PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 407 



friction is lessened one-half, and the liability to fracture two-thirds. Al- 

 most every one has inspected with bewilderment the interior of those ple- 

 thoric bulbs of British origin, known as bull's eyes, and noted for never 

 being right, They disclose, when opened to the light of day, a nightmare 

 of recondite machinery'-, propelled with alternate vigor and languor by some 

 imprisoned force, the origin of which defies investigation. There are 

 labyrinths of wheels and inniimerable radii of cogs, and slender chains, 

 and coiled springs, and extensive axels, and a general blaze of highly 

 os'tentatious brass. During the inspection of this mysterious interior, the 

 vehicle, very probably, stops, and declines to move on except upon the 

 provocation of being tapped with severity against some hard substance. 

 Of such was the well known time-piece of Captain Cuttle, which if turned 

 forward fifteen minutes in the forenoon and backward half an hour toward 

 evening, was, in the opinion of its owner, a watch that would do any one 

 credit. The special vices of this primitive time-piece have not yet been 

 altogether repealed in any of the instruments of continental manufacture. 

 Their complexity continues unabated, and it is the evidence of precisely 

 this fault to which the attention of the American manufacturers is, in a 

 great degree, directed. How entirely tl/e American manufacturers are 

 justified in the changes they have made is attested by the recognition they 

 have received from those whose judgment may be taken as complete and 

 final. The advantages of simplicity in construction having been secured 

 to the fullest extent that is expedient, those of perfect uniformity are, of 

 course, more easily attained. And it is probably to these latter, more 

 than any other causes, that the real vahie of the Waltham watches must 

 be attributed. The important fact that there is virtually no variation in 

 even the minutest details of all these instruments, is the one upon which 

 most reliance is placed. They must all inevitably be equally good. Exact 

 unity is the first quality which watches, by whomsoever produced, can 

 possess. Exact unity is simply unattainable by the European processes. 

 Of two instruments, simultaneously completed in a foreign workshop, it is 

 impossible to expect that they will bear more than a general and superfi- 

 cial relationship to one another. There is no tie between them to hold 

 them to exactitude. Deviations in regularity are alwaj^s counted upon, to 

 a greater or less degree, in imported watches, their harmony being contin- 

 gent upon the most doubtful conditions. The dexterity or the good faith 

 of individual workmen is all that can be trusted to for correct results. 

 Here, however, nothing is left to the discretion of the artisan. From be- 

 ginning to end, all is carefully wrought out by unvarying mechanical rule. 

 The isolated particles must of necessity be identical in every watch, since 

 they are modeled by force of machinery, and not by labor of hand. The 

 most practiced eye or delicate touch might sometimes err, but the opera- 

 tions of machinery are without a flaw. The proof is in the circumstance 

 to which we have before alluded, that fragments from one American watch 

 fit perfectly and at once adjust themselves in any other. The grand result 

 of this verisimilitude is, that in regard to time-keeping the Waltham 

 watches are all alike. Microscopic variations, dependent upon accidental 

 conditions, which under no circumstances can ever be guarded against, do, 

 of course, exist; but they are so slight, as compared with the wider deflec- 



