Fig. 81.
Both pinion wheels and cogwheels are cut by cutters rotating at a high speed, about 3,500 times in a minute, the cutters being carefully shaped for the pinion wheels with straight edges, for the cogwheel in epicycloids. It is a pretty thing to see a wheel-cutting engine at work, the cutter flying round with a hum, cutting the rim of a brass wheel into teeth, the brass coming off in flakes thinner than fine hairs and falling in fine dust. When a tooth is cut, the wheel is moved round one division of an apparatus called a “dividing plate,” so as to present a new part of the wheel to the cutter. Of course, the cutter and wheels must all be properly proportioned. Cutters are sold in sets duly shaped for the work they have to do. Wheel-cutting is a special branch of the clockmaking industry. The reason the speed of cutting is so high is because it is desired to take off small portions of metal at a time, and thus not strain the wheel and the cutting machinery. If bigger cuts were made, then the machine would have to go slower, for it is a principle in the construction of cutting machinery that the speed of the cut must always be proportioned to the depth of it. If you want to take deep cuts you must move the cutting edge slowly, and vice versâ. The most modern method of making cogwheels of brass, and the best, is to stamp them out of solid sheet metal at a single punch of a punching machine, and cheap watches are always made in this way. In fact, the whole method of watch and clock-making is undergoing a transformation.
Before the time of the great engineering development which took place towards the end of the eighteenth century, the making of machines was a sort of fine art. Cogwheels were cut by hand. The circumference was marked out by means of compasses. Then holes were drilled round the rim, and teeth cut out leading into them, and shaped by means of special files constructed for the purpose ([Fig. 82]). Big machinery was all shaped out at the forge and by the file. The engineers complained that you could not get big work made true even to the eighth of an inch. But watches and clocks were beautifully made, though only at the cost of hours of patient measuring and filing. The taste for ornament still existed. The wheels and backs of watches were chased over with the most beautiful patterns; the frames of the clocks were wrought into beautiful figures and forms. Even astronomical instruments were embellished.
Fig. 82.
Then came the era of severe accuracy. Men of science took the government of machine-making whose feelings were repugnant to art in any form. They hated to see any effort expended in ornament. With severely utilitarian aims, they banished all appearance of beauty from instruments and tools of all sorts, so that our modern machines, from a steam engine down to a watch, are now models of precise but perfectly unornamented workmanship. They are the fitting implements of a nation that wears trousers and tall hats. One has only to compare an old vessel of war, with its sculptured prow and streamers, with a modern ironclad to take note of the difference. The art of ornamentation is now little more than a spasmodic imitation of the past, with a historical interest only. As a living entity it has almost ceased to exist.
But in precision of manufacture the present age is without a rival in the history of the world. People believe no longer in the old methods of scraping and filing, and hand-work directly exercised on metal is rapidly falling into desuetude. It is possible, of course, with a file and scraper and days of labour to get two flat surfaces of metal so perfect that when put together one will lift the other like a sucker on a stone, but it is waste labour. A small machine will do it as well in a few minutes. No longer is a watch built up as one would build a house, fitting part to part. By expensive machines thousands of watch parts are stamped and cut out to pattern, and then a watch is made by taking one of each indiscriminately and just putting them into their places. Comparatively unskilled workmen can do this. Where the skill is wanted is to design and make the machinery and watch the cutters, measuring them with microscopic gauges from time to time, and at once remedying them if an edge is found to be a ten-thousandth part of an inch out of place. So that the labour of man is becoming more and more a labour of design and of supervision. Machines are the slaves that do the work, for in a good machine we have an eye and an arm that never tires, and only needs to be kept in working order. But machines are not artistic, and thus art is lost while precision is gained. At present a desperate attempt is being made to supply by means of machinery the craving of the human mind for art. But it is destined to failure. Art of this kind is generally produced by the same brain that designs machines, and therefore presents an appearance of rigid accuracy and uniformity, which, while essential to an engine, is out of place in an artistic product.
The great manufacturers of our Midlands do not seem to understand that there is no object in making a towel-horse as geometrically accurate as a turning lathe. It will apparently be years before they learn to put art and precision each in the place where it is wanted—precision in the works of the watch, art in the face and the case of it; machine work in the inside of a watch, hand work on the outside. When the public taste is educated so as to see the odious character of the jumble of Gothic, Egyptian, and meaningless ornament on such an article as the case of an American organ, one step will have been made towards the revival of artistic taste.
But to propose as a means of reviving art that we should discontinue the use of machinery or abandon our modern cutters of precision to go back to a hack-saw and file is ridiculous, and could only be suggested by men quite destitute of scientific ideas. Art and precision each has its place: there is room for both; let neither intrude on the domain of the other.