Remembering how accurate every piece must be, it is no wonder that in
Switzerland, where all this work used to be done by hand, a boy had to
go to a "watch school" for fourteen years before he was considered
able to make a really fine watch. He began at the beginning and was
taught to make, first, wooden handles for his tools, then the tools
themselves, such as files, screw drivers, etc. His next work was to
make wooden watchcases as large as dinner-plates. After this, he was
given the frame to which the various wheels of a watch are fastened
and was taught how and where to drill the holes for wheels and screws.
After lessons in making the finer tools to be used, he was allowed to
make a watch frame. All this took several years, for he had to do the
same work over and over until his teachers were satisfied with it.
Then he was promoted to the second room. Here he learned to adjust the
stem-winding parts, to do fine cutting and filing, and to make watches
that would strike the hour and even the minute. Room three was called
the "train room," because the wheels of a watch are spoken of as "the
train." The model watch in this room was as large as a saucer. The
young man had to study every detail of this, and also to learn the use
of a delicate little machine doing such fine work that it could cut
twenty-four hundred tiny cogs on one of the little wheels of a watch.
In the fourth room he learned to make the escapement wheel and some
other parts; and he had to make them, not merely passably, but
excellently. In the fifth and last room, he must do the careful,
patient work that makes a watch go perfectly. There are special little
curves that must be given to the hair spring; and the screws on the
balance wheel must be carefully adjusted. If the watch ran faster when
it was lying down than when it was hanging up, he learned that certain
ones of the bearings were too coarse and must be made finer. In
short, he must be able to make a watch that, whether hanging up or
lying down, and whether the weather was hot or cold, would not vary
from correct time more than two and a half seconds a day at the most.
Then, and not till then, was the student regarded as a first-class
watchmaker.

The graduate of such a school knew how to make a whole watch, but he
usually limited his work to some one part. Every part of a watch was
made expressly for that watch, but sometimes a hundred different
persons worked on it. The very best of the Swis