It is a singular feature in the history of this branch of art, that it has remained until very lately concentrated in the metropolis; besides which, Liverpool and Coventry are said to be the only places in England where a complete watch can be manufactured. At the latter place the business has only been introduced since the commencement of the present century, but the number of persons employed are said to equal the number in London.
But before passing from this event in the history of our subject (the incorporation of a company for the protection of their manufacture in the reign of Charles I.), we may as well describe a watch of the period, which a few years before the publication of the "Encyclopædia Londinensis" (in 1811) had been in the possession of the proprietor. It was dug up but a few years previously, near the site of the ancient castle of Winchester, where it had probably lain from the time of Cromwell, who, it is well known, destroyed that edifice. It was of an octagon form, and had no minute hand; a piece of catgut supplied the place of a chain; it required winding up every twelve hours, had no balance spring, and appeared never to have had one; and it shut like a hunting-watch without any glass.
But to compensate for this interior rudeness in its construction, the lid and bottom of the case, as well as the dial-plate, were of silver, very neatly engraved, with pieces of Scripture history in the centre, and in the compartments the four Evangelists, and St. Peter, St. Paul, St. James, and St. Jude: it had no date.
The reign of Charles II., who (like his namesake the emperor, in whose time they first appeared) is said to have been very partial to these instruments, was remarkable for the improvements made in them. Spring pocket-watches were invented by Hooke, 1658; and repeaters were introduced, one of the first of which Charles sent as a present to Louis XIV. of France. According to some authorities, reproduced would be the juster phrase here, for it is stated in "Memoirs of Literature," that some of the most ancient watches were strikers, and that such having been stolen both from Charles V. and Louis XI. whilst they were in a crowd, the thief was detected by their striking the hour!
Perhaps the most remarkable repeating watch extant, is that in the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, and which, like the old Nuremberg watches, is about the size of an egg: within is represented the holy sepulchre, with the sentinels, and the stone at the mouth; and while the spectator is admiring this curious piece of mechanism, the stone is suddenly removed, the sentinels drop down, the angels appear, the women enter the tomb, and the same chant is heard which is performed in the Greek Church on Easter Eve.
Germany, by the way, has always been famous for the manufacture of clocks and watches, these latter claiming Nuremberg for their birthplace; and from this circumstance, and their oval shape, Dopplemayer tells us they were originally known as Nuremberg animated eggs.
At present this branch of horometry is chiefly to be found on the other side of the Alps, at or near Geneva, and at Chaux de Fond, in the principality of Neufchatel, where vast numbers of watches are manufactured. But the wooden clocks, which tick on every cottage wall, and which are erroneously called Dutch, are in fact German, and are nearly all made in the Black Forest, the village of Freyburg being the centre of the manufacture, whence it is said 180,000 wooden clocks on an average are yearly exported.
The Swiss, or Geneva watches, as they are commonly called, owing to the poverty of the workmen, the employment of women, and the subdivision of labor, which is carried to even a greater extent than with us, sell at a much lower price than those made in England; but an English watch has hitherto been a desideratum in every part of the world. Here, at present, the term watch-maker is no longer applicable, every portion of the instrument being the work of a different artisan, and the separate parts are often sent hundreds of miles, to meet in the metropolis, and make a whole of excellent workmanship. There are innumerable places in which some branch or other of the manufacture is carried on; but the best movements are made at Prescot, in Lancashire, while the town of Whitchurch, in Hampshire, is employed wholly in making hands. In London, Clerkenwall Green has long been the resort of artificers employed in the various nice and delicate manipulations requisite in the construction of our subject: here, slide-makers, jewellers, motion-makers, wheel-cutters, cap-makers, dial-plate-makers, the painter, the case-maker, the joint-finisher, the pendent-maker, the engraver, the piercer, the escapement-maker, the spring-maker, the chain-maker, the finisher, the gilder, the fusee-cutter, the hand-maker, the glass-maker, and pendulum spring wire-drawer, are all located; for, owing to the minute division of labor, which tends greatly to facilitate its execution after the movements (which have previously passed through thirteen workmen's hands in the provinces) are received in town, the watch progresses through those of these other twenty-one artificers before it comes forth complete.
Owing to this delicate and varied workmanship, materials originally not worth sixpence are frequently converted into watches worth a hundred pounds and more, so costly may their appendages be made. But in all these different branches of a business which maintains thousands of families, the only part of it which falls to women in this country is the polishing of the cases, which the casemakers' wives are sometimes employed to do.
Perhaps no object of man's ingenuity has been made the exponent of so many grave morals as the watch. Poets and philosophers have managed that its beatings should be only a little less gloomy to the imagination than the associations of a passing bell; but Paley has thrown a glory round this gloom, and aggrandized it from a peevish reminder of passing time into a fair argument of a Creator's presence, in the delicate and wonderful machinery of nature, which could no more come by chance than could this little instrument have been formed without a contriver.