YOUR WATCH’S MAGIC PULSE.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 October 1924, Page 4

YOUR WATCH’S MAGIC PULSE.

I ho writer of these notes has a cheap watch, the illuminated dial of which enabled him to note the slowly-pass-ing night-hours in the trenches mi the Western Front. Two weeks ago the watch got “sick.” hike Sterne’s I’nelo Toby, it paused. . . stopped. . . went on . . . ami then gave up the struggle. “.Mainspring:-” the owner suggested to the wateh-repaiivr. “Hairspring.” said the man behind the counter, after a magnifying search among the “works.” Then the owner went home and hunted up some figures about that wonderful little hit of steel wire that is the hcart-puksc of every watch. Here is om- little “nesl” ol information nlxjut that magic hit of wire: “A ton of gold is worth £IBA,ABD. A ton ol steel made up into hairsprings is worth £1 ,Ai fi.lAS—more than 1J * times the value of pure gold. Hairspring wire weights one-twentieth of a grain to the inch. One mile of wire weighs less than half a pound. “The balance gives live vibrations to every second. DO!) every minute, 18.000 every hour. -130.000 every dav. and 1 A7.fi80.0011 every year. At each viI hraion it rotates about one and a quarter times, which makes 107.000.(X10 revolutions ever year. “In order that we may belter understand the stupendous amount of labour performed hy those tiny works, take for illustration, a locomotive with six driving wheels. Ij<?t its wheels lie run until they have given the same .number of revolutions that a watch gives in one year, and they will have covered a distance equal to JS complete circuits of the earth. “All this a watch does without other attention than winding once every twenty-four hours.” AVliat a frail—but what a faithful—little bit of hair-thin wire- And what a. lesson to us to “keep pegging away” in shadow as in shine 1