Der Tod Georgs

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 Excerpt: ...known, regarded as a guarantee for fidelity of workmanship, and the demand for his Watches exceeds the present facilities for supplying it. His factory in Roxbury is built in the form of a hollow square, one hundred feet on each side, four stories in height, and employs two hundred workmen. A plot of ground has recently been purchased for the erection of a new and much larger manufactory, capable of accommodating one thousand employees. There are few, if any, industrial establishments more interesting than a manufactory of Watches by machinery. We have carried our readers through many where their wonder would be excited at the size of the machines employed--the ponderous lathes and massive planers of the Marine Engine Shops--but here the tools and machines are miracles of minuteness. The drills for probing the orifice in the jewels, to admit the shaft on which the wheels revolve, are almost as fine as the filaments of a spider's web. The gauges, which are used to measure the correctness of the aperture, are so delicate as to indicate the thirtieth part of a hair or the ten thousandth part of an inch. The cutters, which are employed to form the teeth of the scape-wheel out of the solid metal, are sapphires, ground down to the proper shape in diamond dust and oil, and then inserted in small wheels or discs, and so fine do they cut that the chips which they can remove are only the thirtieth part of the thickness of a hair, and this infinitessimal portion can be taken from any part of the tooth, so easily are their motions controlled. A coil of wire, weighing a pound and worth about $5, is divided and worked into three hundred thousand screws, worth $3,600. These screws, which, to the naked eye, resemble particles of rifle powder, are finished in all respects a...