Life, 1919-04-03 · page 9 of 60
Life — April 3, 1919 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily a **Waltham Watch advertisement**, not a political cartoon. The page features a technical explanation of the hairspring mechanism that makes precision watchmaking possible. The illustrated scene at top shows men in a laboratory or factory examining watches—depicting Waltham's manufacturing process as scientifically rigorous. The text emphasizes that Waltham, unlike foreign competitors, forms the hairspring through an innovative single continuous process rather than hand-bending, making their watches more reliable. The "campaign to aid you in selecting your watch" is marketing rhetoric: the ad argues Waltham's superior manufacturing method justifies choosing their brand. The Breguet over-coil design is presented as exclusive to Waltham among American makers. This reflects early 20th-century industrial advertising that positioned American mass-production methods as technically superior to traditional European craftsmanship.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A Campaign to Aid You in Selecting Your Watch Tei hairspring is the brain of the watch. It is the most delicate tension spring made. For use in the small sized watch, 84,000 springs are made from one pound of steel, raising the value of that pound of steel from $5.00 to $30,000. The Waltham hairspring steel is drawn through diamond surfaces, and for the smaller watches, to a third of the thickness of a human hair. The Breguet, or over-coil (named after inventor, a famous old French watchmaker), is used on every \ am watch. The most important part of the complete operation in making a hairspring is the forming and tempering of this Breguet over-coil. At Waltham, instead of being formed or bent by hand as a separate operation, the entire completed hairspring is formed at one and the same time, after which it is hardened and tempered in form— the invention of John Logan, American watchmaker, a genius who was a part of Waltham leadership in watchmaking. Indeed, Waltham is the only watchmaker that claims this perfect method of making the Breguet hairspring. The foreign, imported watch movement has a hairspring that is first \ formed in the flat, then hardened and tempered in the flat. Then the The Riverside | - outer coil is bent to form the Breguet over-coil, which, if the flat spring were as hard as the Waltham, and properly tempered like the Waltham hairspring, it could not be bent to correct form, and would be liable to break in the attempt. Waltham superiority is in original method, secret process, unvarying quality of every important part of the watch—a quality that cannot be equaled by the foreign “hand” method of manufacture. That is why Waltham leads the world in standard ized watchmaking, and why your watch selection should be a Waltham. LITHAM THE WORLD'S WATCH OVER TIME comicbooks.com