Abstract
THIS little volume (which is intended for popular reading) is comprised of several short essays, by different writers, upon the separate subjects indicated. Each essay contains a fairly good account of the history and general trade position of its subjects, but so far as their mechanical construction and the manufacturing operations involved therein are concerned, all are more or less disappointing. No doubt this is in great measure to be attributed to the nearly entire absence of diagrams, the essay on watches and clocks alone being illustrated, and that but scantily. Naturally some subjects suffer more than others. In jewellery, gold working, and cutlery the forms produced are familiar, the tools employed are simple, and what is the method of shaping and fitting together the various portions can easily be imagined. But with musical instruments and watches and clocks the case is different; people, à priori, are unacquainted with the apparatus or mechanism made use of, and a free reference to diagrams or figures becomes indispensable. In the essays upon jewellery and gold working, especially in the latter, their aspects and bearings as branches and developments of art are particularly dwelt upon. Cutlery, of course, is treated as an industry, so are watches and clocks. We are afraid the last-mentioned essay is not very carefully written, the writer, amongst other things, actually forgetting to tell us that there is any connection between the length of a pendulum and the time of its swing. And what he can be thinking of to describe Huyghens as a “French clock-maker of eminence,” who “about 1650 showed great skill and ingenuity in arranging pendulums to clocks, so as to describe a cycloid,” we do not know. The essay upon musical instruments (considering its not being illustrated) is much more intelligible than it might have been.
British Manufacturing Industries.—
Edited by G. Phillips Bevan “Jewellery,” by George Wallis; “Gold Working,” by Rev. C. Boutell; “Watches and Clocks,” by F. J. Britten; “Musical Instruments,” by E. F. Rimbault, LL.D.; “Cutlery,” by F. Callis. (London: Stanford, 1876.)
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British Manufacturing Industries. Nature 15, 96 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/015096a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/015096a0