped glass globe containing sand,
and with a small aperture through which the sand flows in a certain
fixed time. The most common form is the hour-glass but many others are
in use as the three-minute glass for boiling eggs, the two-minute glass
used by the British Parliament, etc. Dried and finely powdered eggshell
sometimes used in place of sand. The principle is the same as that of
the simplest form of clepsydra. See _Hour-Glass_.

SANDOZ AND TROT—A firm which established the first watch factory in
Switzerland in 1804. Previous to that time watchmaking had been a house
industry.

SECOND—One-sixtieth of a minute: 1-3600 of a mean solar hour.

SECONDARY COMPENSATION—Same as "auxiliary compensation." See
_Auxiliary_.

SECONDS HAND—The hand on the dial of a clock or watch which revolves
once a minute. Sometimes small and set in a small circle of its own.
Sometimes long and traverses the whole dial. See _Center-seconds and
Sweep-seconds_.

SECONDS PIVOT—The prolongation of the fourth wheel arbor to which the
seconds hand of a watch is fixed.

SECONDS, SPLIT—Divided seconds—into quarters, or fifths; measured by a
chronograph.

SHADOW—A darkened space resulting from the interception of light by an
opaque body.

SHAGREEN—Made from the tough skin that covers the crupper of a horse or
ass. Rough seeds are trodden into the skin and then allowed to dry. The
seeds are shaken out and the skin dyed green. Then the rough surface is
rubbed down smooth leaving white spots on the green ground. Also made
from the rough skin of sharks and dolphins. Formerly used a great deal
for the outer cases of watches. See _Pair Cases_.

SHERWOOD, NAPOLEON BONAPARTE—Born in 1823. About 1855 he entered
the watchmaking business in the employ of the Waltham Watch Co. He
revolutionized jeweling methods and invented among other things a
"Counter-sinker," "End-shake tools," "Truing-up tools" and "Opener."
In 1864 he organized the Newark Watch Company but within a few months
severed his connection with it. He died in 1872.

SIDEREAL TIME—The standard used by astronomers; measured by the diurnal
rotation of the earth, which turns on its axis in 23 hours, 56 minutes,
4.1 seconds. The sidereal day is therefore 3 minutes, 56 seconds
shorter than the mean solar day. Mean time clocks can be regulated with
greater facility by the stars than by the sun for the motion of the
earth with regard to the fixed stars is uniform. Clocks all over the
United States are so regulated from the Naval Observatory at Washington.

SIDE-SHAKE—Freedom of pivots to move sideways. See _End-Shake_.

SLOW TRAIN—A train whose balance vibrates 14,400 times an hour. Now
never used in pocket watches because of susceptibility to inequalities
in the pull of the mainspring, jars, sudden movements, etc. Used,
however, in marine chronometers.

SNAIL—A cam shaped like a snail, used generally for gradually lifting
and suddenly discharging a lever, as in the striking mechanism of
clocks.

SNAILING—A method of ornamenting with circles and bars parts of a watch
movement which it is not desirable to polish highly.

SOLAR TIME—Time marked by the diurnal revolution of the earth with
regard to the sun, of which the midday is the instant at which the sun
appears at its greatest height above the horizon. This instant varies
from twelve o'clock mean time because the earth also advances in its
orbit and its meridians are not perpendicular to the ecliptic.

SPANDRELS—The corners of a square face outside the dial of a clock.
Formerly very beautifully decorated. The age of the clock can be told
approximately from the form of ornamentation employed.

[Illustration]

SPLIT SECONDS—A chronograph in which there are two center-seconds
hands—one under the other—which can be stopped independently of one
another.

SPRING-CLOCKS—Clocks whose driving power is a coiled spring instead of
a weight.

[Illustration]

STACKFREED—The derivation of the word is obscure; it is possibly
Persian. A device to counteract the difference in power of the
mainspring at the different stages of its unwinding. Fixed to the
mainspring arbor above the top plate is a pinion having eight leaves,
which gears with a wheel having twenty-four teeth, which do not quite
fill out the circumference of the wheel. Fastened to the wheel is
a cam, concentric for about seven-eighths of its circumference and
indented for the remainder. Into a groove in the concentric portion
of the edge is pressed a roller which is pivoted at the free end of
a strong curved spring. When the mainspring is fully wound the roller
rests in the curved depression of the cam and the effort required to
lift the roller up the incline absorbs some of the mainspring's power.
On the other hand when the mainspring is nearly run down, the roller
is descending an inclined plane and absorbs less of the power. Not an
acceptable device and now rarely met with.

STEM-WINDING—The ordinary method of winding keyless watches by means of
a stem running through the pendant.

STOP WORK—An arrangement for preventing the overwinding of a mainspring
or a clock weight.

_Stratton, N. P._—One of the early watchmakers connected with American
manufacture. He was an apprentice of the Pitkin Bros., and was sent by
the Waltham Company to England in 1852 to learn gilding and etching.
He was made assistant superintendent of the Waltham Co. in 1857. He
invented a mainspring barrel and a hair-spring stud which were later
adopted by the Waltham Company.

STRIKING-WORK—The part of a clock's mechanism devoted to striking. The
chief forms are _Rack_, and _Locking-plate_, or _Count-wheel_. See
separate articles.

STRIKING-WORK, LOCKING-PLATE, OR COUNT-WHEEL—Used in turret clocks
where there is no occasion for the repeating movement. This form of
striking work does not allow of the repetition or omission of the
striking of any hour without making the next one wrong.

STRIKING-WORK—RACK—A form of striking work used largely in house
clocks; the number of blows to be struck depends merely on the position
of a wheel attached to the going part. In this form the striking of any
horn may be omitted or repeated without deranging the following strikes.

STUD—1. A small piece of metal pierced to receive the outer or upper
coil of a balance spring. 2. The holder of the fusee stop-work. 3. Any
fixed holder used in a watch or clock, not otherwise named, is called a
stud.

STYLE—The finger or gnomon on a sun-dial whose shadow, falling on the
plate, indicates the time.

SULLY, HENRY—An English watchmaker of the early eighteenth century who
lived most of his life in France. He presented the French Academy with
a marine timekeeper superior to the timepieces of the period, and a
memoir describing it. He died shortly afterward and advance in the art
was delayed.

SUN-DIAL—A device for telling time by the shadow of a style, cast by
the sun, as thrown upon a disk or plate marked with the hour lines.
Dials were named from their positions—equinoctial or equatorial; east;
erect or vertical; horizontal; inclining, etc., or from their purpose
or method of use, as portable, reflecting, etc., or as in the case of
the ring-dial, from their form. The word is derived from the Latin
_dies_. The style in the earliest dials was a vertical staff, but later
it was found that reasonable accuracy could only be obtained by a style
set parallel to the earth's axis—that is, inclined to the horizontal at
the angle of latitude of the locality in which the dial was set.

Even before the first astronomical discoveries of the Babylonians,
people had felt some need of a convenient device to mark and measure
the passing of the time, especially the shorter divisions of recurring
time, the time of day. Sunrise and sunset marked themselves by
the horizon, but noon was harder to determine, and the points of
mid-morning and mid-afternoon harder still. And with the knowledge of
those regular movements in the heavens which determine time on earth,
and with the closer division of the day into its hours, that need
became a sheer necessity.

The obvious measure of the sun's movements was the moving shadow
cast by the sun itself. And the earliest device for recording time
was naturally the sun-dial. Its origin fades into the twilight of
antiquity. Long before we know anything about him, primitive man
measured the moving shadow of some tree. And it occurred to him to
set up a post or pillar in some convenient place, and mark out the
positions into which the shadow swung. The earliest sun-dials were
of this pattern, with a vertical pointer of _gnomon_, and the hours
marked upon the ground. And it is related of the early Greeks that
they told the time individually by marking and measuring the length of
their own shadows. But the measure of time by the length of a shadow
is very irregular at best, because of the yearly motion of the sun.
The shortest shadow of the day will indeed fall at noon. But that
noon shadow will vary in length according as the sun's noon is high
in Summer or low in Winter; and so the whole scale of lengths will
be different for every day in the year. If a three foot shadow means
mid-afternoon today, it will mean quite another time tomorrow. And for
measuring by the _direction of the_ shadow, the vertical gnomon is more
irregular still. For the swing of the shadow would depend not only upon
the sun's motion across the sky from East to West, but also upon his
slant North and South along the sky. And this would change from day to
day. The difficulty was to make a dial of which the shadow would move
as regularly as the sun moves.

[Illustration: ANCIENT GREEK HEMICYCLE]

This the ancients accomplished in a very simple and ingenious way. The
sun moves in the sky as it were upon the inner surface of a hollow
globe or sphere. So they made the dial a little hemisphere, place with
its hollow side up toward the sky as a bowl stands on a table. The
pointer was placed above and to the South of this, on the side toward
the sun; and the Time was marked by the shadow of the tip end of the
pointer which was a little ball or bead. The path of this shadow across
the bowl reproduced exactly on a small scale the path of the sun across
the great bowl of the heavens. And it was then an easy matter to mark
off the bowl into equal divisions which the shadow would cross at equal
intervals of the day. Of course, the track of the shadow changed with
the season of the year. But it moved always as the sun moved, and just
as regularly, giving a true measure of the solar day.

The principle of this was applied in several interesting variations.
The defect of the Hemicycle, as this hollow type of dial was called,
was that it could not be read accurately for short intervals. A shadow
moving only a few inches in the whole day must move so slowly that one
could hardly see it move at all. To mark the minutes, it must move
faster, just as the minute hand of your watch moves faster than the
hour hand, and the second hand faster still. One cannot read seconds
from the hour hand, however accurately it moves, because it moves so
slowly. So the idea was applied by making the shadow move across a
street or courtyard, down one side and across and up the other side,
as the sun opposite went up and across and down the sky. Sometimes
the place was partly roofed over, and a single beam of light admitted
through a small hole at the South end. The resulting spot of light
would then move in the same way. The long sunbeam or shadow moved
faster, and so could be read at shorter intervals. The Hemicycle is not
certainly known to have been invented until long after this, about B.
C. 350. But the principle of it is so simple and so entirely such as
would occur to an intelligent man still ignorant of its mathematical
explanation, that we may not unreasonably suppose it to have been
discovered by experiments long before.

[Illustration: ANCIENT ROMAN HEMICYCLE]

The final improvement of the sundial was the discovery that by slanting
the gnomon so that it pointed exactly toward the North Pole of the
sky, the direction of its shadow could be made to show the solar time
correctly. Since the sky is infinitely far away, the line of the gnomon
would then lie parallel to the axis of the heavens. And the sun, moving
parallel to the celestial Equator, would always move straight across
the gnomon. In other words, he would practically revolve around its
sloping edge. Therefore the North and South motion of the sun would be
as it were along the edge of the gnomon, and would not influence the
direction of the shadow at all. His East and West motion alone would
govern the swing of the shadow; and the dial would keep true time with
the sun for every day in the year. There was no longer any necessity
for hollowing out the dial itself into the concave form; it might just
as well be the more convenient flat surface, and this might be either
vertical or horizontal, so long as the gnomon pointed straight to the
Celestial Pole. All that was needed was to mark out on the dial the
true direction in which the shadow fell for each hour of the day.

[Illustration: OLD ENGLISH DIAL]

Just when or by whom the instrument was thus scientifically perfected
is not known. The calculations necessary to the projection of the hour
lines upon a flat surface could hardly have been performed before Greek
times. The Greeks ascribed the invention of the sundial to Anaximander,
in the sixth century B. C., but sundials of various types had been
known in various parts of the world long before then. On the other
hand, the Hemicycle remained the common form of the instrument all
through the classic period and even afterwards. The Babylonians were
quite capable of understanding the principle of the sloping gnomon. And
once this was discovered, it would have been entirely practical to set
up the new dial beside a Hemicycle or Clepsydra, and find the angles of
the hour lines by experiment. These, once laid out correctly, would be
determined once for all. Even at its best the sundial had certain very
marked limitations. Scientifically constructed, it would keep accurate
time according to the visible sun. But it could not be read accurately
unless made inconveniently large. It was inaccurate when removed
from its original latitude, or displaced from a true North and South
position; so that in any portable form it became a very rough measure
indeed. Moreover, it was of course entirely useless at night or in bad
weather or in shadow. And finally, it was never absolutely exact under
the most ideal conditions, because of what is known as the Equation of
Time. The Earth does not, in fact, move around the sun at an absolutely
regular rate of speed; it moves a trifle faster during certain parts of
the year and slower at others. The sun therefore varies correspondingly
his apparent speed along the Ecliptic, so that even from noon to noon
the sun is not always precisely on time. He may be as much as fifteen
minutes late or early, according to the season. And our modern days are
measured according to the sun's average rate, so as to allow for this
variation and keep every day exactly twenty-four hours long. This of
course no sun-dial can possibly be made to do, since it must follow the
actual sun.

The sun-dial has remained in use to the present day. It seems strange
to think of a sun-dial being used as a standard for setting clocks and
actually to regulate the running of trains. But these things were done
in civilized Europe within the last half century. It was only when the
railroad and the telegraph had made standard time at once necessary
and easy to obtain that the sun-dial altogether lost its position of
authority.

SUN-DIALS, DESCRIPTIONS—Classical sun-dials were of many forms.
Vitruvius, the Roman engineer, mentions thirteen, some of them
portable; and ascribes the invention of the Hemicycle to the Babylonian
astronomer and priest, Berosus. There was a famous dial of this type
at the base of Cleopatra's Needle in Egypt. It is now at the British
Museum. And the Emperor Augustus, returning from his Egyptian wars,
brought home to Rome an obelisk which he set up as the gnomon of a
huge dial in the Campus Martius. At Athens there was the famous Tower
of the Winds; octagonal in shape, with a weather vane above, and below
around the tower, the hours and the winds, to each of which the Greeks
gave a personality and a name. There is a curious bit of accidental
poetry in the marking of the sun-dial in Greece. The Greek numerals,
like the Roman, were simply the letters of their alphabet arranged in a
certain order. The hot hours of the day from noon to four o'clock were
those commonly devoted by the Greeks to rest and recreation. Reckoning
the day from sunrise, this period ran from the sixth hour through the
ninth. And the numeral letters for Six, Seven, Eight and Nine, which
marked those hours upon the dial, spell out the Greek word ΖἩΟΙ, the
imperative of the verb to _live_. The poet Lucian thus points the moral:

    Six hours to labor, four to leisure give;
    In them—so say the dialled hours—LIVE.

The shepherds of the Pyrenees still consult their pocket dials. And the
Turk makes a sun-dial of his two hands by holding them up with the tips
of the thumbs joined horizontally and the forefingers extended upward;
so that the shadow of one forefinger falls toward the other and by its
position roughly indicates the time. But even now, when it has nearly
gone from practical use, the sun-dial, as an appropriate adornment of
our public parks and our private gardens, is becoming increasingly
fashionable in our own generation.

[Illustration: OLD FRENCH WALL DIAL]

Sun-dials are common in almost all parts of the world, and not a few
of them have in one way or another become famous. The largest is at
Jaipur in India, and was erected about 1730. Its gnomon is ninety
feet high and one hundred and forty-seven feet long. A flight of
stone steps run up the slope of it, and at the top there is a sort of
little watch-tower. And the shadow, which falls upon a great stone
quadrant instead of upon a flat surface, moves at the rate of two and
a half inches a minute. Another great dial is the so-called Calendar
Stone of Mexico, which was made by the Aztec priests more than a
hundred years before the Spaniards came. It weighs nearly fifty tons,
and is not only a sun-dial but a representation of the zodiac and a
diagram of the astronomical changes of the year: thus showing that
the ancient Mexicans in their own way paralleled the astrology of the
Babylonians on the other side of the world. Probably the most expensive
and elaborate sun-dial ever built was the one set up in 1669 by King
Charles II of England in front of the banqueting house at White Hall in
London. It was in the form of a tall pyramid on which were two hundred
and seventy-one different dials, giving not only the hour of the day
but various astronomical and geographical indications as well. The
place called Seven Dials in London takes its name from a tall pillar
with sun-dials around its top which used to stand at the junction
of seven streets radiating starwise from that spot as a center. The
pillar was overthrown in 1773 by a party of vandals digging for buried
treasure which they believed to have been hidden beneath its base.
Extensive list, descriptions and illustrations, See Book of Sun-dials,
Mrs. Alfred Gatty; Sun-dials and Roses, Mrs. Alice Morse Earle.

[Illustration: OLD ENGLISH PILLAR DIAL]

SUN-DIALS, GREEK—1. Diogenes asserts that the first Greek dial or
gnomon was erected by Anaximander of Miletus. It was probably a
vertical rod on a horizontal plane. This was two centuries after the
Dial of Ahaz. 2. On the "Tower of the Winds" in Athens—a dial on each
face.

SUN-DIAL, HOLLOW—A form of sun-dial invented by the Chaldean Berosus. A
hollow hemisphere with a bead at its center, whose shadow indicated the
hour of the day.

SUN-DIAL, MOTTOES—On nearly all sun-dials both ancient and modern there
there is inscribed a motto—usually of the moral significance of the
passage of time.

Very ancient also, as well as equally common in modern times is the
custom of placing upon the sun-dial some appropriate motto expressive
of the mystery of Time. There are hundreds of such mottoes, ranging in
sentiment from the old Roman one: _Horas non numero nisi Serenas_. "I
number no hours but the fair ones," to the couplet of a modern poet:

    "Time flies, you say? Ah no,
    Alas! Time stays; we go."

And these two thoughts, expressed in many forms, represent fairly the
tenor of most of them. There is a story of a lazy apprentice asking a
motto for his dial, to whom his master sharply replied: "Begone about
your business!" and the fellow, appropriately enough, took that for
the motto required. It is at least a familiar sentiment, especially
in Puritan times; and equally so during the Middle Ages is that more
mystic suggestion, _Umbra Dei_—"the Shadow of God."

[Illustration]

SUN-DIAL, PORTABLE—Made in different shapes and upon different plans
small enough to carry about. The most common form was the ring dial,
consisting of a metal ring with a hole in it through which the light
fell upon an inside ring adjustable to the day and month. It required
careful orienting to be dependable as a time-indicator.

SUN-DIALS, ROMAN—The first dial in Rome was set up B. C. 293 near the
temple of Quirinus by Papirius Cursor. It served ninety-nine years;
then one more accurate was set up beside it. Before that, no time
was noted except the rising and setting of the sun. Emperor Augustus
erected a dial at Campus Martius. A dial captured in Sicily during the
first Punic war was set up in the Forum about 263 B. C. and used for
years before they learned that it was inaccurate in that latitude,
being designed for the latitude of Sicily.

SUNK-SECONDS—A dial in which the seconds circle is sunk below the rest
of the dial. It allows the hour hand to be placed closer to the face
thus making a thinner model possible.

SUPPLEMENTARY ARC—See: "Lifting Arc."

SWEEP-SECONDS—See: _Center-Seconds_.


TABLE ROLLER—The roller of a lever escapement which carries the impulse
pin.

TELL-TALE CLOCK—A clock by which a record is left of periodical visits
of some one as a night-watchman.

TEMPLATE OR TIMPLET—One of the four facets that surround a cut gem.

TENON—A projection at the end of a piece cut to fit into a
corresponding mortise.

TERRY, ELI—The first man to make clocks by machinery in America. When
it was learned that he planned to make two hundred clocks he was much
laughed at. He was born at East Windsor, Conn., in 1772. His first
clocks were made by hand, the movements being of wood. He was the
leading maker of wooden clocks in America. He invented the shelf clock
which contained distinctly new inventions and he introduced the pillar
scroll-top case. He was a mechanical genius and contributed a great
deal to developing clock-making in America into a great industry. He
died in 1852.

THIRD WHEEL—The wheel in the train between the center wheel and the
fourth wheel.

THALES—A celebrated Ionian astronomer, one of the Seven Sages of
Greece. He was born about 640 B. C., and is credited by Herodotus with
having predicted an eclipse of the sun occurring about 609 B. C. He was
the author of several solutions of geometrical problems. He died about
550 B. C.

THOMAS, SETH—Born at Wolcott, Conn., 1785. A very successful clockmaker
who contributed probably more than any other man toward popularizing
the modern cheap clock. The Seth Thomas Clock Co., of today, he started
in 1813 with twenty operatives. By 1853 it had nine hundred. He died in
1859.

THREE-QUARTER PLATE—A three-quarter plate watch is one in which there
is a piece cut out from the top plate large enough to permit the
balance to rotate on a level with that plate. It is the most common
form at present in use in both cheap and high grade watches, and found
in both "pillar" and "bridge" models.

TIME-CANDLES—Candles in alternate black and white sections were used to
mark the passage of time in Europe and Asia for a long time. In England
and France they were used to limit the bidding at an auction. The
phrase "by inch of candle" meant that the one bidding when the flame
expired was the successful bidder. King Alfred is said to have used
time-candles and to have inclosed them in thin horn plates to protect
them from drafts, thus originating the lantern.

[Illustration]

TIMEKEEPER—Any device primarily concerned with measuring and indicating
the sub-divisions of the day.

TOMPION, THOMAS—"The father of English Watchmaking." Born 1638. He
was the leading watchmaker at the court of Charles II. He found the
construction of the time-keeping part of watches in a very indifferent
condition and he left English clocks and watches the finest in the
world, although many great improvements were made after his time. He
associated closely with such scientists as Hooke, and Barlow, and made
practical application of their theories—two notable instances being
the cylinder escapement and the balance-spring. Tompion was the first
to number his watches consecutively for the purpose of identification
though he did not so mark his early ones. There is a famous clock in
the pumproom at Bath, England, of Tompion's construction. Little is
known of his domestic life but he appears to have been unmarried. He
died in 1713 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. Tompion was master of
the Worshipful Clockmakers' Company in 1704.

TOP PLATE—The plate in a watch farthest from the dial. In full plate
watches it is circular; in three-quarter plate or half-plate watches a
part is cut away.

[Illustration]

TOWER OF THE WINDS—An octagonal tower north of the Acropolis of Athens
spoken of as horological by Vario and Vitruvius. Believed to have had
a sundial on each of its eight faces and to have contained a clepsydra
fed by a spring.

TRAIN—The toothed wheels of a watch or clock which connect the barrel
or fusee with the escapement. In a going-barrel watch the teeth about
the barrel drive the center pinion which drives the center wheel and
then in turn the third wheel pinion, third wheel, fourth wheel pinion
and fourth wheel, escape pinion and escape wheel.

TRIPPING—The running past the pallet's locking face, of an escape wheel
tooth.


VACHERON AND CONSTANTIN—In 1840 established the first _complete_ watch
factory in Switzerland. Not until later, however, was motor power used
instead of foot-power; and later still manufacture by machinery. The
work in this factory is carried on under a combination of all accepted
methods.

VAILLY, DOM—A Benedictine monk of about 1690 who made a water clock
which Beckmann says was the first to be constructed on a really
scientific principle. See _Clocks, Interesting Old—Vailly's_.

VAN DER WOERD, CHARLES—A prominent man in connection with watch
manufacturing in this country. In 1864 he invented an automatic pinion
cutter; in 1874 an automatic screw machine. From 1876-1883 he was
superintendent of the Waltham factory.

VERGE—The pallet axis of the verge escapement. See diagram of Verge
Escapement. It carries the balance at its top.

VERGE WATCH—A watch with a verge escapement.

VICK, HENRY DE. See _De Vick_.

VOLUTE—A flat spiral.

VOLUTE-SPRING—A flat metallic spring coiled in a spiral conical form
and compressible in the direction of its axis.


WALLINGFORD, RICHARD—An English mechanic and astronomer of the
fourteenth century. He made a clock which is supposed to have been the
first that was regulated by a fly-wheel. Several authorities, however,
claim that Wallingford's "clock" was actually a planetarium.

WALTHAM—A town in Massachusetts—the site of the first successful watch
factory in America. At present a great watch making center.

WATCH—In modern parlance, a small timepiece to carry about on the
person. Formerly a timepiece which _showed_ time in distinction to
clock which _struck_ time. Derham (1734) uses the term to indicate all
timepieces driven by springs. The term may have been derived from the
Swedish _vacht_, German _wachen_, or Saxon _woecca_. The spaces of time
between the fillings of a clepsydra were also called "watches."

WATCH COLLECTIONS—For list of principal collections, past and present,
see Jewelers' Circular files August to December 1915. List compiled by
Major Paul M. Chamberlain of Chicago. For list of principal present
collections, see Appendix to this volume derived from the Chamberlain
Compilation.

WATCHMAKERS' SCHOOLS—American. In America these schools usually teach
watch-repairing and not the making of watches. Some of them offer
courses in making watches but few pupils avail themselves of these
courses. List of: De Selins Watch School, Attica, Ind.; Detroit
Technical Institute—Detroit, Mich.; Kansas City Watchmaking and
Engraving School, Kansas City, Mo.; Needles Institute of Watchmaking,
Kansas City, Mo.; Bowman Technical School, Lancaster, Pa.; Ries and
Armstrong, Macon, Ga.; Drexler School for Watchmaking, Milwaukee, Wis.;
Newark Watchmaking School, Newark, N. J.; Philadelphia College of
Horology, Philadelphia, Pa.; St. Louis Watchmaking School, St. Louis,
Mo.; Schwartzman's Trade Schools, San Francisco, Cal.; Stone School
of Watchmaking, St. Paul, Minn.; Waltham Horological School, Waltham,
Mass.; Bradley Polytechnic Institute, Peoria, Ill.

WATCHMAKERS' SCHOOLS, SWITZERLAND—Usually under government management.
Teach very thoroughly and completely the art of making a watch from the
beginning.

WATCH-PAPERS—During the 18th century it was a fad in England and
America to carry small round papers, which exactly fitted the case of a
watch. On these were portraits and verses, the latter of doubtful merit
and usually of sinister or gloomy significance.

WATERBURY—A town in Connecticut long a center of clock and watch making
in America. Home of the original Waterbury watch. Location of principal
factory of Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro., manufacturers of the Ingersoll
watches.

WATER-CLOCK—Any device, as a clepsydra, for measuring time by the fall
or flow of water. More commonly applied to the type in which wheels are
turned by water or in such as those in which water sets machinery of
some form in motion as _Vailly's water-clock_. See _Clock, Vailly's_.

WICK TIMEKEEPER—A wick or rope made of some fiber resembling flax or
hemp with knots tied at regular intervals and so treated that upon
ignition it would smolder instead of breaking into flame. Early in use
in Japan and China. Time was estimated by the burning between the knots.

WIECK, HENRY DE—See _De Vick_.

WILLARD, AARON—Born 1757. Probably learned his trade from his older
brothers Simon and Benjamin. He made tall, and shelf clocks, later
banjo clocks—so-called from their shape—gallery clocks, and regulators.
A better business man than his brothers and successful from the start.
His clocks did not lack decorative merit but were inferior to Simon
Willard's. He made a greater number than his brother because more
successful in a business way.

WILLARD, BENJAMIN—Older brother of Simon and Aaron Willard. Among the
first of American clockmakers. Born 1743. Made, probably, only tall
clocks with handsome cases and some with musical attachments. Not so
good as the clocks of Aaron and Simon Willard but older and rarer now.

WILLARD, SIMON—Born at Grafton, Mass., 1753. One of the earliest
Massachusetts clock makers who disputed the claim of the Connecticut
makers for the credit of revolutionizing the clock industry in America.
So far as cases go they excelled Terry, Thomas, and others. But to the
Connecticut makers belongs the credit for having developed clock making
into a great industry. Willard at first made eight-day tall clocks
and shelf clocks, later wall clocks which he called "time pieces." In
1802 he practically abandoned the making of tall clocks, and confined
himself to his "time pieces" and special orders for tower and gallery
clocks. For a detailed list of his productions see his Biography by
John Ware Willard. He was an intimate friend of Jefferson, Madison and
other leading men of the time. Died 1848.

WORSHIPFUL CLOCKMAKERS' COMPANY OF LONDON, THE—Incorporated August 22,
1631, under special charter by King Charles I of England. Was given the
sole privilege of regulating the watch and clock trade in and for ten
miles around London.

WEBSTER, AMBROSE—Mechanical superintendent, and later assistant
superintendent, of the Waltham factory until his resignation in 1876.
He systematized the work in the shop, standardized the measuring
system, and forced automatic machinery to the front. He designed the
first watch factory lathe with hard spindles and bearings of the two
taper variety. He made the first interchangeable standard for parts
of lathes. He invented many machines now in use, among them being the
automatic pinion cutter.

WEIGHT-CLOCK—A clock whose driving power is a weight suspended by a
cord wound on a drum or cylinder.

WEIGHTS—The first clocks were made with a weight on a cord which was
wound around a cylinder connected with the train. The weight descending
caused the cylinder to revolve, setting the train in motion. Too rapid
unwinding was prevented by the escapement. The weight as a driving
power is still used, especially in large clocks.

WHEEL, COUNT—The wheel carrying the locking-plate in a striking
mechanism.


YEAR—Astronomically, the period of time occupied by the earth in
making one complete revolution around the sun. The calendar year is an
arbitrarily determined division of time, approximating more or less
closely the astronomical year. See _Calendar, Gregorian_.


ZECH, JACOB—Of Prague. Invented the fusee about 1525. The Society of
Antiquaries possesses an example of his handiwork—a table time-piece
with a circular brass-gilt case 9¾" in diameter and 5" high. For minute
description see Archaeologia vol. xxxiii.

ZERO—A time-telling term originating or at least made common during the
Great War. Word commonly used in a military sense to indicate a secret
instant of time from which an attack in its various stages is scheduled.

ZODIAC—An imaginary belt 16 degrees in width, spread equally on both
sides of the ecliptic (q. v.). It is divided into twelve sections
or "signs" which receive their distinguishing names from the twelve
principal constellations within the belt. That is how the Babylonians
learned to tell the time by looking at the sun and the stars. Only
their whole problem was vastly complicated by the daily rotation of
the earth on its axis, which of course makes the whole sky seem to
turn in the opposite direction day by day. The earth turns in the same
direction that it goes round the sun, from West to East. So the heavens
turn apparently from East to West, while the annual motion, as we saw
just now by the illustration of the clock face, appears in its true
direction, Eastward. Also, the great clock of the sky is not from our
point of view horizontal, but stood up on edge; and not straight up and
down even, but slanted at an angle. So its apparent movements are as it
were in several directions at once, and the effect is very confusing.
The real motions as they actually do occur are very much simpler and
easier to understand. But of these the Babylonians had no idea. They
knew only what they could see; and it is all the more wonderful that
they contrived to reason out so much and so correctly.

[Illustration]

They mapped out a belt or zone around the sky, with the Ecliptic
along the middle of it. This they divided into twelve equal parts
of thirty degrees each, called Signs or Houses, and each containing
a constellation. These constellations were in order, _Aries_ or the
Ram; _Taurus_ or the Bull; _Gemini_ or the Twins; _Cancer_ or the
Crab; _Leo_ or the Lion; _Virgo_ or the Virgin; _Libra_ or the Scales;
_Scorpio_ or the Scorpion; _Sagittarius_ or the Archer; _Capricornus_
or the Goat; _Aquarius_ or the Water-Carrier; and _Pisces_ or the
Fishes. We know these by their Latin names, and the whole zone by
its Greek name of The Zodiac. But their original titles were much
the same, only in a different language. The sun went through one of
these constellations each month; and by his position along the Zodiac
they told the time of year. Thus the Spring Equinox was where the sun
entered the House of the Ram; and that was for the ancients the first
day of the new year. The House of the Crab was farthest North, and when
the sun got there it was midsummer. The Autumn Equinox was in the House
of the Scales; and when the sun reached the House of the Goat, he would
be at the Southern or Winter end of his journey. Moreover, since the
Moon and the Planets always keep close to the Ecliptic, their apparent
motions all lie within the Zodiacal zone. And the Zodiac therefore
represented the most important part of the heavens from the standpoint
of keeping time; the part, that is, wherein all of those bodies which
moved among the stars month by month and day by day appeared to have
their motions.


       *       *       *       *       *



TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES


Minor punctuation and printer errors repaired.

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.





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