Time Telling through the Ages

by Harry Chase Brearley

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.