Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A watch may be made to wind without a key in several ways. One plan is to
put a kind of gathering click to the handle knob, which pushes in and takes
hold of a ratchet set on the barrel, or the fusee if there is one, and winds
it up as you pull the handle out again. But this was very liable to get out
of order, and was also objectionable because it pumped air into the watch,
which produced condensation of moisture; and the following plan (fig. 78)
was invented by a foreigner and adopted by Dent and some other makers: d
is a wheel set on a ratchet on the barrel arbor, so that it will only turn the
barrel the right way (there is not room to introduce this machinery in fusee
watches of the common size); c in the left hand figure is an intermediate
oblique bevelled wheel between d and a pinion b on the handle. It is evident
therefore that if you turn the handle a the right way you will wind up the
watch, and if you turn it the wrong way you will do no harm.
But besides this you can set the hands by the handle; for there is a small
wheel e on the hand arbor with another f by the side of it on a lever fgh,
by which that intermediate wheel can be thrown into gear with d as well as
e, the lever coming through the side of the watch-case; and then it is clear
that by turning the handle either way you can turn the hands. If you have
to turn the same way as serves to wind the watch you do also wind it a little
(and therefore if it is fully wound you cannot set the hands that way); but
if the other way, then you do not move the barrel, as the wheel d slips on
the ratchet.
Another keyless watch, by Mr. Kulberg, described imperfectly in the
Horological Journal of April 1869, appears to be now more generally used
than that just described. I cannot afford space here for more than a state-
ment of its principle, and a fuller description would be of no particular use
to anybody. The wheel d in the last figure is driven by the pinion b in the
pendant, without the oblique bevelled wheel, and that wheel d (for setting)
drives another, and that other the centre or cannon pinion of the minute
hand, in much the same way as in Dent’s when pushed into gear. But the
winding is done differently. The wheel d is set on what is called a platform,
having a sideway motion something like a remontoire frame in a large clock;
and the first thing turning the knob and wheel does is to move the platform
a little (when it is not pushed into gear for setting) so as to move itself into
gear with the fusee, which it then proceeds to wind. The platform is kept
out of the way generally by a spring, so that neither the fusee nor the centre pinion is
touched by either of the wheels on the platform.
Mr. A. L. Dennison patented another keyless watch, which is fully de-
scribed in his Specification, No. 356 of 1872. There are also other methods
(see Horological Journal, April 1874). The advantages of these modes of
winding and hand-setting are that the watch has never to be opened, which
lets air and dust in, and so the back requires no hinge, which never works
quite air-tight, but snaps on as a separate piece; and also that the inner case
or ‘dome’ is saved.
Self-winding watch.—Napoleon I. had a watch which wound itself up
as he walked, by means of a weighted lever with a slight spring under it,
which danced up and down at every step, and had a click taking into a
ratchet on the barrel.
Pedometer.—A similar lever may be made to drive a train like a watch
train, but without any escapement, and then it in fact counts the number of
your steps and indicates them on a dial. You can adjust it for the number of
steps which you usually take in a mile, and then it measures the distance you
walk, in a rough and approximate way; but it ought to be understood that
it is really nothing but a step-counter, and unless it is properly adjusted,
and you are walking at the rate for which it is set, it is worth nothing for
measuring distances accurately.
Stop watches.—It is sometimes convenient to have the means of mark-
ing a short interval between two observations with a watch, or to mark the
exact time of an observation without looking off the thing you are watch-
ing. Several contrivances have been invented for this, most or all of them
involving some kind of duplication of the seconds hand. In one there are two
seconds hands on concentric arbors connected by a very weak spiral spring,
and when you push in a pin one of them is stopped, while the other will
go on for some seconds without the connecting spring having force enough
to stop the watch. But this is clearly objectionable, and a better plan is
to have the two hands or their arbors connected by a sort of eccentric or
heart-shaped piece acted on by a spring which brings them together again
either forward or backward, through whichever is less than half a revolution.
Several watches of different constructions, on this split-seconds plan were ex-
hibited in 1851, and others have been invented since, called ‘chronographs,’
and other names.
One of them is of this kind, so far as I can describe it here. Pushing in
a pin for a moment drives on a ratchet wheel with a few square teeth half
a tooth-space; and that raises (as we may say) a spring lever, which carries
a pinion with a disc or ‘roller’ on it (which is always going with the train)
into frictional contact with another disc on the arbor of the extra seconds
hand, which is thus set going with the train. Pushing in the pin a second
time drives the ratchet wheel another half space, and so lets the lever fall
again, into a space between two teeth, and takes the discs out of contact,
and might leave the hand standing at whatever point it has reached: which
might be useful for some purposes, but is not in fact done; because it is of
more consequence to have the hand returned to 0, and you can look where it
has reached before returning it. That is done thus:—the second movement of
the pin also brings a ‘jumper’ spring to bear on the heart-shaped piece which
is fixed on the hand arbor (as before described), and so sends it backward or
forward to 0 according as it is left before or after 30 sec., or half way round
the dial.
In watches of this kind, at least in some shown to me by Lund & Blockley
of Pall Mall, the stop-seconds hand is central, which gives it the benefit of
the full size of the dial, and enables the space of each ordinary minute
to be subdivided into fractions of a second corresponding to the time of
vibration of the balance. For this reason also a single beat escapement, like
the chronometer or lever-chronometer or duplex, is not so good for these
split-seconds as a double beat one, such as the lever or horizontal or the
old vertical, in which the scapewheel moves equally for every beat of the
balance, and not only for alternate ones. The falling of a small time-ball
in a suitable frame (see p. 115) is easily made to push in the pin the first
time, and when you take up the watch afterwards you see by the difference
between the two seconds hands how much it is before or after Greenwich
time.
There is also another perfectly different plan, which enables you to make
a mark on the dial at the exact time when you push in the pin at the time
of observation. In fig. 79, DD is the dial of a large watch, with the seconds
hand EAB in the middle: the hand is double, and the lower piece of it ends
in a little spoon with some thick ink in it and a hole in the bottom through
which a point from the upper hand EAB can pass and make a mark on the
dial. That hand is pulled down very suddenly by a lever DPC which slips
over a stop of a shape difficult to describe, being pushed in by the knob K,
and is immediately thrown out of contact again with the link AC, by means
of which it pulls down the hand.
Dials of watches and of small clocks are either made of gold or silver
(which soon tarnishes) or of copper covered with enamel, which is a kind of
glass. Such dials with black hands are more distinct than any other kind,
and if the black figures are burnt in with black enamel, the dials would be
everlasting and never want painting. I noticed the absurdity of gold hands on
gilt dials before, at p. 96. Some of the public clocks in Paris have enamelled
dials, which are far more expensive than white glass ones would be.
Watch cases.—I am not aware that there is anything else of a rudimen-
tary character, or belonging to the principles of watchmaking, which requires
notice. Minute details of watchmaking can be learnt by nothing but expe-
rience; whereas clockmaking is easily learnt by any person of mechanical
ability. Case-making is not horology, and I have nothing to say about it,
except that the cases of what are called hunting watches, which fly open
with a spring when you press the handle, cannot be so close against air and
dirt, as those which snap tight together. Persons who are afraid of breaking
their watch-glasses, may be tolerably safe with ‘half hunting watches,’ which
have only a small and strong glass in the middle of the cap, which may then
fit tight, and need never be opened except when the hands want altering.
The closeness of the case makes a great difference in the time a watch will
go without cleaning. They generally want at least cleaning about every two
years; though very good ones, with all the escapement work jewelled and
well-made, will go 4 or 5 years with no material variation of rate, which I
think may be regarded as one of the greatest triumphs of mechanical art.
At the same time it should be remembered that letting either watches or
clocks go too long without being cleaned and oiled is very bad economy; for
as soon as the oil is all gone wearing out of the pivots begins.
American watch-factories.—In the Horological Journal for April 1869,
and January 1873, there are accounts of some of these factories, where
watches are made by machinery, so that every piece will fit every watch
of the same pattern; on the same principle as Hobbs’s locks. There can
be no doubt in the mind of any one who understands machinery that this
is the best, as well as the cheapest way of making machines which require
precision and uniformity. Adjustments will after all have to be made by
hand, and a machine which has always to be in motion is not quite on a
level with a lock. The degree to which machine-making of machinery can
be carried cannot be defined `a priori. To a certain extent the same thing
is done at the celebrated watch-factory of Messrs. Rotherham at Coventry,
and also at Prescott in Lancashire, where watch ‘movements,’ i.e. the train
set in the frame, are chiefly made. I can give no description of the American
machinery here, but its elements are stamping plates and the holes in them
and the wheels, and then cutting the teeth of many wheels together. Al-
though labour is dearer in America than here, this machinery enables them
to undersell English watches of the same quality, as the Swiss also do with
cheaper labour and more organization, though with less use of machinery;
and if our English makers do not bestir themselves they will lose the trade
in all but the best watches, as they have already lost that of both cheap and
ornamental clocks.