Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-10-25
MYSTERIES IN TIMEPIECES.
Watches Affected by the Habits and
Peculiarities of Owners.

From the Chicago Chronicle.
Wild animal personality has come in for
pretty thorough exploitation, in fiction. Ma
chinery, too, has had queer pranks and
whims saddled on it by the fiction weavers.
But not all the strange machinery stories
have been told.
Story writer's like a large machine for
fiction purposes. The locomotive is ia
vorite But most uncanny of all machines
Is the smallest and oldest-the watch. A
jeweer 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 frozen in the
heart of an ice cake. Yet when they are
sold and worn their mechanical movements
are Immediately affected by the individual
ity and habits of their wearers. wom-
ans watch is joke to every one but a
jeweler. To him it is a mystery. 1rregu-
lar winding won't explain all the vagaries
of womans watch and the cause 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 trouble with
watches, too, and one of the principal fac
tors to be taken into account when a new
watch Is DelnS ADJUSTED 10 It's Wearer s
personality is the owners occupation.
Some men have work that calls for eccen-
trio movements of the body, and these Of
ten cause trouble with watches. Often a
jeweler trying to adjust new watch to
such a wearer will give it to another per-
son in the same occupation, when it goes
all right. Personality enters into the eQua-
ton in a mysterious way.
Some men never have to have watch
adjusted, but can carry even cheap dollar
affair for years and get from it better serv-
ice than other men get from a costly Swiss
movement. Motormen, street car conduc-
tors and workmen employed in the neigh
borhood of electrical machinery usually
carry cheap dollar watches. For the finest
watch may be subtly shocked at any mo-
ment, and after that is almost worthless.
Nobody knows when the shock will come
1t may occur without the wearer of the
watch being conscious of it. Suddenly the
mechanism runs wild or stops and is per-
manently out of business. The dollar
watch, which is really a small clock me-
chanically will also be ruined by electric
shock, but the loss is nominal.
jewelers. tell of men who, when given
number of watches of different value
movement and nationalities, never succeed
in finding one that will run for them; any
watch carried by these individuals stops
A man CAME into a New York jewelers.
some time ago and handed over his watch
saying that three mechanics had labored
over it without avail, and that If this lew
eler could not transform it into an eff
fective timepiece he would throw it away
On examination the mechanism looked all
right and when the watch was kept two
weeks by the jeweler it ran to the second
But when the owner got it again It stopped
within two days. His wife carried it and
it went again, but as soon as her husband
took the timepiece 1t stopped. In conversa-
ton it was learned that this man had gone
to Hot Springs. Ark, few months before
where he took treatment for rheumatism
Since that no watch he carried would go
long. Timepieces that had given faithful
service to others for years would stop
when he borrowed them These eccen-
tricities are caused by vague Influences
probably more mechanical than occult
Some jewellers attribute them to personal
magnetism" and others to electricity in
the atmosphere" They are so delicate,
however, as to defy the sublest analysis
and investigation.