Time Telling through the Ages

Here ends the first great division of our story. The scientific problem had been solved; what remained was to democratize the keeping of time; to place mechanism equal to the best of those days within the reach and within the means of every man. In this later development the work was to pass out of the hands of artists and inventors into those of manufacturers. Its history from this point on is no longer a record of science but a romance of industry.

CHAPTER TEN

The "Worshipful Company" and English Watchmaking

From the beginning, there are two sides to the history of timekeeping. The first is the story of discovery and invention – how men labored for thousands of years to produce a contrivance that would really tell the time. But if only a few such machines existed in the world, it would be of very little use to humanity in general, however perfect each might be. Accordingly history must now recount how clocks and watches came to be made in sufficiently large numbers and at sufficiently low cost to be within the reach of all who needed them.

The turning-point from the inventive to the industrial side of the development was reached about the year 1800. Timekeeping has always been a part of history, and history a part of timekeeping, and this opening of the nineteenth century was a period when history itself was changing, for the progress of civilization is like a journey over a mountain road; one must needs turn occasionally or one can rise no higher. The American Revolution had ended but a few years before, and the thinly settled states were trying the strange experiment of having the people govern themselves without a king. In the old world, the people of France had suddenly risen up and seized the power from their king, and a bloody struggle had ensued in which many of the old nobility had been beheaded. In England, the power of the throne was growing less and the power of the people greater. In fact, the whole world was becoming more and more filled with democratic ideas and ideals than ever before.

Now, this same democratic idea that set up republics was getting ready to put a watch into every man's pocket. At first, everyone had told the time for himself, and had told it badly. Now, after thousands of years, it had come about that a few had the means of telling time accurately. The great inventors mentioned in the last few chapters had contributed one idea after another, until, among them all they had worked out clocks and watches that would keep correct time. But these timepieces were not yet convenient in form, and they certainly were not yet convenient in price for the average man. They still were made by hand in small quantities, and such a condition would have to be changed before it would be possible for everyone to tell the time and to tell it well.

Naturally, the industrial and business development of watchmaking began long before 1800, long before, indeed, the time at which the inventions were all complete. For centuries the two sides of the story, the inventive and the industrial, had progressed side by side, but for the sake of clearness, we have described the inventions first. Now we must glance back again to the time of Shakespeare, when the period of modern inventions was just beginning, in order to see how the business side of watchmaking started upon its growth.

Four nations have been concerned in this development – England, France, Switzerland, and the United States. The English worked in one way; the French worked in another; the Swiss, in still another; while the Americans took up the final organization of the work in a manner that was thoroughly typical of their peculiar genius.

The mechanical improvements and inventions were mostly made, as we know, by the English. But for the beginnings of the watch industry in England one must go back to a time before the days of Hooke and Huyghens, to the year 1627, the year of incorporation of the Worshipful Clock-makers, Company. Imagine such a name being chosen to-day! The Worshipful Clock-makers' Company was the original trade-organization of the business in England. It was not at all like our modern companies but was one of those great trade "guilds" which played such an important part in the development of European industry.

People sometimes think of the medieval trade-guild as something like the modern trade-union, but this is a mistake; it was in many ways quite different. Perhaps one might call it a sort of a cross between a labor-union and a manufacturing trust. Within a certain district, all who were occupied in a particular business were required to belong to the guild; otherwise they were not allowed to do business, and the "district" might include the whole country. In order to gain an idea of a guild, imagine in this country a single association of jewelers to which everyone connected with the jewelry business was forced to belong, whether he were manufacturer or retailer, employer, or employee, the head of his firm or the last new clerk behind the counter. Or, to look at it in another way, imagine a trust controlling the whole industry and a union including all the workmen under a closed-shop system, and then suppose that the trust and the union were one and the same. That would be like one of the great medieval guilds. It was easy for such an organization to create a monopoly of the entire national product.

Sometimes the guild would forbid the importation of foreign goods and would not permit workmen to come from other countries. It usually regulated, to some extent, the conditions of wages and labor. It fixed its own standards of quality of the product; if goods did not come up to this standard, they might not be sold, and the rules of the guild had practically the force of law. But it did not attempt to control prices, nor to limit the quantity of production, nor to interfere, except very indirectly, with free competition among its own members.

Thus, it was not, in our modern sense of the conception, a company at all, but an association of independent manufacturers or tradesmen, each in business for himself, each in competition with his fellow craftsmen, and all kept upon a tolerably even footing by limiting the amount of labor that each one might employ. Its members were the master craftsmen, each the head of his own house; through them were associated the journeymen, or skilled workmen in their employ, and the apprentices. These latter might rise to be masters, in business for themselves. But no one without such a connection could engage in the business at all, in any capacity whatever.

The Worshipful Clock-makers' Company, under its charter granted by Charles I, had the power to make rules for the government of all persons following the trade within ten miles of London, and for regulating the trade throughout the kingdom. Its first master, or president, was David Ramsay, who was mentioned as having been "constructor of horologes to His Most Sacred Majesty, James I," and is one of the characters in Scott's novel "The Fortunes of Nigel." Its wardens or executives were Henry Archer, John Willowe, and Sampson Shelton; and there was, besides, a fellowship, or board of directors. The company proceeded at once to forbid all persons "making, buying, selling, transporting, and importing any bad, deceitful clocks, watches, larums, sun-dials or cases for the said trade," and full power to search for, confiscate and destroy all such inferior goods, "or cause them to be amended."

This company limited the volume of business by forbidding any one master to employ more than two apprentices at one time without express permission; and, since all journeymen must first pass through the stage of apprenticeship, this tended to keep up wages by limiting the labor supply and to keep competition on a fair basis. The coat of arms of the company represented a clock surmounted by a crown, the feet resting upon the backs of four lions, all of gold, upon a black ground; on either side were the figures of Father Time and of a king in royal robes; and the motto beneath read: Tempus Imperator Rerum, or "Time, the Emperor of Things." These matters sound rather quaint to us, but perhaps the quaintest of them all is the idea of a monopoly concerning itself so jealously with the quality of the product, and letting prices and competition practically alone.

It was under such conditions that the English work was done and the inventions made. Huyghens was, of course, not an Englishman; and Hooke was rather an inventor and a scientist than a manufacturer. Both these men themselves made clocks and watches, but they made them only as instruments to assist them in their researches, or as working-models of their design. It was often said of Hooke that he never cared to develop an invention after he had proved that it would work. But once these first inventions had been adopted, the real production of timepieces was in the hands of the Clock-makers' Company, and the great names were those of clock-makers.

These were the days when the leaders of the industry worked with their own hands as well as with their heads. We may imagine the master seated in the front room of his shop studying over a new model, or putting together and decorating one already made; or, perhaps, making with his own hands some of the most delicate parts. From the back rooms would come the sound of tapping or filing as the journeymen and apprentices were hard at work upon their various tasks. Meanwhile, perhaps some apprentice, standing outside the door, would call out to passers-by and urge them to step in and buy. This was a favorite form of advertising in that time. For that matter, we still have our "barkers" and "pullers-in" at Coney Island and elsewhere. Everything about the small business was carried out under the personal direction of the master and, where necessary, by his own hand. The phrase "clockmaker to the King" meant something more when applied to such a man than merely that royalty had purchased some product of his craft.

Such a one was Thomas Tompion, often called "the father of English watchmaking." He was the leader of his craft in the time of Charles II and he, more than anyone else, worked out the inventions of Hooke for actual manufacture. He left his father's blacksmith shop to become a clock-maker, from this he went on to the more delicate work of making watches, and at last became a famous master of his guild. It may fairly be said of him that he set the time for history in his day, for most of the royalty and great men of Europe timed all their doings from banquets to battles by Tompion watches.

Meanwhile, he, too, was making watchmaking history by his improvements. Tompion made watches with hair-springs, balance-wheels and escapements with various improvements. His design of the regulator is nearly that in modern use. His cases, too, were as famous as the movements that he made. The so-called "pendulum watches" were then much in fashion, and Tompion met the demand by making a number of them. They did not, of course, work with a pendulum; but one arm of the old foliot balance could be seen through an opening in the case or dial, and looked like a pendulum swinging to and fro. To read the advertisements of that day one would think that all lost or stolen watches were of Tompion's making, so often does his name appear in them.

Many legendary stories are told about Tompion's work. It has been set down in cold print that Queen Mary gave one of his watches to Philip II of Spain, and that he made watches for Queen Elizabeth. Unfortunately for such stories, Tompion was not born until 1638, by which time both Mary and Elizabeth had been dead for some years. But though the legends themselves are untrue, yet they do shed some light upon their subject, for such stories, true or false, are not told about unimportant men. And it is true that Tompion grew so celebrated that at his death, in 1713, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where only the great may have resting-places.

Another famous watchmaker was George Graham, the inventor of the mercury pendulum. He first was Tompion's journeyman, then his partner, and at last became a well-known astronomer, having become interested in astronomy through making astronomical clocks. But his great contribution was the invention of the dead-beat escapement, which, in one form or another, is in use in all the best clocks and watches of the present time, and which has had more to do with making their accuracy possible than has any other improvement since the discovery of the isochronism of the pendulum and hair-springs. Graham, also, is buried in Westminster Abbey; his body lies beside that of Tompion, his teacher and friend.

Another famous figure was Daniel Quare, the first to devise the mechanism for driving the two hands as we have it to-day. Quare was a Quaker, and was no less prominent in the Society of Friends than in his business. As a Quaker, he was opposed to taking an oath of any kind, and was what we now call a "conscientious objector" to warfare. Therefore, at the same time that he was being honored by royalty for his work, he was being prosecuted and fined for his refusal to pay taxes for the support of the army and of the Established Church. When he was made clock-maker to King George I, means had to be devised for excusing him from taking the oath of allegiance.

It was Quare who originated the practise of giving to each watch a serial number, so that it could always be identified. This is, of course, a common custom with us; we also number automobiles, and many other manufactured articles of value, and Quare's device of numbering watch-movements may very well have given the start to all this.

Still other famous watchmakers were Harrison and Arnold and Earnshaw, who between them developed and perfected the marine chronometer that we discussed in the last chapter; and Mudge, in whose hands watch-movements really became modern in type. Men of this kind thought first of producing reliable work which would give service; ornaments, curiosities of workmanship, and even convenience, were secondary. Some of these men were extremely independent; for example, Arnold, in his early days and by way of establishing a reputation, made a repeating watch less than a half-inch in diameter – so small that it was worn set in a ring; but when King George III had bought the masterpiece, and the Empress of Russia offered one thousand guineas (more than five thousand dollars) for a duplicate, Arnold coolly excused himself on the plea that he desired the specimen to remain unique.

Time passed; machinery began to be employed in manufacturing and hand-work declined. The guild system in every line slowly changed into our modern organized industry. This was only natural, for factories were becoming larger, their output was increasing and the head of the business was no longer likely to be himself a master workman. The greater part of this change, of course, took place in the nineteenth century, and was primarily owing to the increased use of machine-power and improvement in transportation. But as regards watchmaking in England, the substitution never became complete, for the bulldog quality in the Englishman has always made him hold fast to his ideas. Habits died hard, and the old methods were changed slowly and under protest, even when these changes spelled progress.

At first, as we have seen, the watch was the work of one man and of his assistants, and was almost entirely handmade. In those days, the trade was supplied by a multitude of small independent manufacturers. To make a single watch might take weeks or months; and every one must be made separately and patiently, regardless of labor or expense. So long as this method could hold its own, the English watchmakers led the world; their watches were good, but they certainly were not cheap.

After a time, other countries began to use more modern methods, and English watches could no longer stand competition in the world's markets. However, the bulldog quality still held; English manufacturers preferred to lose ground rather than change their methods. The introduction of machinery and the employment of women operatives were each bitterly opposed. Factory production was never adopted on a large scale, nor was there much combination of small independent manufacturers. Necessarily, these things did, at last, come to be done; but half-heartedly, and without much success. At one time, for example, there were some forty small factories making various parts which each watch manufacturer assembled and adjusted for himself.

The Clock-makers' Company is still in existence; although now, of course, it has developed into a society like the ordinary modern association of manufacturers. Under pressure of change and competition, English manufacturers were compelled unwillingly to change their system of production, but the character of the watches they would not change. The same country which had made so many of the mechanical inventions finally settled down into satisfaction with its models at a time when other nations were continuing to make improvements, as, for example, when they clung to the fusee after watchmakers abroad had found a better substitute.

The English watch has remained heavy, substantial, and reliable; it is an excellent mechanism produced regardless of expense. Such a watch cannot be made cheaply, least of all by British methods. There has been something obstinate in the maker's attitude; if the law of supply and demand called for something different, so much the worse for the law. The English have been slow to see the possibilities in the cheap watch. They have not realized that a watch need not be expensive in order to keep good time. They started to put the watch into universal use, but left to other nations the completion of the process.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

What Happened in France and Switzerland

Across the English Channel lives a race of a very different character. The French are people of highly adaptable minds; often they see possibilities in the inventions of other nations which those other nations have failed themselves to see. The automobile was first made in the United States, but the French soon developed it into something that was better than our early clumsy cars, and we were years in overtaking them. The Wright Brothers first learned the secret of aerial flight, and then Wilbur Wright sailed for France, where the people went wild with enthusiasm over the idea of flying; it was in France that aviation really became what it is to-day.

The French have always been fine mechanics and finished workmen. It was to be expected that they would do something artistic and interesting with the manufacture of timepieces. They could not make a better watch than the British were turning out toward the end of the eighteenth century. Nobody could – but they could make it more beautiful. In Shakespeare's time and afterward, while watches were still more valuable as works of art than they could be as timepieces, the richest work of this nature was done in France. There watches were made in the form of mandolins and other musical instruments, in the form of flowers, in the form of jeweled butterflies, and in wonderful cases, painted and enameled and engraved. In the J. Pierpont Morgan collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, there is a watch which, in 1800, on the fete-day after the battle of Marengo, Napoleon Bonaparte gave to Murat, who was his brother-in-law and one of his generals. On the back cover of this watch appears a miniature portrait of Napoleon himself. And since he himself was the author of the gift, one may assume that it represented the Great Emperor's own conception of himself.

The wrist-watch, to-day a military necessity, was at first a French idea. It is interesting to learn that the merchants and makers of this kind of work were in their own time called neither watchmakers nor horologists, but toymen. There again is shown the old idea about watches; they were not timepieces but toys.

Later on, toward the end of the period of invention, when first, the clock, and soon afterward, the watch, had become fairly accurate timekeepers, the French makers again took the lead in the same way; once more they beautified what they could not practically improve. The French clocks of the period of Louis XIV and his successors are celebrated for their design. One might easily suppose, from an examination of the great modern collections of rare and precious watches in our museums that the French had been the leading watchmakers of the world, for the specimens there found being selected chiefly for beauty or value from the collector's point of view, are oftener of French than of any other make. Yet it must not be supposed that the French made no inventions. The credit for some of the important improvements is disputed between the English, French and Swiss, and it is not always easy to decide which nation has the better claim. Furthermore, certain of the French watchmakers came from Switzerland while at various times, some of those in France moved to England, especially during the reign of Terror. The distinctions are somewhat confused and we can only speak in a general way.

However, while the watchmaking industry was developing in France, it gave forth a seed which took root in new soil. In the hill country of eastern France, in the town of Autun, there lived a watchmaker named Charles Cusin. One day, in 1574, for reasons that we do not know, he moved a few miles eastward across the border into Switzerland and there settled in the beautiful lake city of Geneva. He probably had no thought that this personal act of a private citizen would have an effect upon history, but an industry employing thousands of people and making millions of dollars worth of goods can be traced back to the time when he crossed the border.

Remember that this was back in the days of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth, while watches were still esteemed jewels and ornaments for the wealthy, and when the improvements which later made them practically useful had not yet been invented. The business side of watchmaking was thus growing up at the same time with the inventive and scientific; it was preparing itself for the day when the mechanism should be perfected, and the only remaining task would be to popularize its perfection.

Charles Cusin liked Switzerland and thirteen years later he became a citizen. In the course of time, he was active in founding a watchmaker's guild in Geneva and from that period Geneva watches have been famous. This does not mean that Switzerland had contained no watchmakers before Cusin's appearance, but we are considering the beginnings of a great industry and not mere instances of isolated workmen. The man from Autun seems to have been one of those energetic leaders who see possibilities and know how to organize. It is largely through such men that the world progresses.

You will remember that in an early chapter we touched upon the way in which men first began to exchange the results of their work in order that each man might devote most of his time to the special task for which he was best fitted, such as hunting, or the making of weapons. Through this exchange, everyone was enabled to live better than anyone could have lived by himself. But if it were true that people doing different things could help each other, it also became true, after a while, that people doing the same thing could help each other and could help the general public, by learning to co-operate. They could exchange ideas, improve their work, and bring about better conditions. This was one of the effects of the guilds – they changed crafts into industries.

The guild with which Charles Cusin now had to do – some say he was its sole founder – was a very dignified and important board of master-workmen. It was founded about fifty years earlier than was the Worshipful Clock-makers' Company in England, and its members were no ordinary workmen. Switzerland was, and still is, a thoroughly independent little country and a man skilful enough to make a whole watch with his own hands was apt to be a man who realized his own worth.

The members of this guild were decidedly particular about their dignity and their meetings were serious occasions, as may be seen from Article I of their regulations which read: "Whenever the master workmen shall meet in a body to discuss subjects pertaining to their guild, they shall, before proceeding to such discussion, offer prayer to God beseeching Him that all that they say and do may rebound to His glory and may further the interests of these people."

As a matter of fact this dignity was based upon a correct conception that has been somewhat overlooked in the present busy age. The man who has to do either with the manufacture or sale of timepieces does well to take his position seriously since he is a most important link in our entire civilization. Such a man may well reflect upon the fact that without the timepieces which he produces or sells, the world would drop into hopeless confusion, for human society is able to run smoothly and efficiently only when it is correctly timed. Workmen and dealers engaged in such a vital industry have a great responsibility to their fellow-men.

It is probable that members of this guild who met from time to time in the Swiss city by the lake shores, under the shadows of the snow-topped Alps, realized something of this responsibility. Their timepieces were not yet as accurate as are ours of to-day, and the world was not yet so busy that its affairs required the closest adjustment, but they at least were trying earnestly to keep the human cogs running smoothly by turning out watches as nearly perfect as their skill and knowledge would permit.

This may be seen again in Article V of their regulations; "The functions of the jurors are to enforce the laws of the guild and to provide that there be no infringement of the same. To this end, they shall be required to visit each journeyman at least four times during the year, having power to seize all articles which do not conform to the specifications now in force, to report all delinquents to the worthy governing board, and to punish the offenders in accordance with the gravity of their fault."

It is quite clear that Geneva was out for quality in watches, and, indeed the name of the Swiss city has always been associated with quality. Nevertheless, they were no angels – those old Swiss craftsmen; they were in fact quite preponderatingly human. Thus it was not long before they began to make a tight little monopoly of their business. They restricted the number of workmen who might be admitted to the guild, and they secured special ordinances by means of which all other watchmakers were forbidden to establish themselves within a certain distance of the city. In other words, they did not purpose allowing the new and promising industry to grow beyond their control.

There were, however, other independent people in those days who hadn't the slightest intention of being bound by such restrictions. Here and there, a watchmaker left Geneva to carry on his work in some foreign city, as, for example, in Besancon, France. Thus began a competition which grew and spread as time went on.

This competition developed some interesting features. For example, the guild in Geneva obtained the passage of laws forbidding anyone from bringing into the city, in a finished state, a watch constructed within a certain distance. "Schemes" for watches and certain parts might be made at will, but only members of the citizen guild were permitted to complete these schemes.

Such restrictions naturally did not tend toward low-priced watches; but all watches in those days were necessarily high-priced, and a man wealthy enough to afford one was apt to seek the best that could be bought. Geneva's strictness gave it so great a reputation that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries foreign watchmakers flocked to the Swiss city very much as art students later journeyed to Paris, and it became the acknowledged center of the European industry. As time went on the demand for time-pieces became more widespread and many Genevans moved to other cities where they became dealers in Geneva watches. It is said that, in 1725, the city of Constantinople contained as many as eighty-eight mercantile agents who had become established in this way.

One hundred years after the founding of the guild, Geneva was producing five thousand watches a year, having one hundred masters of the guild and three hundred journeymen. Now five thousand watches is no small output when it is considered that each one must be constructed entirely by hand and occupied a matter of weeks in the making; yet, by 1799, the city contained nearly six thousand watchmakers and jewelers and was producing fifty thousand timepieces a year.

Not many miles to the northward from Geneva is another mountain city – that of Neuchatel. Neuchatel also contained an enterprising and skilful population, for the Swiss people seem to have been naturally ingenious and skilful in the use of tools. Doubtless the mountainous character of the country has had something to do with this fact; farming and fruit-raising are slow, hard work in their rocky soil and severe climate and the making of bulky articles is not desirable where transportation must be had over mountain trails.

The Swiss with their clever fingers had long been famous for their wood-carving; now, when they had a chance at an industry which called for delicate and skilful hand-work and which produced goods of small size and high value, it exactly suited them.