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Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 100, 8 January 1870, Page 7

Ats American watchmaker has made a chance discovery that the balancewheel in nearly every watch is, if made of steel, converted into a magnet. By what process in the manufacture it has become one it might be difficult to say; but whether the wheel be indeed a magnet or not may easily be discovered by fixing it upon a small piece of cork, letting it float in still water, and seeing if it always turns in one direction. The fact of the magnetic character of the wheel will account for many perturbations in watches which have hitherto been ineplicable. A key, or the steel blade of a knife in the same pocket as the watch, will exert a disturbing influence. But even if there should be no peiee of steel in the pocket, the magnet will necessarily tend towards the north, and so far interfere with the calculate piece of mechanism. In the Bank of England no fewer than 60 folio volumes of ledgers are daily filled with writing in keeping the accounts ! To produce these 60 vols., the paper having been previously manufactured elsewere, eight men, three steam presses, and two hand presses are continually kept going within the banks. In the copper-plate printing departments, 25,000 banks notes are thrown ofi' daily, and so accurately is the number indicated by machinery that to purloin a single note without detection is an impossibility.