Makers of Many Things

onds and have it run for forty hours is so common that we forget what a wonder it is. When you wind your watch, you put some of the strength of your own right hand into it, and that is what make

up in your watch. The outer end of this spring is held fast by a hook on the inside of the barrel; the inner

this work requires four wheels. The first or main wheel is connected with the winding arrangements, and sets in motion the second, or center wheel, so called because it is usually in the center of the watch. This center wheel revolves once an hour and turns the minute hand. By a skillful arrangement

f motion might do for a mouse, but it would not answer for a watch. A watch must move with steadiness and regularity. To bring this about, there is a fifth wheel. Its fifteen teeth are shaped like hooks, and it has seven accompaniments, the balance wheel, the hair spring, and five others. This wheel, together with its accompaniments, i

ime; while in a cold day it would go too fast and would gain time. This fault is corrected by the balance, a wheel whose rim is not one circle, but two half-circles, and so cunningly made that the hotter this rim grows, the smaller it

em a marvel how so many kinds of wheels and screws and springs, one hundred and fifty in all, can be put into a case sometimes not m

s, for he had to do the same work over and over until his teachers were satisfied with it. Then he was promoted to the second room. Here he learned to adjust the stem-winding parts, to do fine cutting and filing, and to make watches that would strike the hour and even the minute. Room three was called the "train room," because the wheels of a watch are spoken of as "the train." The model watch in this room was as large as a saucer. The young man had to study every detail of this, and also to learn the use of a delicate little machine doing such fine work that it could cut twenty-four hundred tiny cogs on one of the little wheels of a watch. In the fourth room he learned to make the escapement wheel and some other parts; and he

expressly for that watch, but sometimes a hundred different persons worked on it. The very best of the Swiss watches were exceedingly good; t

Waltham

ATCHES

. Now one watch may be the product of a hund

ntricate work that, as you stand and watch them, you feel as if they must know what they are about. One of them takes the frame,-that is, the plates to which the wheels are fastened,-makes it of the proper thinness, cuts the necessary holes in it, and passes it over to the next machine, which is reaching out for it. The feeder gives the first machine another plate; and so the work goes on down a whole line of mach

ighteen thousand times an hour, it is plain that a vast amount of wear comes upon the spot where the pivots of these wheels rest. No metal can be made smooth enough to prevent friction, and there is no metal hard enough to prevent wear. The "jewels" are smoother and harder. They are sawed into slabs so thin that fifty of them piled up would measure only an inch. These are stuck to blocks to be polished, cut into disks flat on one side but with a little depression on the other to receive oil

y machinery and are sure to fit. After the assembling comes the adjusting of the balance wheel and the hair spring. There is nothing simple about this work, for the tiny screws with the large heads must be put into t

ture of the "dollar watch." Properly speaking, this is not a watch at all, but a small spring clock. It has no jewels, and its parts are stamped out of sheets of brass or steel by machinery. The hair springs are made in coil