$9$ 



NATURE 



[Feb. 26. 1880 



of Dublin, speaks of the Telescopes shown by Grubb, 

 Home and Thorn thwaite, and Dallmeyer, as unapproached 

 by any shown by Continental opticians. Mr. Lambert 

 regards the French instruments as a whole, as too lightly 

 constructed to give precision or durability ; and though 

 English work errs in the opposite direction, he thinks 

 that a judicious compromise would not only add to 

 elegance of appearance, but would reduce the cost. He 

 adds his opinion that much of the optical work imported 

 into this country might be done as cheaply or more 

 cheaply at home if employers would give the sane 

 facilities for working which French operatives have. The 

 French avail themselves largely, it appears, of tools which 

 are not much used for this class of work in England, 

 small planing machines, shaping machines, and rotating 

 cutters. The very fine quality of the brass used in 

 the French Instruments attracted the attention of the 

 reporter. 



From Mr. Walker's Report on Machine Tools we learn 

 that Continental engineers are still copyists, though per- 

 haps in some ways in advance of us in the extent to which 

 such appliances are used throughout the industries. The 

 American Section, however, told a very different tale ; for 

 here the amount of novelty was almost inconceivable, and 

 the designs had all the freshness of being struck from first 

 principles. The automatic grinding machines of Messrs. 

 Thomson, Sterne, & Co., and the hydraulic plant for 

 boiler building of Messrs. Tweddle called for special 

 comment amongst English exhibits. Mr. Walker points 

 out that we have given too little attention to the necessity 

 which is implied in the employment of machine tools, for 

 skilled workers of a high order; and he thinks that this 

 skill is of a kind which an English workman is better 

 fitted to acquire than a French workman ; for the latter 

 has semi-artistic tastes that are not satisfied by machine 

 work. " Let the Frenchman be set to carve a Crockett, 

 or to cut a glove, or to shape a meerschaum pipe, or to do 

 any task on which he can claim the result as his own, his 

 soul lightens up." "His own work must be made to 

 appear conspicuously in the result, or his interest in it is 

 gone. This personality in work is not easily attained in 

 the manufacture of heavy machinery." 



The first of the Reports on Mechanical Engineering by 

 Mr. J. W. Phillips, speaks of the number of machine-tool 

 makers represented in the French gallery, and of the 

 excellence of their work. Amongst the American ma- 

 chines bearing the stamp of original thought commented 

 upon in this Report, is a screw-making machine of very 

 extraordinary precision and merit. There are a few dis- 

 crepancies between the three reporters upon Mechanical 

 Engineering, discrepancies v Inch doubtless arise from 

 their visits having been brief and independent. One 

 who expected to find the French artisans deficient in 

 energy, says that " a more earnest and thoroughgoing set 

 of men " he never encountered in a workshop ; while 

 another says that " the energy put into their work by the 

 mechanics was certainly much below what we are accus- 

 tomed to see in England." One mentions tools of novel 

 and superior construction; another sees "very very few 

 tools" that he would think worth introducing into 

 England ; while the third says that in machines and 

 tools there is so great a similarity that their nationality 

 would be unrecognisable if it were not for the makers' 

 names on them ! One praises the get up of the iron and 

 steel work from the Creuzot works ; and while another 

 sees nothing in it worthy of mention, the third speaks of 

 it as a very magnificent contribution, of which any 

 English house might have been proud. All of them 

 comment on the Technical schools, which afford to French 

 engineers in such abundant measure, opportunity to pur- 

 sue scientific and theoretical courses of instruction. The 

 Report of Mr. Hopps devotes no fewer than five pages to 

 a description of the Municipal School for Apprentices in 

 .he Boulevard Villette, the pupils of which institution 



contributed a very admirable display of specimens of 

 forging, turning, fitting, and carpentry, as well as several 

 larger machine-tools made in the workshops of the 

 school. 



The two Reports on Watch and Clock-making, by 

 Mr. Ganney and Mr. Warwick, contain a host of matters 

 of scientific interest, and are well worthy of study. We 

 learn also that, apart from the introduction of labour- 

 saving machinery, the means of production of watches 

 and the forms of the watches themselves are what they 

 were at the beginning of the century ; that the Swiss tool- 

 makers annihilated the English watch toolmakers some 

 years ago, and that no English watchmaker has made 

 repeating movements for the last fifty years, the repeating 

 train being imported and fitted to an English going train. 

 Mr. Warwick mentions an American compensating balance 

 in which V-shaped notches filed in a steel rim are filled 

 in with a more expansible brass composition ; a device 

 which is probably in every way inferior to the numerous 

 bi-metallic rim-balances with continuous laminae that have 

 from time to time been devised. He also speaks of certain 

 American watch manufacturers who claim to possess the 

 art of conferring on springs the property of isochronism 

 by machines ; and adds that as no idea of the machine 

 employed for the purpose was given, " it must be left to 

 individual credulity to form what notion it pleases of this 

 invention." Mr. Warwick mentions with praise the ex- 

 hibits of the French and S>uss Schools of Horology. 

 Some of these, he says, contained a number of most 

 interesting models of every form of escapement, all 

 mounted with the escapement on the top, so as to 

 facilitate examination ; most of them were wound up 

 and go ng, so that the action could be seen. They were 

 all constructed on a large scale, the balances being four 

 inches in diameter, so that the parts could be well observed 

 and studied. There were working models of escapements 

 on blackboards, with movable parts to show the action 

 and the working angles, which were traced out on the 

 board. " Standing before these objects," he adds, "one 

 could not, as an Englishman, but envy them, and carry 

 his thoughts back to his own land with regret that there 

 are no corresponding institutions for technical education 

 there." Mr. Ganney was even more struck by the 

 advantages possessed by France and Switzerland over 

 our manufacturers in possessing institutions for training 

 workmen of the very highest skill in the theory and 

 practice of their craft. He enters into details about the 

 Horological School of Besancon, its system of instruction, 

 and the extraordinary successes it has achieved. He 

 gives a list of the work turned out by their head pupil, 

 who after being in the school thirty- four months had 

 completed with his own hands nearly fifty watch move- 

 ments, including a fusee keyless pocket chronometer, and 

 a keyless repeater lever finished and fully jewelled by the 

 pupil. He adds, that as many years might have been 

 deemed a reasonable time for learning so much, and that 

 it is doubtful whether the whole English trade contains 

 any English trained workman of experience who could do 

 such a variety of work so well. Self-sufficiency appears 

 to be the characcristic of the English watch trade : with 

 the result that while we turn out less than 1 50,000 watches 

 a year, America turns out nearly half a million, Switzer- 

 land and France some six millions ; the French industry 

 having risen in the last thirty years from 40,000 to over a 

 million watches per annum. It appears that good work 

 is as dear in America as here, though a little cheaper in 

 France or Switzerland ; but, on the other hand, the Swis3 

 can sell a complete watch in a case, or the Americans a 

 complete watch without a case, for very little more than is 

 charged for an unfinished English blank movement alone ; 

 and this solely on account of the labour-saving appliances 

 which they employ. 



The other Reports, particularly those on Caoutchouc, on 

 Ornamental Ironwork, and on the Porcelain and Glass 





