WATCH ON FINGER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1940, Page 6

WATCH ON FINGER

GEORGE Ill's NOVELTY. George the Third was once very proud of a watch he wore on his finger. In these days wristlet watches are common enough, and no one wonders greatly if they see a lady wearing a watch no bigger than a sixpence. But in George the Third’s day most people carried “turnip watches,’’ and smaller ones were a novelty. It was, therefore, still more surprising for the king to have a watch so small that it was set in a ring on his finger. Who made it? The answer is a Cornish man. John Arnold, who is thought to have begun life in 1730. and is known to have come to the end in 1799. Born at Bodmin, he was a watchmaker's son, and after going off to Holland, he came back to England and made a poor livelihood as a travelling mechanic. Good fortune attended him, however, and he set up as a maker of clocks and watches, winning the favour of the king, and undertaking the manufacture of chronometers. He was the first to use the word chronometer, and the first, to make chronometers on a big scale. Harrison, tiie famous clock-man. had already won a reward for his accurate timekeepers for ships at sea. but it was John Arnold who simplified Harrisons complicated clocks, and made it possible to manufacture them more (illicitly and less expensively. He made clocks for the Government, and for the East India Company, and before his end came he had the satisfaction ol knowing that his chronometers were on every sea and in every continent, all keeping accurate time. He sleeps in Chislehurst churchyard.