In 1577, the first watches were brought from Germany to England. They had been made at Nuremberg for the first time in the year 1500, and were called the eggs of Nuremberg, on account of their oval form.
At last a man appeared who, not content to enchain time, endeavored to force matter to represent with greater accuracy the flight of years. This was Julien le Roy, the most skilful practical philosopher that France ever had. Always on the qui vive for everything useful and curious, as soon as he heard of the watches of the celebrated Graham, he imported the first one seen in Paris, and not until he had proved it would he relinquish it to M. Maupertuis. Graham, in turn, procured all he could from Julien le Roy. One day my Lord Hamilton was showing one of these wonderful repeaters to several persons. "I wish I were younger," said Graham, "to be able to make one after this model."
This illustrious Maupertuis, who accompanied the king of Prussia to the battle-field, was made prisoner at Molwitz and conducted to Vienna. The grand-duke of Tuscany—since emperor—wished to see a man with so great a reputation.
He treated him with respect, and asked him if he had not regretted much of the baggage stolen from him by the hussars. Maupertuis, after being urged a long time, confessed he would gladly have saved an old watch of Graham's, which he used for his astronomical observations.
The grand-duke, who owned one by the same maker, but enriched with diamonds, said to the French mathematician, "Ah! the hussars have wished to play you a trick; they have brought me back your watch. Here it is; I restore it to you."
To-day, as formerly, the handling of watches is an art. It is much more difficult to measure time than wine or cider. Therefore, among the members of the Bureau of Longitudes, by the side of the senator Leverrier, the marshal of France, (M. Vaillant,) the Admiral Matthieu, is placed the simple clock-maker, M. Bregnet.
And for these artists who give us the means of knowing the hour it is, there is a publication as serious as the Journal of Debates, called the Chronometrical Review. It certainly should be regularly sent to its subscribers. If the carrier is late, it cannot be for want of knowing if he has to-day's or yesterday's paper; and the subscribers are never exposed to chercher midi à quatorze heures.
M. Claudius Saurrier, the chief editor of this Chronometrical Review, has also a clock-maker's annual almanac for 1869. This appears very abstruse at the first glance; but if we examine the little volume with the same nicety as a watchmaker his mainspring—that is to say, with a powerful magnifying glass—we will find some things to greatly interest us. For example, a sketch of different attainable speed:
| Miles per hour. | |
| The soldier in ordinary step makes | 2¾ |
| The soldier in a charge | 4 |
| The soldier in gymnastic exercise | 7 |
| The horse walking | 3 |
| The horse on the trot | 7 |
| The horse on the gallop | 14 |
| The horse on the race-course | 30 |
| The locomotive at ordinary speed | 30 |
| The locomotive going rapidly | 60 |
| The current of the Seine | 3 |
| Steamboats | 4 to 14 |
A railroad train making thirty miles the hour would consume about three hundred and fifty years in the journey from the earth to the sun. More than a dozen successive generations would have time to appear and disappear during the transit.