Here then we have five of the leading English clockmakers in 1704, to
which we can add George Graham, the inventor of the "orrery," named
after his patron, Robert Boyle, Earl of Cork and Orrery, and to make
the number up to twenty-five we add the following. These men are in the
first flight. Ahasuerus Fromanteel (and the family of Fromanteel, of
Dutch origin), the first to introduce the pendulum into England; Edward
East; Joseph Knibb, father and son; William Dutton, Matthew and Thomas
Dutton, John Ebsworth, John Harrison, J. Grant, Stephen Rimbault,
Thomas Earnshaw, John Arnold, Thomas Mudge, Christopher Pinchbeck,
William Tomlinson, Justin Vulliamy, and Benjamin and Benjamin Lewis
Vulliamy.
In _Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers_, by the late F. J.
Britten, there is a list of some ten thousand names of clockmakers, so
that examples coming in the possession of collectors can readily be
checked by this list. But the fact that a maker's name is not in this
directory does not exclude him from recognition as a master, though
possibly he may not be one of the great masters.
=The Several Branches of a Great Art.=--The timekeeper--whether it be
the scientific astronomical clock, or the chronometer used by mariners,
or the modern watch, minute in size but recording time with accuracy,
or the bracket or table clock, or the long-case clock--has proceeded
on parallel lines of development. These types represent the several
branches of the great art of clockmaking.
Clockmakers and watchmakers very soon specialized when the correct
standard had been reached, and further inventions effected economy in
mechanism rather than drastic changes in principle making for further
exactitude. Specialization may be said to have undone clockmaking. We
realize that the clockmaker could not cast the brass spandrel ornaments
and chase them, or engrave the dial. We do not expect him to, nor did
he, lay the marquetry, or become a lacquer varnisher in the cases. We
cannot call upon him to cast the bell in the chiming movement, or to
make the catgut which is wound around the drum carrying the weights.
Nor was he an expert in metal design to pierce the hands and employ
delicate ornament in so doing. Perhaps we may forgive him employing
a special trade to supply him with delicate springs. But the factory
system of the middle nineteenth century began to eat into the vitals of
clockmaking in this country as a scientific craft. Makers of wheels,
makers of chains, makers of every conceivable part of the movement
sprang into being. No one of whom was a clockmaker, and no unit of any
such industry could put a clock together. The clockmaker, and even
then there is something personal yet remaining, became an assembler
of component parts. He certainly understood the completed whole and
made the wheels move and the hands record exact and perfect time. That
is something, and it is a very great thing too. But how shorn of his
former glory is the clockmaker in these conditions!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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