Life, 1919-03-06 · page 5 of 42
Life — March 6, 1919 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily a **Waltham Watch advertisement**, not satire or political commentary. The advertisement educates consumers about watch mechanics, using the tagline "Know the 'Works' of a Watch Before You Buy It." The top image shows a factory workshop scene where workers examine watch components. The left sidebar contains technical diagrams of watch parts, including "The Main Spring" and a "Colonial A" pocket watch design. The text explains Waltham's manufacturing expertise—claiming they produce fourteen tons of mainsprings annually and are "the largest mainspring maker in the world." It emphasizes quality control through precise hardening and tempering processes. This is straightforward product advertising typical of early 20th-century *Life* magazine, designed to build consumer confidence through technical credibility rather than humor or satire.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The 4 Y Know the “Works” of a Watch Main Spring | Le Before You Buy It IHE watch presents the same elements of mystery that once surrounded the automobile. Now, nearly every one knows something about a motor car’s mechanism. It is to make the “works” of the watch an “ open book” that these Waltham advertisements are designed —- to instruct and protect you in buy- ing a watch. The mainspring is the power of a watch. It is a piece of specially hardened and tempered steel, about twenty inches long, coiled in a barrel between the upper and lower plates of the movement. It is subjected to varying conditions of service in temperature and tension. The variation in thickness of two one-thousandths of an inch, or lack of uniformity in hardening and tempering, will decide the time-keeping quality of your watch. The Waltham Watch Company produces fourteen tons of mainsprings every year. It is the largest mainspring maker in the world. The Waltham mainspring is cut from long rolls of steel of uniform and special quality, then tempered in resilient form by a secret process, and is placed in the watch coiled into a hardened and tempered steel barrel. This is exclusively a __ Colonial A Waltham practice. Extremely shin at 2° The foreign mainspring is not only cut in short lengths, but hardened and tempered in short 2and 19 jewels lengths — therefore every foreign mainspring is an individual spring of uncertain temper, $125 to $240. making the watch a liability. of more The foreign maker of watch movements buys his springs in the open market. That is one depending upon Feason why the imported watch gives such varying service. An inferior mainspring means the coe an inferior watch—no matter how much you pay for it. The uniform superiority of the Waltham mainspring is one of the reasons why the noro- logical experts of the leading nations of five continents chose Waltham in preference to watches of any other make. WALTHAM THE WORLD'S WATCH OVER TIME comicbooks.com