Whatever be the date or origin of the watch or portable clock, certain it is that there was mention made of such an instrument as far back as 1494, by Gaspar Visconti, an Italian poet, who in a sonnet describes 'Certain small and portable clocks made with a little ingenuity, and which are continually going, showing the hours, many courses of the planets, the festivals, and striking when the time requires it.' The sonnet is, as it were, composed by a person in love, who compares himself to one of these clocks. One of the earliest places of watch manufacture was Nuremberg, and foremost among its horologers was Peter Hele, who was thus described by Doppelmayer in his 'History of the Mathematicians and Artists of Nuremberg.' 'Peter Hele, a clockmaker, was everywhere esteemed a great artist on account of the pocket-clocks, which, soon after the year 1500, he first made in Nuremberg, with small wheels of steel. The invention, which with great justice may be ascribed to him, being something new, was praised by almost every one, even by the mathematicians of the time, with great admiration. He died 1540. On this subject Johannes Cocclæus, in his Commentary on the Cosmographia of Pomponius Mela, published in Nuremberg in 1511, makes the following announcement:--"Inveniuntur in dies subtiliora, etenim Petrus Hele, juvenis adhuc admodum, opera fecit, quæ doctissimi admirantur mathematici, nam ex ferro parva fabricat horologia, plurimis digesta rotulis, quæ, quocunque vertuntur, absque ullo pondere, et monstrant et pulsant XL. horas. Etiamsi in sinu, marsupiove contineantur."' This quotation from Cocclæus may be thus translated:--Ingenious things are just now being invented, for Peter Hele, as yet but a young man, hath made works which even the most learned mathematicians admire, for he fabricates small horologes of iron fitted with many wheels, which, whithersoever they are turned, and without any weight, both show and strike forty hours,--whether they be carried in the bosom or the pocket. Doppelmayer in continuation says: 'This, already so written by Cocclæus in 1511, shows in the clearest way, that pocket-clocks were made at Nuremberg many years ago, and he has fairly attributed the invention of them to this artist, since it was the most deserving of admiration, and the newest of his time, and which will be considered as a Nuremberg invention; whence also clocks of this kind were for a long time called Nuremberg living eggs, because they at first used to make them in the form of small eggs, which name is to be found in the German translation in chapter 26 of a strange book which F. Rabelais has left behind him. Hence it is evident how erroneous it is to ascribe, as many do, the invention of small striking-clocks, as of these pocket-clocks, to Isaac Habrecht, a well-known mathematician who lived about the beginning of the last century, and dwelt at Strasburg, whereas our Peter Hele had made them in Nuremberg 100 years before.'