The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-05-18
KEEPING TIME IS MINOR TASK OF
 SUPER-WATCHES
One Timepiece In Boston Mans Collection Cost
 $1S,0OO

Elliott c. Lee, says Margaret Fitzhugh Browne in the Boston Transcript. The obtaining of the collection covered q period of thirty-five years, the time pieces being made to his order by the most noted watchmakers of Europe and England. It includes watches that took seven and eight years to make, one of them at a cost of $1S.000. Recently they were placed on exhibition in the shop of Boston jeweler, the first time the public has been allowed to view them.
 The list of accomplishments of c single watch 1T, this cellects0r. is so far beyond the ability of the average time piece to tell hours, minutes ard sec onls that 1t ;s bewilderins.
 A watch which can record not only the man-made divisions of eternity but also accurately register the far more complex incidents of the passage of natural time, such as the phases of the moon, the high and low tides, the varia- tipns of the suns declination north and south of the meridian in the different seasons of the year. the varying part of the heavens visible from the western hemisphere, the signs of the zodiac, as well as the days of the week, month and year, even accounting for leap year, and with all this has mechanism for striking chimes, for reneatanS the Ntlikes in hours. qnarle.s and masHtss at any :;me, for telling the time ln 3ls3 cities of the world at midday, is piece of machinery which could only be de- ciphered by the most accomplished ex- pert in watches, and its building would take the combined skill of many master watchmakers many years.
 The watches are large, about 5 1-2 inches in diameter, and some of them are almost an inch thick, as they would have to be to accommodate the five decks or layers of machinary which they contain. Yet large as they are, an idea can be given of the complex nature of their mechanism when it is known that some of the parts are far smaller than the corresponding parts in a lady's wrist watch.
 The cases are all 1S-carat gold and they are all stemwinders and clock watches, that is, the turning of the stem one way winds up the mainsprings for the time and the other way the mainsprings for the automatic strikes. Many of them are minute repeaters, and by pushing a button on the side Of the case they can give the time whenever wanted, repeating the strik- ing of the hours, quarters and minutes.
 The first repeating watch " s sug- gested by Constantinople physician in 1642: He gave the idea to a watch maker and as it is possible by this kind of watch to tell time in the dark. it was valuable improvement in that time, doing away with the troublesome procedure of striking a light by flint and steel.
 Calculating Speed
 Some of the watches are chronograph or split-second watches having an ap- phance to stop minute or second hand at will. And in this particular there is one watch which has a long, thin second hand which is really made up of Aections. By pressing the stem of the watch this hand starts on it's journey round the dial. At a second pressure part of its stops, but the rest goes on. Another pressure marks another stop ping place, and so on. Then, when three periods of time have been record ed, at fourth pressure the three sec tions fly back to zero again as one hand. This, of course, could be used to check off the difference of the finish ing time of runners in a race.
 Another appliance of this sort will give rapid calculation of the miles per hour of any moving object at quarter mile distances, and in another watch the chronograph hand will start, stop and fly back, or by pushing a second ary pusher once. the hand may be start ed onward without flying back. This could be used in timing football games. Several of the watches strike the Vest minister chimes, the same chimes which sound the quarters and half hours from Big Ben on the houses of parliament in London. Some of them show Green wich mean time, the hour and minute of the rising and the names of the morning and evening stars.
 Most of the watches have two dials, one on the front and one on the back, and these dials in themselves are mar vicious pieces of fine hand-l ainting and engraving. One watch, which took seven years to build, has among the other dials on it's face an oval opening which shows the stars apparent in the sky at each minute and secoI of time. The detail in this little plan of the heavens is so minute that the lettering can only be read through a powerful magnifying glass. It was made through glass of one-half-inch focus. which shows how close the workman's eye had to be to the dial as he painted it.
 The Personal Touch
 MT. Lee as q rule favored the Eng lish watchmakers over the Swiss, al- though it is generally understood in this country that the Swiss watches are superior. He considered the British timepieces, though larger in size and apparently clumsy by comparison, to be more careful and exact in manufacture He did not object to the large size of the English watches, and sometimes carried four of the marvellous time pieces on his person in pockets made specially to accommodate them.
 seS often used to visit the watch makers in England and would himself give the specifications for many of the watches. He was for thirty-five years actively engaged in making the col lection and was continuously wedding out the less remarkable examples and improving the standard of his collection by replacing poorer ones with more valuable ones, sometimes bringing their cost way up into the thousands.
 He kept them all in a pigskin-cover- ed cabinet, lined with chamois skin and specially made for the purpose, and every night after dinner, it was his de-