356 WILLIAM A. COUNTRYMAN 



consolidated it with the home shop, retaining also the ser- 

 vices of some of the experts. This Nashua watch was a 

 valuable three quarter plate movement, highly esteemed by 

 the public. Some of the people who had been interested in 

 the Nashua company went to Chicago and, with other experts, 

 founded the now well known factory at Elgin, 111., one of the 

 leading establishments in the manufacture. Other enter- 

 prises were offshoots of the Waltham idea, but many of them 

 proved only experiments. It is noteworthy that the centers 

 of the manufacture are still in the states of Massachusetts and 

 Illinois. 



It is said that the number of scientific and mechanical 

 appliances that have been brought out in the manufacture 

 of watches is greater than in any other industry, with the pos- 

 sible exception of the production and use of electricity. And 

 it is probable that the ingenuity of inventors of automatic 

 machinery is shown to greater advantage in this industry 

 than in any other. The processes required are of the most 

 perfect kind, and some of the products are so small as to be 

 distinguishable in character under the glass only. The 

 watch factories of the United States are filled with these 

 automatic and semi-automatic machines, which not only make 

 large numbers of parts of perfect uniformity at small cost, 

 but have, in many cases, done away with the need of special 

 skill in the individual workman. Frequently an operator 

 can care for six or seven machines, and sometimes, as in the 

 pioneer factory at Waltham, a track is laid on the floor and 

 chairs are provided with grooved rolls, so that the attendant 

 can glide easily and quickly the whole length of the line. 



The only practicable way of treating the evolution of 

 automatic machinery in watchmaking is to consider certain 

 representative machines accomplishing certain representa- 

 tive results, and thus going from headland to headland, 

 bridge the half century of progress and triumph in the United 

 States. This Edward A. Marsh, of Waltham, has done. 

 First he presents the draw-in-chuck and lathe, tracing their 

 development by Ambrose Webster, Charles V. Woerd, and 

 Charles S. Moseley, into the self closing, three bearing slide 

 spindle lathe, with its application to the manufacture of watch 



