Perth Amboy evening news., 1906-11-19
MYSTERIES IN WATCHES.
Timepieces Affected by the Habits
and P~ecularities of Owners.

and Pecularities of Owners.
Wild animal personality has come
in for pretty thorough exploitation,
in fiction. Machinery, too, has had
queer pranks and whims saddled on
it by the fiction ave But not
all the strange machinery stories
have been told.
Story writers like a large machine
for fiction purposes. The locomotive
is a favorite. But most uncanny of
all machines is the smallest and old
est-the watch, says the Chicago
Chronicle. A jeweler might write
the ideal story of watch personality.
Notes for it continually appear in the
technical journals of that trade.
Watches may be accurately tested
and adjusted at a factory so that they
will run alike in boiling water or fro
zen in the heart of al ice cake. Yet
when they are sold and worn their
mechanical movements are immedi-
ately affected by the individuality
and habits of their wearers. A wo-
| mans watch is a joke to every one
but a jeweler. To him 1t is a mys-
terry. Irregular winding won't ex-
plain all the vagaries of a woman's
| watch, and the must be sought
in it's fair owners habits. Probably
when a woman learns to eat her
meals regularly and keep Office hours,
her watch will run on time.
Men of irregular habits have trou-
BILE with watches, too, and one of the
principal factors to be taken into ac-
count when a new watch is being ad-
iusted to it's wearer''s personality, is
the owners occupation. Some men
have work that calls for eccentric
movements of the body, and these
often cause trouble with watches. Of
ten a jeweler trying to adjust a new
watch to such a wearer Will give 1t
to another person in the same occu-
patton, when it goes all right. Per-
sonality enters in the equation in a
mysterious way.
Some men never have to have a
watch adjusted, but a carry even a
cheap dollar affair for years and get
from it better service than other men
get from a costly Swiss movement.
Motormen, street ear conductors and
workmen employed in the neighbor-
hood of electrical machinery usually
| carry cheap dollar watches. For the
finest watch may be. subtly shocked
at any moment, and after that is al
! most worthless. Nobody knows when
! the shock will come. 1t may occur
without the wearer of the watch be-
ing conscious of it. Suddenly the
mechanism runs wild or stops n Is
permanently out of business. me
dollar match, which is really a small
clock mechanically, will also be ruin
ed by electric shock, but the loss is
nominal.
jewelers. tell of men who, when
given a number of watches of dltfer-
ent value, movement and natlonall-
ties, never succeed in finding one tnat
will run for them; n watch carried
by these individuals stops. a man
came into a New York jewelers. some
time ago and handed over MIS- watch
saying that three had Ia
bored over it without avail, and tnat
if this jeweler could not transform !,
into an effective timepiece ne Wouiu
throw it away. On examination me
mechanism looked all rightsand when
the watch was kept two weeks by the
iewe,er IL ran to the second. But
when the owner got it again it stop
ned within two days. His wife car
rcd if and it went, again, but as soon
as her husband took the timepiece II
stopped. In CohVeloa.ion -
learned that this man had gone y
Hot Springs, Ark, a few months pc
fore, where he took treatment lor
rheumatism. Since that no watch ne
carried would go long. Timepieces
that had given faithful service to otn-
! ers for years would stop hen ne DOT
rowed them. These eccentricities are
caused by. vague influences. prooaDIy
more mechanical than occult some
Jewellers attribute them to persona
magnetism" and Others to "eiectrio,
ity in the atmosphere. Iney are ~
delicate, however, as to defy tne sun
tlest analysis and investigation.