_How a Mechanical Toy Became a Scientific Timepiece_
Now, since we are at last well into the story of the watch, let us glance back over the road we have traveled. We have seen man first beginning to think of time by noting the positions of shadows or the motions of the stars. Next, we have seen him making his plans for days ahead by means of the changes in the moon, then by making such division in the flow of time as the month, the season, and the year. We have seen him growing out of his savage isolated life in caves and forests and forming tribes and settlements, and have seen him coming out of the darkness of those early ages into Mesopotamia, the Land Between the Rivers, where our first written history seems to begin.
Here, with great cities, temples, and a high degree of civilization and culture, we have found priests studying the stars and making sun-dials and clepsydræ in order to tell the time by shadows, sunbeams, or the dropping of water. We have taken a glimpse at the wonderful people of Greece and Rome, and have seen how, as they became more cultured, they found it necessary to have more accurate means of telling time. We have considered the advantages and disadvantages of the sand-glass, have found clumsy pieces of clock-work in church towers, getting their running power from weights, in order to strike the bells, and have stood with young Galileo in the Cathedral at Pisa, when a swinging lamp gave him the idea of the pendulum.
Lastly, we have seen the making of smaller clocks—that were made smaller and smaller until they could be carried as watches, in which springs were used instead of weights. Following this, it has been merely a question of improvement, as one inventor after another has hit upon some idea that would do away with this or that difficulty.
Thus we have come, in the time of Shakespeare, to a clever little contrivance that ticked beautifully but registered time rather badly; that took a long while to manufacture by hand, and cost so much that only the rich could afford to buy it, and that, in consequence, people were proud to own, but did not take seriously as a timepiece.
In all this journey, covering thousands of years, one thing has made itself clear to us—the story of timepieces is not a mere mechanical story; it is a human story. Men did not put together certain pieces of wood or metal in order merely to make mechanism, but to meet a vital need. One might almost say that the story of the watch is in the watch itself. The works run and the hands move because of the mainspring, which by pressing steadily forces them into motion. In very much the same way, the busy brains of the inventors and the busy hands of the workmen have been kept active because advancing civilization has been like a great mainspring, always pressing upon larger affairs and greater numbers of people, always needing to fit its engagements more and more closely together, and always calling for better and better means for telling time. Thus, if the watch in the days of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth was still an inaccurate timepiece, its improvement was a foregone conclusion. Brains and hands were still active; civilization was still pressing.