116 
House & Garden 
You demand much of hardware 
Sargent 
Door Closer 520 
Small in size 
and reasonable in 
price, is most con¬ 
venient for use 
inside the house, 
on lavatory, 
cellar, back stairs 
and refrigerator 
room doors. Use 
it on the screen 
door, too. It 
closes the light- 
weight door 
silently and 
surely. 
P ERHAPS you take hardware for 
granted. Only when the hinge 
squeaks, the knob sticks or the lock-set 
refuses to work, do you become con¬ 
scious of them. But hardware to func¬ 
tion smoothly day in and day out must 
be carefully designed and made of the 
best materials. 
It will more than pay you, therefore, 
to select Sargent Hardware for the un¬ 
interrupted service it will give. Sargent 
easy spring lock-sets for doors inside the 
house will work perfectly every time you 
use them. Sargent cylinder locks for 
exterior doors give unquestioned secur¬ 
ity. And it is also a wise investment to 
buy knobs and escutcheons of solid brass 
or bronze. The additional cost is almost 
negligible in the total building expense. 
There are Sargent styles to harmonize 
with every type of home. Write for the 
Book of Designs and select Sargent 
Hardware with your architect. 
SARGENT & COMPANY 
Hardware Manufacturers 
31 Water Street New Haven, Conn. 
French watch 
in form of a 
cross, made by 
Abraham Bobi- 
net, about 1600. 
This and oth¬ 
er illustrations 
from the Metro¬ 
politan Museum 
of Art 
Collecting Old Watches 
(Continued from page 114) 
pended, as they were, from the girdle. 
The globular form of these “watches” 
occasioned the name for them of 
“Nuremberg Eggs”. Only the rich 
could afford these novelties. 
The word “watch” appears to be 
derived from an Old English word, 
waecce, from the word wacian, mean¬ 
ing to guard, to watch, and from wacan , 
to wake. In the earliest times the 
term watch shared usage with the words 
clock and orologue as applied to clocks 
and watches alike. 
The military division of the night into 
watches by the Greeks and by the 
Romans, likewise the watches on ships 
associated the name with the passage 
of time as mechanically marked at a 
later date by the pocket timepiece. 
By the end of the 
16th Century the watch 
had been reduced to a 
pocket possibility and 
French makers pro¬ 
duced timepieces quite 
the equal of those from 
the hands of the Ger¬ 
man watch-makers. It 
would seem, in these 
early pieces, that in¬ 
terior workmanship was 
not at all comparable 
with that bestowed up¬ 
on the cases. While 
the exteriors of these 
watches were richly or¬ 
namented and executed 
with marvelous skill, 
crude enough were the 
interior parts in com¬ 
parison. 
The English were 
quick to take an interest in Continental 
watches. Queen Elizabeth had a re¬ 
markable collection of them, gifts from 
ambassadors and courtiers. However, 
popular as watches had become with 
persons of quality in England, we do 
not find record of an English watch¬ 
maker before the end of the 16th Cen¬ 
tury. While certain of the watches 
could be carried in the pocket, it was 
more common to find them suspended 
from neck chains. 
With the advent of Puritanism and 
its stern censure on display of any sort, 
the watch found refuge in the pocket, 
and there remained until these later 
years which have witnessed its journey 
to the wrist band. It was about the 
time when watches were concealed in 
pockets that the fob 
came into use. The 
word was derived 
from German, fuppe, 
signifying small pocket. 
The forms of the 
watches of the Eliza¬ 
bethan period were 
myriad, devised to the 
utmost of ingenuity as 
applied to design. Nat¬ 
urally when extrava¬ 
gance in dress came to 
be curbed, the watch 
became simpler in form. 
It remained for 
Thomas Tompion 
(1639-1713) to Invent 
a dead-beat watch es¬ 
capement, improved 
upon bv George Gra¬ 
ham (1673-1751). John 
( Cont. on page 118) 
A lyre-shaped watch 
of the 18th Century 
A remarkably ornate watch case 
made by the French designer, 
Baptiste le Nom, in 1760 
A more utilitarian form is found 
in this Swiss watch made in the 
late years of the 17th Century 
