i really can't tell you how much this means to me but i can tell you that this truly wonderful gift will be a constant reminder of your friendship and the help you get  through the use i shall always remember the pride i feel this evening and having won your companionship and good opinion thank you thank you from the bottom of my i learned how to write your grandfather what it is he always looked at promptness and consideration for the time of others was a mark of character and integrity  this fine watch my twenty first birthday present has always reminded me of that and it is one of my most precious possessions as i hope your maybe to you yes for hundreds of years  fine watch has been one of man's most highly prized possessions its possession always has been a mark of distinction its performance and beauty a source of pride when approached what is were made they were so ornate and expensive that only monarchs and the wealthy get on them despite the fact that they often varied as much as an hour a day they were the mark of distinction the badge of wealth today that market distinction still remains but modern american production methods have made it possible for people everywhere to own a fine watch less ornate brass but times have changed but certainly more accurate but which watch that is the question there are many conflicting claims many aspirants to the thro leadership in the watchmaking industry what makes a fine watch fine there are many things first the name and reputation of the company and that is important because a good name and respect can only be gained by quality of product quality or product to build up by years and years of fine watchmaking experience but before you can even begin to make a really fine watch it takes people many people of long experience people with ideals and ambition and pride in their craftsmanship together with vast quantities build up through years a patient developed many ability special tools and much equipment many laboratories for never ending research to maintain the spirit of pioneering of leadership in research it takes a record of performance to through time itself time the test of any product a product survives grows and becomes a byword for satisfactory performance through long years of service and it takes the preference of people to buy and sells quality products fine watches which are fine all the way through so let's go into a fine watch factory and see what it takes to make a fine watch and why everyone can't do it we'll begin with people people chosen carefully on the basis of rigid it takes almost a year to make a really fine watch but it takes years to make a watchmaker even under friendly supervision and the help of more experienced fellow workers because of these high standards watchmaking is a career into which sons follow their father's adding their youthful spirit to the accumulated experiences of the years and here a career is more than just a job nearly half of the employees in this fine watch factory have been with the company for five ten fifteen twenty or more years and some certain a few of these with the company more than fifty years go back in memory and experience to the first hamilton watch ever sold their swatch built more than a deep four years ago can still pass rigid time inspection tests for railroad service such accuracy and dependability are a product of  xining and making the tools and equipment to manufacture fine watches as well here are machines making machines delicate machines making still more delicate and precise machines which are in turn used to make almost unbelievably small parts unbelievably small parts have you ever had a speck of dust in your eye some of the actual watch parts are no larger than a speck of dust this back is a white screw actual size and alongside is a model of the screw enlarged to one hundred diameters and there's enough metal in the enlarged model to make one million actual screws of this type modern facilities miracles in miniature on this machine what screws are made complete with exquisite precision yet they are almost invisible to the naked eye here in this small pill box three hundred thousand tiny's groups are full years output of one of these amazing machines so in a world of fascinating smallness highly skilled people work with fine machines  a super fine degree of accuracy in every step in manufacturing like making extremely small axles called balance stats with tolerances from the absolute point of accuracy to only one ten thousandth of an inch in all operations such as the manufacture of a balance wheel that tiny constantly moving wheel accuracy is almost a religion and through the skill of the patient about watchmakers crap bits of metal are transformed into minute watch parts of technical perfection these craftsmen have drilled a hole so small through pieces of metal that they cannot be seen by the naked eye until a light is placed behind them and just to keep in practice a technician recently drilled a hole in the hair his way of demonstrating the type of minute operation without which the manufacturer really accurate small time the his would be impossible people machines and metals there's accuracy in metals to take for example the hairspring of america's spine watch here is the beating heart pulsing five times the second controlling the operation of the balance wheel and determining the accuracy of the watch although it is called the hairspring it is sometimes only one fifth as big as a human hair and because of its small size and the job it has to do it must be as nearly perfect as humans ingredients and careful control of the heat and a lot of patients and no all the exclusive alloy known as alan bought extra is produced by this miniatures steel mill in ten pound ingots only two pounds of which are actually used without allen bought extra the amazing and record shattering performance of hamilton marine chronometers and other wartime pieces would never have been achieved it is now used in all the watches made by this company when you are making the finest hair springs in the twenty inch rod twenty miles up mirror an east ribbon finer than a hair produced from start to finish under exacting laboratory conditions for quality control but there's still more to it than that the flattened ribbon of wire is precisely coiled permanently set by heat into its final spiral shape and then through incredibly delicate operations installed on the balance assembly did we say that the hair spring is a heart of time did we say that the accuracy of a really fine watch is determined to a large degree by the accuracy of its tiny hair spring and balance wheel only in this factory where you see this machine an amazing electronic vibrator a machine that measures with microscopic precision the exact length of hairspring needed to make the completed watch a really accurate fine watch by testing no more than the hairspring and balance wheel with no other gears springs nor any of the other vital watched parts this machine can yet tell with almost absolute precision how fast or slow a watch will run before it is assembled in seventeen sixty nine when james watt patented is first steam engine he was proud of his manufacturing accuracy as demonstrated by the fact that certain parts of the engine were machined the tolerances of one tenth of an inch today parts that go into a really fine watch are made to tolerances as small as one ten thousandth of an inch some even to one one hundred thousandth of an inch and instruments are used that can measure one million to make fine american watches special precision measuring instruments gauges and tests had to be developed measurement and remake you meant inspection and reinspection checked can double check fine watchmaking is the ritual of accuracy and the worship of precision of the two thousand operations which go into the making of a fine watch nearly half our inspections and twenty percent of these are double inspections or inspectors inspecting inspectors a speck of dust and forty pounds of bread dough what has this to do with watchmaking a great deal it seems when you realize that every morning this amount of bread dough is mixed and used  together during the manufacturing operation jewels those tiny bits of extremely hard and precious stones rubies and sapphires synthetically produced which serve as bearings for moving parts these bearings are so frictionless movement so effortless that a fine watch could be kept running for four thousand years on the power used in lighting a twenty five watt light bulb for one hour to reduce friction in the vital parts all fine watches have a seventeen or more jewels this is the minimum number more jewels can be used in watches but it is important to understand that seventeen or more jewels do not necessarily make  watch find that the measure of a good watch lie is not alone in the number of jewels that may have but in the attention that is given to every detail in the design planning manufacture anything and assembly of where must be the finest of the fine here in miniature scale is a complete oil refinery producing what is probably the world's finest watch a whale a single flask like this is  half a million watches and yet most of its precious lubricant which costs about six thousand dollars a gallon is thrown away because it is delivered drop by drop to the watch assemblers and it is kept clean and fresh by a delivery schedule in which every two hours the leftovers are carefully wiped away and replaced it takes nearly nine months to complete the two thousand operations that go into the making of a really fine watch but it takes nearly two years from the time a new watch movement is conceived to the delivery of the first production unit during this time more than one hundred thousand to man hours of design careful engineering and specialized skills go into the development of a new movement and the precision tools and equipment needed to build it here are watches that were never made better years after time and money went into their development they were never put into production because they didn't measure up to the standards which make america's fine watch to make a fine watch find takes many laboratories laboratories for testing old and new materials laboratories for the control of quality laboratories where heat and extreme cold answer critical questions where metals are twisted and torn apart laboratories where the answers to scientific problems are found on machines and measuring instruments that can see the invisible or can weigh a pencil mark laboratories where the highest development of nearly every science known to man plays a part in the production about a really fine watch and research is an endless task almost since the beginning of time man has been asking the question what time is it here the question is what time really is it imagine building a time piece so accurate so faithful in its measurement of time that nowhere in the world was there a machine precise enough to check its error there's is what happened when the famous hamilton marine chronometer was produced for our navy during the war to check this going ahmet are built in mass production in defiance of watchmaking tradition the electronic compare it was developed for the naval observatory to show variations measured in one two hundredth of a second and the time microscope forerunner of all rapid timing devices used today is so precise that it reduces measurements which used to take days to less than half a minute this magic lantern the time projector helps check the accuracy of tiny watches which have no second hands enlarging the minute hand on a screen so that otherwise imperceptible movements can be accurately measured yes it takes some of the world's most precise scientific measuring instruments to make sure that a fine watch is really fine w work of many hands american production methods are making it possible for people in all walks of life to own and find watches american craftsmanship with american men and women with the wisdom of experience working alongside the eager spirit of american youth with patience and skill and pioneering enthusiasm all these produce the finest watches that human ingenuity can design you can tell a man or woman by the watch ear he wears people know that the possession of a fine watch is a mark of distinction and find jewelers everywhere know the story behind a fine watch the inside story that makes the vital difference but they hear the words of praise  or the words of complaint and rake that even more today than in days of old a buying want is a precious possession and a highly prized a gift few other gifts are so appropriate so long lasting and that's what makes a fine watch really fun all the way through