Time Telling through the AgesBrearley, Harry Chase
History
Time Telling through the Ages
Brearley, Harry Chase
Clocks and watches -- History; Time measurements
During the time that these business principles were being formulated,
the line of watches was also in process of development with the goal
of universality in view. Thus, it was presently realized that while
the dollar watch was essentially a man's timepiece, watches were also
needed by women and by children. Accordingly, smaller models were
developed to meet these needs. At a later date, the Ingersoll business
principles were extended into the field of jeweled watches, when the
factories of the Trenton Watch Company and the New England Watch
Company were acquired. At the date of the present writing, there are
more than a dozen models, each of which is adapted to a different need
and use, but the manufacture of no model is undertaken unless there is
a market for at least a thousand watches a day.
And the latest development as this is written is the time-in-the-dark
watch.
Do you recall a soldier in the "foreword" waiting in the darkness for
the perilous moment to go "over the top" with his eyes fixed upon
the luminous hands and figures of the watch strapped to his wrist?
This watch may now be named; it was the "Radiolite." How it came into
existence in time to go into the Great War is a story in itself.
This story is the latest step in that steady progress of
democratization by which accurate timetelling, once a privilege of the
few, became the possession of the many.
A good many people wish to tell time in the darkness as well as in
the light, and if these people could afford to, they bought expensive
repeaters. Such watches, however, cost hundreds of dollars, so that
while telling time in the light had come within the reach of everyone,
telling time in the darkness was still possible for very few.
Therefore, the watch could not yet be held to be of equal service to
all humanity in every one of the twenty-four hours. This equal service
at any moment was finally made possible in a somewhat extraordinary
manner.
In the year 1896, Monsieur and Madame Curie startled the world with the
discovery of radium. They found that certain substances emitted rays
that would pass through solid matter as light passes through glass or
as the wind blows through a screen. They were finally able to secure
tiny quantities of a whitish powder, salt of radium, which gave forth
an energy that acted upon everything brought near to it and this energy
they calculated, would be protected uninterruptedly for three thousand
years. Up to the present time, radium and radioactivity are subjects
of constant study and research, but radium exists in such small
quantities and is so enormously costly that comparatively few have had
a chance to experiment with it.
It seems a little strange to think of using the most precious substance
in the world—many times more costly than diamonds—in order to bring
time-telling-in-the-dark within the reach of every person, but this is
exactly what has been done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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