Newspaper Page Text
THE SOUTHERN WORLD, OCTOBER 1, 1882.
CLOCK AND WATCH LAND.
The State of Connecticut faces the sun. That
is, its surface slopes to the south. Its rivers
all run to the southward on their way to the
8ound. This divides the State into a series
of parallel valleys. There is the Valley of
the Connecticut, of soft and placid beauty;
the hill edged Housatonic, and the winding
valley of the Naugatuck, or clock land.
This, the smallest of the three valleys, is the
home of some of the most unique industries
of this industrious country. Here have
sprung up towns famous for their workers in
brass and metals, celebrated for their manu
factories of clocks for all the world. Now
come watches, a natural outgrowth of the
clock-making industry. Here is Water-
bury, where it is said that within a radi
us of 'twenty miles more clocks are made
than in any other place in the world.
There is even a hint in the wooded hills
of that other watch country—Switzer
land. There a hardy and industrious
people tend their poor, rough farms in
tho summer, and make watches by hand
in winter. Here is the same rough and
broken country, a poor land for farmers,
whose the people make watches by the
gross. For the tourist, the Naugatuck is
well worth a visit. There are wooded
hills, wild glens, and the noisy river,
good hotels and llvoly towns, every one
a shop. Here are the skilled workers in
brass, the rubber men, and the clock and
watch men. Their land may be poor,
but their hands and brains have made
them rich, in spite of the forbidding
rocks and stony pastures.
The school geographies of a quarter of
a century ago used to speak of Trade and
Commerce in a flattering way, intended
to convey the idea that the exportation
of hymn-books and New England rum to
the benighted inhabitants of the South
Seas was a highly commendable work.
“ Commerce introduced civilization
among the heathen; trade was a Great Moral
benefit to all the nations." The geographers
have grown wiser, yet business, in a broader
and more hnmane way, does now help all the
people. If it is true that regular meals, a
comfortable house, and a good suit of clothes
are aids to virtue, then the factory, the shop,
and mill have other missions besides paying
dividends.
Fifty years ago a clock was a household
it is noon yet?” for he has a good watch in
his pocket. Perhaps it is not fair to call
a watch a luxury. This generation
lives “on time." The railroad has be
come the monitor of the people. If
you do not know the time of day, if
you cannot tell on the instant what
hour and moment it is, you are sure to
be left out of modern business life. A
timepiece of some sort is a positive ne
cessity. Only a jeweled watch, timed to
split seconds, is a luxury; a good, ser
viceable, reliable watch is a necessity—
a first requisite in all business and so
cial life.
The manufacturers of the Naugatuck
Valley early saw this want and under,
took to meet in by making cheap
clocks. Not merely “Cheap John”
trickery, but real, steady-going clocks,
of honest face and well-regulated character.
After that came tho American watches.
If machinery could be used to make a clock,
then it might be trained to finer and higher
work. The Waltham and Elgin watches
made it possible for people of moderate
means to carry the time in their pockets.
The success of American machine made
watches has revolutionized the business of
making watches the world over. With all
this, there was still a wide field unoccupied.
There were still multitudes so poor they
could not buy a watch. Tiien it was that it
occurred to some of these long-sighted man
ufacturers of tho Naugatuck Valley that, if
To understand this difficult
problem you must observe
that a watch is simply a
means of storing energy. You
consume a certain amount of
food. It is potential energy,
though the poets call it the
"staff of life," and that sort
of thing. In an hour or more
you are able to realize the en
ergy as actual work perform
ed by your own hand or arm.
You spend a trifle of this en
ergy in winding up a watch.
The watch spring has now be
come stored with the energy
that directly came from good
beef, and originally from the
sun that built up the grass the ox fed upon.
If the spring wore free to unwind it
would give one vigorous twist, and spend
the energy in an instant and to no purpose.
By tying the spring to a train of wheels it
is possible to make the spring spend its en
ergy slowly in the work of turning the
hands of the watch. It only requires some
system of regulation to make the energy
you put into the spring in one minute ex
tend itself over twenty-four hours. It is
wound up quickly. It must run down
slowly. Tiie Englishman and the Switzer
can do this well, if we give them money
enough. Who can doit cheaper than aH?
Clearly the American! This narrowed the
search, and practically reduced it to New
A DESIGNER. .
heirloom, only to be bought with much
money or inherited from rich parents. To
day, no tenement so poor that it has not its
mantel clock from the Naugautuck. Fifty
years ago only the rich man could wear a
watch. To-day, the laboring man need not
importune the passing stranger to know “ if
a good reliable watch could be made and
sold for about three dollars, that it would
pay. Now, a thing pays because it meets a
human want. Was there a want? Bid the
people really wish a cheap watch? The ques
tion did not require much discussion. A
watch for three dollars would meet a want—
it would pay.
There are two. ways in which a want is
met. The thing is discovered or it is
invented. When it is recognized that
there was a demand for a three-dollar
watch, the usual course of Invention
was reversed. The watch was not dis
covered, nor was it invented as a
whole, or as a single idea that might be
made into a practical machine. The
first thing that was done was to find a
man to tako an order for the watch.
Naturally enough the watch-making
profession was looked to for the com-
_ ing man. A watchmaker or watch re-
I) pairer would at least know the difficut-
k ties of filling such an order. Ho would
know, in a general way, what had been
done, or, what was more important,
/ what could be done.
The commission was a strange one.
Wanted,—aman who can make a watch
that shall have a less number of parts
than any watch ever made. Anybody
can make a watch if you place no lim
it on the material and labor. The En
glish watchmaker can make a magnificent
watch if you let him put in any number of
parts and you are not particular about the
cost. The Waltham and Elgin people can
make a first-class watch with one hundred
and sixty parts, and do most of the work by
machinery. The price will be far more rea
sonable, but it will, at best, be many times
three dollars.
THE WASH ROOM.
England.
At the Centennial Exhibition there was
shown the largest steam engine in the world.
One day there came a man to the main
building with a new engine in his vest
pocket. For a house to shelter the motor he
had used a sailor’s thimble. It had a boiler,
a cylinder, valves, a governor, crank, piston,
and shaft, and it would work. Three drops
of water filled the boiler, and when steam
was up it started off in quite the correct
steam-motor style, and stood at work
near the greatest engine in the world—its
brother, and yet the smallest. The man
who could, with a common watch repairer’s
tools, design and construct such a machine
was the man to make the coming watch.
This was Mr. D. A. A. Buck, at that time
living in Worcester, Mass. He took the
commission and—failed. Then it seemed as
if the whole idea was past the doing. A
three-dollar watch that was not a toy could
not be made. It is not in your true Yankee to
give up. Within a year Mr. Buck had in
vented, or thought out, and constructed an
other watch.
It had been found! Here was a real prac
tical timepiece, a regular watch, with fewer
parts than had ever been seen. The watch
had been constructed by hand, every part
cut out with ordinary tools. Could it be
made by machinery on a large commercial
scale? That was the question for the Nau
gatuck. In this land of cheap clocks could
be found, if anywhere, the men to invent
the machinery and make it too, the business
men who could see the matter in its com
mercial aspects, and here was capital in ex
haustless abundance. The histories of com
mercial enterprises are often as interesting
as the histories of men and nations, there
are ups and downs, failures and successes
happy discoveries and discouraging delays
A REAL WATCH.
when it seems as if inanimate things are
really totally depraved.
This first hand-made watch was shown to
Mr. Charles Benedict, of the Benedict and
Burnham Manufacturing Company, of Wa-
terbury. Thig company owns the largest
brass-making plant in the world. They had
a large force of skilled workmen and many
fine tools for working in brass. The new
watch was carefully examined by Mr. Ben
edict. It was tested in every imaginable
way, and it stood the tests. Mr. Benedict at
once saw a gigantic business in the new
watch. No need to make a second. The
question was now how to make a million
just like it. He arranged at once that the
work of making watches should begin in
their establishment. It wns thought
that with the tools already owned by
his company, and by the construction
of others, that the business of making
watches could be started in about six
months. It took nearly two years, and
over two hundred thousand dollars, to
merely make the tools and machinery.
The three rooms first taken at the
works of the Benedict and Burnham
Company soon proved too small. This
led to the formation of a stock compa
ny and the building of a factory. The
company was incorporated under the
style of the Waterbury Watch Com
pany, with Mr. Charles Benedict for its
first President.
The Company became the owner of.
the patents, for this watch, simple as it
is, contains many novel features that
are fully protected by patents, both in
this country and in most countries
where patents can be obtained.
The factory was designed by Mr. H.
W. Hartwell, of Boston, architect of the
watch factories at Waltham, Mass., and
Elgin, 111. Though this was to be a low
priced watch, it did not follow that the
actual plant where it was to be made
was to be cheap. The factory was to be
the best—as good as would be required to
make any watch. So it happened that when
the building was furnished complete it was
found that nearly a half million of dollars
had been expended, and all this to make a
watch that.could be sold for less than four
MAKING STEEL 8PBINQ8.
dollars, or, better still, to make a million
of watches, not one of which should cost
over three dollars and fifty cents at retail.
About May, 1881, manufacturing was com
menced in the new factory. that time