I was recently reading a book titled "American Watch Co., Waltham, Mass. Incorporated 1854." It was originally printed in 1885 by the American Watch Company as a souvenir catalog of the New Orleans Exposition and published by Ken Roberts Publishing company of Bristol, Conn. This book as a lot of information, in particular some description of the various sections of the factory. Before I share those here is a quote from the book that I thought interesting and I think the ladies that frequent our list would like to read. "For certain kinds of work female operatives are preferred, on account of their greater delicacy and rapidity of manipulation; and it should be added that women get the same wages as men for doing the same kind and amount of work." Was Waltham ahead of its time or have we just fallen backwards? Following is a description of the some of the rooms and their, function at Waltham in 1885. From the book: The Plate Room is where they manufacture the pillar and top plates. The material used is generally brass, although nickel is used for some of the finer watches. Eighty operations are required of the pillar plate alone. The parts being assembled and screwed together, several operations were preformed, after which they are taken apart and finally distributed. During the process at various times the plates have to be boiled in soapsuds to clean them from dirt. There are 157 operations performed in the plate room alone. The Press Room is in charge of N. P. Mulloy. The first thing that was exhibited was a sort of cabinet, in who's glass jars and tiny drawers are myriads of parts of watches, each sort labeled, e.g., regulators, yokes, forks, clicks, lever springs, winding wheels, train wheels, gold and steel balances, hour hands, minute hands, second hands, etc., everything in short that can be made by punching. The effect is striking of seeing so many objects of a kind massed together, e.g., 10,000 second hands in one jar - the result of one day's work on the line, the monthly order calling for 160,000. The counting is done by weight. A box of center wheels was weighed in my presence, and found to weight 146 3/4 oz. A single ounce was then weighed and the wheels counted and found to number 136. Consequently it was ascertained that there were 19,979 wheels in the box. Some idea of the multiplicity of operations in this department may be hand on learning that there are over 200 different sort of hands now made! Many parts made here, and in other departments are so small as to be almost microscopic, and measurements have to be made by a fine gauge micrometer. Curious to see the working of the instrument, I measured a single hair, find it to be 5/1000 of a centimeter in diameter. Many operations have to be verified to within 1/2000 of a centimeter, i.e., to 1/10 the thickness of a human hair. The Pinion Room. In the care of Martin Thomas, who has been in the employ of the company for 23 years, has another cabinet of jars, boxes and drawers, with pinions of every sort and in every stage. Probably as much is involved in perfecting the pinions as in any other department of watch making. Everything must be as exact as possible. The process begins with cutting the wires to be used in lengths of 18 inches. Then these are cut automatically to the right lengths, roughed out and pointed. Five or six turnings follow, and then the leaves (or teeth) are cut. It has long been known that these should be epicycloidal in form but under the old system it was difficult to effect this with desirable exactness. Drawings on a large scale could be made with mathematical precision but it was another thing to reproduce them in almost microscopic miniature. And then, it is said, that many workmen had a singular prejudice to these particular teeth, fancying them to resemble bishops' miters! Here the superiority of machinery over handwork is visible. Machines have not prejudices nor aesthetic notions, and are as able to shape a little pinion exactly as the great wheels of the largest engine. The cutters and polishers of the machine for making the pinions are themselves kept true and in perfect order by a machine invented for giving the exact epicycloidal form. The final results is that, when all the parts of the watch are assembled and set in motion, the action of the teeth of wheels on the pinion is perfectly smooth and continuous, an end that cannot be secured in any other way. This statement holds good for all grades of watches made here, the cheapest as well as the most costly. After the leaves have been cut, the pinions are hardened and tempered, polished and finished ready for use. Seven barrels of flour a month are consumed in making dough for various uses, besides many barrels of pith and quantities of rouge and Vienna lime. OK who knows what the flour/dough and Vienna lime were used for----Please E-mail me and the list. Thanks Gilding Room. All the brass movements have to be gilded, which is done under the direction of Mr. C. B. Hicks. The parts must first be stoned, then inspected, after which they are put through a bath of nitric, sulfuric, or muriatic acid. Having been rinsed, they are brushed with revolving wire brushes to prepare them for the gilding bath. They they are rinsed in alcohol, dried in saw-dust, inspected and such gilding is done both with electric dynamos and with old style Daniell battery. From $40 to $50 worth of gold is put on the works of 1,000 watches in the process of gilding. An exhaust fan carries off all deleterious fumes, perfect ventilation is insured and every precaution is taken against any poisonous effects from the various chemicals used. Balance Making. It begins with a plain steel blank made of the best steel. According to the foreman, J. L. Keyser, there are 85 operations in all required of making an expansion balance. The screws, 22 in number, are of different sizes, weights and metals to conform to the varying strength of the hair spring. The Escapement - Includes the roller, roller jewel, pallet with its two jewels and arbor, fork and guard pin, screws, escape wheel and pinion - thirteen pieces in all requiring the most exact precision. The mechanical principles involved are such as have been determined by repeated experiments, but cannot be easily explained without voluminous detail. This department is in charge of Mr. H. N. Fisher. The escape wheel cutting is done by an automatic machine carrying six cutters, three steel and three sapphire. Fifty wheels are cut at a time, and it takes six cuts to make each of the fifteen teeth. The machine stops when they are done. Each wheel is then set on its pinion and topped to make it sure that will run true in the round. The garnet pallet stones are placed 30 or 40 together, on a steel block ground, and finished on one side then on the other. The edges are finished the same way. They are then stacked on a graduated plate, and marked with a diamond to be broken off to a length. They are then put in a grooved pallet set at the desired angle for the impulse force. All are finished with diamond dust on ivory laps. The polishing is done with an oscillatory motion. Matching the escapement is done in the watch, which is regarded as preferable to the old method of doing it by the depthing tool. Jewel Room - The jewel making department is under the direction of W. R. Willis. The First object exhibited was a cabinet containing agates and other materials or making polishing laps. Then a safe was opened containing about $50,000 worth of precious stones. To some extend Brazilian diamonds were used for splinters to drill with. But for general purposes African diamonds are good enough. Diamond bought in the rough, cost $1.50 a carat, or $225 an ounce and the company required about 12,000 carats a year. It should be noted, however, that contrary to the popular notion, no watch jewels are made of diamonds, because they could hardly be drilled. Glass also is never used in Waltham nor is quartz crystal. The stones used are rubies, sapphires, garnets and occasionally chrysolite and aqua marine. A full jeweled watch takes 16 jewels, called, for the pieces to which they belong, balance, end stone, escape, pallet, third, fourth, and center jewels. Every watch has the same kind of jewels throughout, e.g., one will have all garnets, another all rubies, etc. The balance jewel, however, in all watches is either ruby or sapphire, there are 40 different grades of garnets; but the only sort used here is the hard violet from Bohemia and Germany. The process of making diamond dust is, first, by means of a crusher, and then a steel mortar held down by heavy weights. The results is a powder one-fifth diamond and four-fifths steel. After separation the dust is used in the state for diamond saws only; but for polishing, it is graded by successive precipitation from olive oil. The jewels, having been sawed into thin slabs, are next rounded to size, shaped, drilled and faced. The jewel hole is opened to a certain size, varying from 0.005 to 0.020 of a centimeter, in order to fit the pivot - a process requiring the finest possible finish and polish, regardless of the quality of the stone. There were made, in the month of June, 350,000 jewels, employing 255 hands, of whom 175 were males. Hair Spring Department. Under the direction of Thomas Gill. The material is steel wire 0.022 of a centimeter in diameter, and spun for this special use. It comes in coils, and the first thing done is to draw it through ruby and sapphire dies down to 0.018 of a centimeter. Next, it is rolled flat between hardened steel roller and afterward drawn between pairs of diamond dies, from which it come out 0.027 of a centimeter wide and 0.908 thick. It is then cut into lengths of 14 inches, which are wound in little boxes, three in a box, these are wired together in pairs, face to face, and hardened and tempered. They are then separated, cleaned by acid, and blued. The spring is now attached to a brass collet in the center, and to a steel stud at the outer extremity. Gauging the hair spring is a delicate operation. The gauge is a dial plate, 7 inches in diameter, beneath which is a spring of known strength attached to the center staff and jeweled. This dial is accurately divided into 2,000 divisions, each 0.01 of an inch wide. The hair spring is put on the end of the staff, where it is held by friction; the stud being attached to an arm held by an outer ring revolving about the dial, which is stationary. One revolution is made each way, and the strength of the hair spring determined by an index hand attached to the staff. It is seldom equally strong both ways, the variation amounting to from 5 degrees to 10 degrees, the average strength is about 1,000 degrees. It takes so many degrees of strength in a hair spring to run a certain weight of balance and make the requisite number of beats per hour. All balance wheels are weighed; the average being 8 grains. One degree on the dial equals about 4 seconds of time an hour, and in the balance 0.01 of grain makes the same difference. An exact record is kept of the weight of the balances, which goes with the work till it is completed. The last step is the actual timing and toning the hair spring in watches; after which they are laid a way to be used according to their numbers. Each hair spring belongs to its own balance and each balance to its own watch, but they do not meet each other till the watch is done. (Out of one pound [troy] of fine steel wire, worth form $2.75 to $5.40, is made 17,280 hair springs worth $7,152 at the lowest wholesale prices) The Dial Making Room. Under the direction of Charles Moore. The dial has a copper base, which is pressed and pierced at one operation. Next, the dial feet are brazed in. Pulverized enamel is laid both on the back and the face and then fused on or "fired". Having been smoothed they are fired a second time, inspected and sent to the Painting Room, of which E. L. Hull is foreman. Here the face is spaced into 12 equal divisions that are indicated by lead pencil marks. Two circles are drawn likewise, to mark the length of the letters or figures. Dabs of paint go on where the hours are to be; enamel paint being applied by a camel's hair brush. When dry, the tops and bottoms are cut off to the proper length, then by suitable tools straight spaces are cut through, leaving the heavy lines of the hours and the surplus paint is carefully scraped off. Painters then draw in the hair lines of the hours, and put on the name of the company. The "minuters" are next, by the aid of a an accurately graduated machine, paint on the minutes. After inspection the dials go back to the third firing. A circular cut is then made through the enamel on both sides, and the intervening copper is burned out with acid, thus making a hole for the seconds dial, which has been undergoing operations similar to what has been described. After the edges of the hole and of the "seconds bit" have been ground and polished, the bit is soldered to it place. Tim Sweet TIMEKEEPR2@AOL.COM M.O.S.T (MY OWN SWEET TIME) WATCH COMPANY. 14002 Tuckey Lane El Paso, TX 79927 U.S.A. (915) 852-2409 (See my add in the MART) Look for my Web site at: http://www.cyperportal.net/watches/timhome.html Requests and comments welcome enjoy