WONDERS OF A WATCH.

Shannon News, 19 February 1924, Page 2

WONDERS OF A WATCH.

Like many of the marvels of civilisation, the watch has become so familiar that its perfection passes almost unnoticed by those who fail to realise that it is one the most extraordinary things made by human hands. The hairspring is literally as fine as a hair, and it is made by drawing steel wire through a hole in a diamond until it. looks like a thread from a spider’s

I b. A I'onnd of steel used for this ’ wire costs in America five or six dollars and makes eight miles of hairspring worth 62,000 dollars. It re- > quires 3,773 operations to make, a ’ watch containing 211 pieces, about one-third of which is screws. Some of these screws are so small that 20,000 1 will go into a thimble. Laid on a piece . of paper, they lopk like gold dust or ‘ grains of pepper. Half a million of [ them will not weigh more than a pound. Scales to weigh these screws | are so delicate that they will weigh a i pencil mark on a bit of tissue paper. Jewels used for bearings are cut from rubies. They are just rough pebbles to s begin with. Then they are cut into pieces thinner than ordinary writing paper, shaped into circles the size of a pin-head, and a hole is drilled through the centre of each. The pivots of the gears turn in these pierced rubies, which are required to withstand 18,000 blows an hour and over 150,000 beats a year from the movement of .the balance wheel, which is audible as the familiar “tick-took.” All of the driving farce of the watch lies in the main spring which is about 2ft. long, and yet, if suddenly released it can strike a blow strong enough to put out the eyes of the person handling it. If a spring breaks, the watch will stop at once, but just why it breaks is a good deal of a mystery. Strangely enough, the best springs are most liable to breakage, while a comparatively soft spring, which will not keep good time, will last almost indefinitely. The spring should be wound in the morning, not at night, as it is then less sensitive to the jars it encounters during jthe day. Many curious superstitions have grown up about watches. One is that the hands should never be turned backward. Experts say, however, that this will not injure any timepiece except one that strikes. In cleaning watches a rare oil is useL which comes from a cavity in the jawbone of the porpoise or the blackfish. Cape Cod fishermen bring in most of it. To be tested, the oil is taken up into Vermont, where the mercury goes far below zero in winter. The best grade is that which remains practically unchanged at these law temperatures. A single drop of this oil is enough to lubricate a watch for a year. It required years •of experimenting .to develop this lubricant, as it was first used only in crude lamps. The, most extraordinary of all the ;maxvels in a modern watch is the balance. It is the heart of the watch. The adjustment of the balance wheel, and of the hairspring inside of it, is what makes a watch “keep time.”- Mast watch trouble comes from some derangement of the balance.