such as files, screw drivers, etc. His next work was to make wooden watchcases as large as dinner-plates. After this, he was given the frame to which the various wheels of a watch are fastened and was taught how and where to drill the holes for wheels and screws. After lessons in making the finer tools to be used, he was allowed to make a watch frame. All this took several years, for he had to do the same work over and over until his teachers were satisfied with it. Then he was promoted to the second room. Here he learned to adjust the stem-winding parts, to do fine cutting and filing, and to make watches that would strike the hour and even the minute. Room three was called the "train room," because the wheels of a watch are spoken of as "the train." The model watch in this room was as large as a saucer. The young man had to study every detail of this, and also to learn the use of a delicate little machine doing such fine work that it could cut twenty-four hundred tiny cogs on one of the little wheels of a watch. In the fourth room he learned to make the escapement wheel and some other parts; and he had to make them, not merely passably, but excellently. In the fifth and last room, he must do the careful, patient work that makes a watch go perfectly. There are special little curves that must be given to the hair spring; and the screws on the balance wheel must be carefully adjusted. If the watch ran faster when it was lying down than when it was hanging up, he learned that certain ones of the bearings were too coarse and must be made
finer. In short, he must be able to make a watch that, whether hanging up or lying down, and whether the weather was hot or cold, would not vary from correct time more than two and a half seconds a day at the most. Then, and not till then, was the student regarded as a first-class watchmaker.
The graduate of such a school knew how to make a whole watch, but he usually limited his work to some one part. Every part of a watch was made expressly for that watch, but sometimes a hundred different persons worked on it. The very best of the Swiss watches were exceedingly good; the poorest were very bad, and much worse to own than a poor American watch because it costs more to repair a Swiss watch than an American watch.
Courtesy Waltham Watch Co.
WHERE WATCHES ARE MADE
Once a single man made a whole watch by hand. Now one watch may be the product of a hundred hands, each man doing his particular part.
Even though in America the parts of watches are made by machinery, an apprentice has to undergo just as careful and just as extended training here as in Switzerland. A poor watch is worse than none at all, and careless work would not be tolerated in any watch factory. Of late even Switzerland has been importing American machinery in order to compete with the United States. These machines do such careful, minute, intricate work that, as you stand and watch them, you feel as if they must know what they are about. One of them takes the frame,—that is, the plates to which the wheels are fastened,—makes it of the proper thinness, cuts the necessary holes in it, and passes it over to the next machine, which is reaching out for it. The feeder gives
the first machine another plate; and so the work goes on down a whole line of machines. At length the plate is taken in hand by a machine, or rather a group of machines, which can do almost anything. Before they let it go, they actually perform one hundred and forty-two different operations, each bringing it nearer completion. These machines are automatic, but nevertheless they must be constantly watched by expert machinists to keep them in order and make sure of their turning out perfect work.
While one line of machines has been perfecting the plate, others have been at work on screws and wheels and springs. As many of these as are needed for one watch are put into a little division of a tray and carried to another room for its jewels and the rest of its outfit. The jewels, which are pieces of rubies, sapphires, garnets, or even diamonds, are very valuable to a watch. When you know that the little wheels are in constant motion, and that the balance wheel, for instance, vibrates eighteen thousand times an hour, it is plain that a vast amount of wear comes upon the spot where the pivots of these wheels rest. No metal can be made smooth enough to prevent friction, and there is no metal hard enough to prevent wear. The "jewels" are smoother and harder. They are sawed into slabs so thin that fifty of them piled up would measure only an inch. These are stuck to blocks to be polished, cut into disks flat on one side but with a little depression on the other to receive oil, bored through the center, and placed wherever the wear is greatest—provided
the purchaser is willing to pay for them. A "full-jeweled" watch contains twenty-three jewels; that is, in twenty-three of the places where the most severe wear comes, or where friction might prevent the watch from going with perfect smoothness, there will be practically no wear and no friction. A low-priced watch contains only seven jewels, but if you want a watch to last, it pays to buy one that is full-jeweled.