1850–1900 Mass production
At Vacheron Constantin, Geneva, Georges-Auguste Leschot (1800-1884), pioneered in the field of interchangeability in clockmaking by the invention of various machine tools. 1830 he designed an anchor escapement, which his student, Antoine Léchaud, later mass produced. 1839 he invented a pantograph allowing some degree of standardisation and interchangeability of parts on watches fitted with the same calibre.
Watch manufacturing really changed from assembly in watchmaking shops to mass production with interchangeable parts, as from 1854, pioneered by the Waltham Watch Company, in Waltham, Massachusetts. The railroads' stringent requirements for accurate watches to safely schedule trains drove improvements in accuracy. The engineer Webb C. Ball, established around 1891 the first precision standards and a reliable timepiece inspection system for Railroad chronometers. Temperature compensated balance wheels began to be widely used in watches during this period, and jewel bearings became almost universal. Techniques for adjusting the balance spring for isochronism and positional errors discovered by Abraham Breguet, M. Phillips, and L. Lossier were adopted. The first international watch precision contest took place in 1876, during the International Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia (the winning four top watches, which outclassed all competitors, had been randomly selected out of the mass production line), on display was also the first fully automatic screw making machine. By 1900, with these advances, the accuracy of quality watches, properly adjusted, topped out at a few seconds per day.[29]
From about 1860, key winding was replaced by keyless winding, where the watch was wound by turning the crown. The pin pallet escapement, an inexpensive version of the lever escapement invented in 1876 by Georges Frederic Roskopf was used in cheap mass produced dollar watches, which allowed ordinary workers to own a watch for the first time; other cheap watches used a simplifed version of the duplex escapement, developed by Daniel Buck in the 1870s.
These improvements were mostly originated and applied in the United States, and as a result the American industry ousted that of Switzerland from its long-held position as worldwide leader in the low-to-middle-class market. The Swiss responded, towards the end of the century, by changing their emphasis from economy to quality.
Вот еще один источник описывающий события тех лет.
http://www.bing.com/reference/semhtml/Watch
Тоже самое на
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch Википедия
Для меня оказался удивительным тот момент,что никто из форумчан не владел информацией относительно КТО и КОГДА разработал и пустил в производство Швейцарский анкерный ход.Все концы данного расследования пока идут в одном направлении.....Вашерон Константин начало-середина 30х годов 19 века.Относительно гравировки,надписей и позолоты я проконсультируюсь со специалистами и результаты сообщу позже.
13.02.2010, 19:42
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