The key-note of the whole development was that new principle which American invention, prompted and stimulated by the pressing necessities of a new nation, brought into the business of time-recording—the principle of marvelously cheapening production-costs without loss of efficiency, through the systematic employment of machinery on a large scale. As long as the inventive brains and the technical knowledge of the old-time craftsman found expression only through his own fingers, the results would be limited to his individual production, and the costs would be proportionately high. When, however, the master mind was able to operate through rows of machines, each under the supervision of a mechanic trained to its particular function, his inventive genius was provided with ten thousand hands and a hundred thousand fingers. Furthermore, the production gained in quality as well as in quantity, because of specialization, all the time its costs were in process of reduction. This, perhaps, has been America's chief contribution, not only to the making of timepieces, but, also to the world's industry in general. [Illustration: English Clock about 1700—Floral Marquetry in Walnut Ground American Clock Black Walnut on Pine Eighteenth Century "GRANDFATHER'S CLOCKS" _These huge but beautiful clocks represent the most reliable form of timepiece known to the people of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. In the Metropolitan Museum._] CHAPTER THIRTEEN _America Learns to Make Watches_ While Eli Terry was sawing wood for his curious clocks back in the early days of the nineteenth century, Luther Goddard, America's first watch-manufacturer, was preaching the Gospel to the town and country-folk in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Between sermons he repaired watches. Although we can find no record of such a meeting, it is easy to imagine that while plodding along some dusty country road Preacher Goddard met Terry jogging along with his cumbersome wooden clocks hanging from his saddle. The thought may have come to the minister-mechanic that it would be much easier to peddle watches than clocks. Whatever may have been the prompting, we find, as a matter of record, that, in the year 1809, while Terry was making and peddling his clocks, Luther Goddard set up a small watch-making shop in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, the place of his birth. He employed watch-makers who had learned their trade in England. At that time, there was a law in force which prohibited the importation of foreign-made watches into America and this gave Goddard his chance. But in 1815, when the law was repealed and the American market was quickly flooded with cheaper, if not better watches from abroad, he was forced to retire from the field. During those few years he had produced about five hundred watches.