Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

THE MAKING OF WATCHES AND CLOCKS. 343 specialised craftsmen, is followed, although the copper dial is usually silvered, instead of being enamelled, and the hall-marked case for the pocket is replaced by a mahogany case, in whose interior is fixed a ring hung upon gimbals to preserve the horizontality of the dial in all weathers. Marine chronometers and deck watches intended for the use of the Royal Navy are tested, not at Kew, but at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, where the instru- ments are under continuous observation for no fewer than twenty-nine weeks, and are subjected to a range of temperature from 39° to 104° F. In the last recorded year the number received for this purpose was 1,118, including 24 for the Indian Government. The mechanism of a lever clock differs in degree only from that of a watch. A pendu- lum clock, in which the force of gravitation is harnessed for the service of man, dispenses with the spring balance, and requires methods of adjustment of its own. Both descriptions of clocks, however, are usually manufactured on the factory principle, and there is not the same division of labour as in the case of the smaller instruments. Let us walk through a typical factory, and follow the birth of a clock through its various stages. The wheel blanks having been stamped out of the solid sheet of metal, are poised in a cutting machine whose hard steel cutters revolve at a great speed, and cut the notches with absolute precision. Solid steel pinions are made in the same way, while lantern pinions are formed out of sections of pinion wire, which are still in some instances cut by hand. In other departments the barrels, axles, pendulum bobs, escapements, and so forth are pro- duced, and at length the several parts are assembled in the room where they are put together to form the finished movement. Elsewhere, in an apartment whose dusti- ness is properly quarantined from the rest of the factory, expert carpenters fashion the wooden cases, which vary in intricacy from the simple drop case of an office timepiece to the choice pieces of cabinet work which are used for the grandfather clocks and the drawing-room instruments. There cannot be a doubt but that the French makers have captured a large section of this trade by their attention to the artistic side of the industry, although they have never been able to touch seriously the massive hall cases which Englishmen love. There is another department of this industry in which England is still without a rival, and that is the production of turret clocks, especially when associated with striking and chiming mechanism. A clock was erected in Canterbury Cathedral in the year 1292, and there was a striking clock in West- minster as far back as 1368. Since that time the course of invention has been steady, and a landmark in the history of the industry was reached in 1859, when the great West- minster clock, designed by Sir Edmund Beckett, and built by Dent, was put into position. Special appliances have to be employed in the manufacture of apparatus of this kind, because of the mechanical difficulties pre-