18. Clocks and watches are constructed on the same general principles. The mechanism of both is composed of wheel-work, with contrivances to put it in motion, and to regulate its movements. The moving or maintaining power in large clocks is a weight suspended by a cord to a cylinder. In watches, and sometimes in small clocks, this office is performed by a steel spring. In the clock, the regulation of the machinery is effected by the pendulum, and in the watch, by the balance-wheel, or spring balance. In either case, the maintaining power is prevented from expending itself, except in measured portions.
19. The time is indicated by hands, or pointers, which move on the dial plate. The minute hand is attached to the axle of the wheel which makes its revolution in sixty minutes, and the hour hand to the one which makes the revolution in twelve hours. Greater and smaller divisions of time are kept and indicated on the same principle. The part of a clock which keeps the time, is called the going part; and that which strikes the hour, the striking part.
20. The division of labor is particularly conspicuous in the manufacture of watches, as the production of almost every part is the labor of a distinct artisan. The workman who polishes the several parts, and puts them together, is called, among this class of tradesmen, the finisher or watch-maker. Those, therefore, who deal largely in watches in England, purchase the different parts from the several manufacturers, and cause them to be put together by the finisher.
21. Watches are extensively manufactured in various parts of Europe, but particularly in French Switzerland, France, and England. The London watchmakers have been celebrated for good workmanship, for more than a century and a half. This manufacture has not yet been commenced in the United States, although the machinery, or inside work, is very often imported in tin boxes, and afterwards supplied with dial plates and cases. This is especially the case with the more valuable kinds of watches.
22. Brass clocks are manufactured in most of our cities, and in many of our villages, and wooden clocks, in great numbers, in the state of Connecticut. These last are carried by pedlers into the remotest parts of the country, so that almost every farmer in our land can divide the day by the oscillations of the pendulum.
