Life, 1919-05-01 · page 5 of 44
Life — May 1, 1919 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily a **Waltham watch advertisement**, not political satire. The top illustration shows a watchmaker or jeweler at work in a workshop, depicting the craftsmanship involved in watch manufacturing. The text educates readers about watch mechanisms—specifically the "lower plate," which the ad describes as engineered with precision comparable to human ingenuity. The advertisement emphasizes Waltham's standardization and quality control, contrasting handmade work done "elsewhere in many homes and small shops" with Waltham's mechanized reliability. The smaller watch face illustrations on the left show product examples. The tagline "The World's Watch Over Time" positions Waltham as a trustworthy timekeeping authority. This is straightforward commercial messaging rather than political commentary or satire.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Know Something About the “Works” in the Watch You Buy F you open your watch and examine its mechanism, you will find it consists substantially of two supporting plates, be- tween which is mounted a gearing of meshed wheels to take care of the movement, recording time. This is called the train, which we will speak of in our next advertisement. The lower supporting plate in a Waltham watch is the founda- tion upon which every unit revolves and is fixed. It is bored with minute holes to take the Pivots, screws, pinions, etc. This lower plate is drilled and threaded by one of the most eaclusive and wonderful machines ever designed by the genius of man —-an exclusive Waltham invention from the master-mind of Duane H. Church. Many operations are accomplished with such methodical, automatic regu- larity that one instinctively imagines that a marvelous human brain guides the extraordinary operations of this machine. es every operation (and there are 141) with infinitesimal exactness to the ten andth part of an inch ~ flawless, beautiful in its complex simplicity — every plate Waltham Colonial A a replica of every other plate, proving W akham standardization to be one of the mira Excremely thin at no sac cles of American mechanical! us. fifice of accuracy ua ° . Maximus movement The plate of the foreign built watch is subject to the variations of hand process. Made Viewels to variant sizes and models without precise relation to the parts which they are to con- tain, which parts are made elsewhere in many homes and small shops, by hand. $1 35 to $255 No hand work could ever approximate the beautiful and flawless exactitude of this Wal. or more tham drilling and threading. depending upon the case So when you buy a Waltham watch you are assured of a standardization of quality and leadership which has placed the Waltham watch on the pedestal of world dominion. ALTHAM THE WORLD'S WATCH OVER TIME comicbooks.com