class="tdl">Eighteenth Century Watches

168 "Quantity Production" in 1850 176 A Glimpse of a Giant Industry 200 Twentieth Century Watches 208 Time Telling in the Dark 216 Time Pieces Vital to Industry 224

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FOREWORD

It was a moonless night in No Man's Land. A man in khaki stood silently waiting in a frontline trench. In the darkness, his eyes were drawn, fascinated, to the luminous figures on the watch-dial at his wrist. A splinter of pale light, which he knew to be the hour-hand, rested upon the figure 11. A somewhat longer splinter crept steadily from the figure 12.

"Past eleven," he whispered to himself. "Less than twenty minutes now."

To the right and to the left of him, he, now and then, could see his waiting comrades in the blackness of the trench, their outlines vaguely appearing and disappearing with the intermittent flares of distant star-shells. He knew that they, too, were intent upon tiny figures in small luminous circles and upon the steady, relentless progress of other gleaming minute-hands which moved in absolute unison with the one upon his own wrist. He knew, also, that far in the rear, clustered about their guns, were other comrades tensely counting off the passing minutes.

At twenty minutes past eleven, the artillery bombardment would begin and would continue until exactly midnight. Then would come the barrage—the protecting curtain of bursting shells behind which the khaki-clad figure and his companions would advance upon the enemy's trenches—perhaps also upon eternity.

How strangely silent it seemed after the crashing chaos of the last few days! There were moments when the rumble of distant guns almost died away, and he could hear the faint ticking of his timepiece or a whispered word out of the darkness near at hand. He likened the silence to the lull before a storm.

Five minutes thus went by!

In another fifteen minutes, the fury of the bombardment would begin; it would doubtless draw an equally furious bombardment from the enemy's guns.

At twelve-ten plus forty-five seconds, he and his platoon were to "go over the top" and plunge into the inferno of No Man's Land. That was the moment set for the advance—the moment when the barrage would lift and move forward.

The slender hand on the glowing dial stole steadily onward. It was ten minutes after now.

Ten minutes after eleven—just one hour plus forty-five seconds to wait! His thoughts flew back to his home in the great city beyond the sea.

Ten minutes after eleven—why that would be only ten minutes after six in New York! How plainly he could