That’s what I find most valuable about working with this collection. People read them, wrote in them, and used them, often until they were falling apart. Many of our items–like this one–are unique, with only one copy in existence. Even without the owner’s identity, this notebook can still provide us with detailed information about how working mid-century watchmakers set up shop, and how they studied (and still study) different models to hone their craft and repair beloved watches for future generations.Īs a longtime librarian who’s new to horology, I’ve already learned so much about watchmaking from this notebook and other materials in our collection. I don’t yet know who this watchmaker was, although the notebook and other details point to an American working in the 1940s and 1950s. At right there is a hand-drawn diagram of different types of staking punches, sets of tools used for multiple purposes in watchmaking, including to join or rivet different parts of the watch together. The notebook’s owner has carefully illustrated different types of jewels and notes how to remove them when a watch needs repairing. The image at left above shows typed instructions for jeweling watches, or replacing the bearings of a watch, usually made from rubies, which allow the gears to rotate smoothly. In this ringed binder, the owner detailed their store inventory, took notes on different watchmakers and how to repair different models, and drew diagrams of watch parts. Around the same time that Golay and Bandini were studying in Europe, an anonymous watchmaker was writing and typing in a notebook, purchased at Woolworth’s, that is now also in our collection. But in our library, we certainly have evidence of how other watchmakers worked. What we don’t know about Golay and Bandini is what they did after watchmaking school–whether they actually worked on watches, either servicing them or in some other context. And since we have some of their graded exam papers, we know they were pretty good at it. They went all the way down to the invisible equations that underpin all the work of the hands. Bandini and Golay weren’t just interested in the easy part. I’ve chosen to photograph notebook pages with hand-drawn diagrams because they’re visually interesting, but many more of Bandini’s pages are filled with hard math, calculations about energy and force that any working watchmaker needs to understand at a basic level. In the image below right, Golay, studying the balance wheel and the hairspring, illustrates the right type of screw to use (domed) so as not to deform the rim of the balance wheel. Her drawings are both precise and beautiful, and they use color to distinguish the different parts of a watch, making it easier to follow how repairs could be made. Today we have four of their notebooks in our library.īelow, images from Marinette Golay’s notebook show that she not only took great care in copying diagrams, she also seemed to relish the process of illustrating watch parts. A hundred years after the Perry women inscribed their book, watchmaking students Marinette Golay and Liliane Bandini were taking meticulous notes in their classes on “Horlogerie, Arithmétique, and Réglage” (watch adjusting). They were proud of their ownership of this book and active participants in the dawn of the industrial era in Britain.ĭespite a lack of encouragement to enter the trade, women were working in watchmaking, and we have evidence of that in our library too. The Booth women, however, clearly educated themselves about the facts of many trades in which they were not especially invited to participate. It also foreshadows the increasing mechanization of the industry, which like most others, was experiencing rapid change during what would later be known as the industrial revolution: the “invention of engines for cutting the teeth” has “reduced the expense of workmanship and time to a mere trifle in comparison to what it was before” (420).Īs for the book’s owners, Augusta, Harriot, and Edith, according to the text, they could participate in watchmaking as watch chain makers, a part of the trade that “appears difficult” but is actually “easy,” according to our author, and therefore suited to women (421). The entry, which includes the engraving at right, is lively and attempts to draw in young readers with anecdotes about famed clockmakers like Thomas Tompion, who “began the exemplification of his great knowledge in the equation of time, by regulating the wheels of a jack for roasting meat” (418).īut most of the text is practical, explaining how clocks and watches work, what a watchmaker does, and what the job requires: “a light hand,” “a strong sight,” as well as some understanding of “mechanics” and “mathematics” (421). We own this volume because it contains an entry on watchmaking, “an employment so well known as to require no description” (nonetheless meriting a six page description).
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