The Watchmaker’s and Jeweler’s Hand-Book (eBook, PDF)

It is a well-known fact that all equally good workmen, in the main, and equally acquainted with the general structure of the watch, are not equally with each other skilled or successful in performing the same thing or things. And, other things being equal, this will invariably be found the result of disparity of knowledge of what are usually denominated the secrets of the trade, or the best modes of Operating on particular or specific points. The practical part of watch repairing, as of other important trades, can only be learned at the bench. But while the sources of knowledge relating thereto are restricted to verbal or oral instruction, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that imperfections and great disparity of knowledge in these regards must prevail, and that new or improved processes, the results of individual skill and ingenuity, must, from the very nature of things, remain from year to year, and perchance from age to age, in ex elusive possession of the few, while the many, for want of available sources of information, are excluded from their bent fits altogether. No better proof of this is needed than the well-known fact that some of the processes known and practiced in Europe for a long series of years past are still unknown in this country, or known only to here and there an indi vidual, who from fortuitous circumstances has chanced to be more highly favored than the great mass of his cotemporaries in the trade. And the same observation applies with equal force in regard to processes in this trade — the results of American as of European skill and ingenuity.