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exceedingfy rude and irregular. But
not long after the Pilgrims landed at
Plymouth, Galileo, while noticing the
vibration of a hanging lamp, discovered
the great principle of the pendulum —
that when a suspended body is swing
ing, any increase or decrease of its
speed will not change the number of vi
brations it makes in a given time, but
only the length of the arc it describes.
The pendulum was soon applied to the
THE CLEPSYDRA.
clock, and added very greatly to its ac
curacy.
Until after the Revolution the Ameri
can colonies had few clocks of any kind.
Sun-dials and hour-
glasses sufficed for J
those leisurely days. 2 c»
Why is it that the =afl iyl
more we multiply ~”~i
inventions for saving hour-glass. <
time and labor, the more we are press
ed for minutes, and the harder we have
to work ?
Thirty-years ago, “The varnished
clock that clicked behind the door”
OT.D-FASHION’ED CLOCK.
was the great domestic tiine-keeper.
What old person has forgotten its mo
notonous “click-clack,” or its quaint,
upright case, taller than a man?
BURKE’S WEEKLY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS.
Until within the last two or three gen
erations all our time-keepers were made
in Europe ; now, American clocks tell
the hour at Jerusalem, at Calcutta, at
Pekin, and at Irkoutsk. At our facto
ries, a fair little clock, neatly cased, can
be afforded for eighty cents gold. Am
erican inventiveness has done it!
Town clocks and chronometers are
regulated from the nearest observatories.
But the electrical clock will do away
with that. One at some central point
will serve for a city as large as New
York. Wires connecting with dials on
all the church towers, and, indeed, in
all the dwellings, may regulate the hands
of every clock in the metropolis to per
fect uniformity. When the telegraph
nerves run into every house we shall all
get the time of day from a common
source, as we do gas and water.
The ship chronometer —for determin
ing longitude at sea —was invented in
SHIP CHRONOMETER.
1675. One costs about four hundred
dollars. The most are of English man
ufacture, though there are half a dozen
makers in the United States. A few
years ago the Greenwich Observatory
paid a premium of three hundred pounds
for a chronometer which had varied
only about one second in twelve months.
It makes no difference whether one is
fast or slow ; all the shipmaster requires
is that it shall run with regularity. No
other invention since the mariner’s com
pass, has so diminished the perils and
uncertainties of navigation.
“Watch” is from a Saxon word sig
nifying “to wake.” At first the watch
was as large as a saucer ; it had we’ghts
and was called “the pocket clock.”
The earliest known use of the modern
name occurs in a record of 1542, which
mentions that Edward VI. had “ onne
larum or watch of iron, the case being
likewise of iron gilt, with two plumettes
of lead.” The first great improvement,
the substitution of the spring for weights,
was made about 1550. The earliest
springs were not coiled, but only straight
pieces of steel. Early watches had on
ly one hand, and required winding twice
a day. The dials were of silver or
brass ; the cases had no crystals, but
opened at back and front, and were four
or five inches in diameter. A plain
watch cost the equivalent of SISOO in
our currency, and after one was ordered
it took a year to make it.
There is a watch in a Swiss museum
only three-sixteenths of an inch in di
ameter, inserted in the top of a pencil-
case. Its little dial indicates not only
hours, minutes and seconds, but also
days of the month. It is a relic of the
old times, when watches were inserted
in saddles, snuff-boxes, shirt-studs,
breast-pins, bracelets, and finger-rings.
Many were fantastic—oval, octangular,
cruciform, or in the shape of pears,
melons, tulips, or coffins.
Mary, Queen of Scots, had a large one
in the form of a skull, which is still pre-
SKULL WATCH OF MARY STUART.
served by a gentleman near Edinburgh.
The case is opened by dropping the un
der jaw, which turns upon a hinge, while
the works occupy the place of the brain.
Old watches are common in English
museums. There are comparatively
few in the United States ; and there arel
none of American manufacture mucin
over fifty years old. A gentleman in
Boston has upwards of two hundred —
much the largest and rarest collection
on our continent. One of the most cu
rious is an old English verge, two#iches
thick. If it were only half as large it
would be a perfect specimen of the an
cient bull’s-eye.
OLD VERGE WATCH ed upOLl the
Another—also an English verge—is
over two centuries old. One would like
to see a photograph of the man it was
made for, knee-breeches, horse-hair
wig, and all. It keeps excellent time,
not varying two minutes a week, though
its little heart has throbbed on while six
generations of owners have wound it,
and carried it, and left it at the jeweler’s
for cleaning—have been born by it, and
lived by it, and died by it.
A third is a French striking watch
two hundred years old, with elaborate
ornamentation, and allegorical male and
female figures on the dial. When the
works within strike the hours these fig
ures pound with hammers upon little
counterfeit gold bells, as if they pro
duced the sound.
Thq ticking of a watch—the beating
of its heart—is the playing of the two
arms of the pallet in between the teeth
of the scape-wheel, at the point where
the rotary motion of the wheels or
“train” changes to the vibratory
motion of the balance.
In nine cases out of ten a skilled
watch-maker can tell whether there
is anything wrong with a watch, and
if so, what, by putting it to his ear,
as a skilled physician learns the con
dition of the human time-keeper by
feeling its pulse or hearing its heart.
The mainspring is the locomotive,
the wheels are the train, and the bal
ance and hair-spring the brakes.
AUTOMATIC FRENCH WATCH.
small end of the fusee, where the most
OLI) BARREL AND FUSEE.
power was needed. As the spring grew
weaker the chain descended to where
the fusee was larger and required less
force to turn it.