Watch

a portable timepiece. The watch was derived historically from the clock, and was rendered possible by the discovery that regularity of movement can be produced by a coiled spring of steel governed by a balance wheel, quite as well as by the use of weights and a pendulum. Watches are said to have been made in Nuremberg as early as 1477. The credit of watchmaking belongs largely to the Swiss and to the English upon whom Americans were dependent until the decade immediately preceding the Civil War. Prior to that time American watchmakers contented themselves chiefly with cleaning and repairing the timepieces of European make. The making of parts by machinery first attained a high degree of perfection in America. Machine-made watches have proved not only cheaper, but more accurate than those made by hand. In 1851 American factories surprised the watchmakers of Europe by the methods of their exhibit at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, London. They deposited machine-made parts in little heaps on a table, here a box of screws, here a pile of pivots or a heap of jewels, and showed that parts chosen at random, one from each heap, when put together without filing, bending, or tinkering, formed a watch that surpassed the finest hand-made article, not only in beauty, but in absolute accuracy of movement. American factories have not attempted to compete with European watchmakers in the production of curiosities. The smallest watch in the world, once belonged to the empress of Brazil. It was made in Geneva by the famous watchmaker, W. Zogelin, and cost over 5,000 guineas. It has a diameter of one-fifth part of an inch, and is set in an artistically worked finger-ring, which is studded with diamonds. Zogelin worked three years on it, and permanently weakened his eyesight in the task.

Edward Howard, the founder of the first American watch factory, Boston, Massachusetts, 1850, estimates that a well made watch will last fifty years and tick 7,884,000,000 times with no care beyond that of careful handling and winding once a day.

Several prominent American watch companies take their names from the cities in which they are located. Among these are the American Waltham of Massachusetts; the Elgin and Rockford of Illinois, and the Trenton of New Jersey. The Howard Company has been mentioned. The Illinois is located at Springfield and the Hamilton Company at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Waltham factory is the largest in the world. It turns out 600,000 watches a year. The Elgin ranks second in size. It is interesting to note that the Elgin Watch Company has recently built and equipped an astronomical observatory in order to be furnished independently with accurate time. The construction was under the superintendence of Professor William W. Payne, formerly director of Carleton College Observatory, Northfield, Minnesota, who has since been appointed director of the Elgin Observatory.

The most important improvement in the manufacture of watches within the last fifty years is the change from the key to the stem winder. The so-called Waterbury watch and similar timekeepers, which require so much time in the winding as to be a matter of jest, are really vest pocket clocks.

The following statistics for 1900 are taken from the last United States census, and show that many people and a large amount of capital are employed in making watches.

In addition, two-thirds as much capital and over half as many people are employed in the manufacture of watch cases. The buyer of a watch pays more on an average for the case than he does for the works.

See Clock; Hour-Glass; Sundial; Geneva; Waltham