Double Flee A

school

We're oiling the ETA 7750 (formerly Valjoux), and getting it all put together. It's like the other watches essentially; it just redirects force in more directions because of the stopwatch functions. We're all in agreement that the guy who designed it was really smart, but we haven't had to work on the Zenith El Primero yet, which is a much more difficult piece, so we can't fully appreciate the simplification that good design means by way of comparison. I could almost tell you right now without any reference material all the parts in the 7750, and which screws to use to attach them together with.

When you're working on watch with a lot of different kinds of screws it's helpful to screw them back into their holes after disassembly, just to keep track of where they go. Otherwise, if you don't make what amounts to a map, you're virtually guaranteeing you'll be wasting your time later looking for where they go. And sometimes, there are an awful lot of options.

I, personally, am waiting to see what the really hard part of watchmaking is. Once you get where you're not shooting parts everywhere and you're not beating parts up in other ways, watches for the most part put themselves together. You've got this big round thing. Where does it go? Oh, over here in the big round cut-out. Repeat. One thing that does have me interested --in the shiny new way of being interested-- is a remontoir, which is a device that supplies constant force. That is a thing that transcends regular power transmission in a way, and I want to learn more about it. It looks simple but I don't think it is.

Some things are made to address problems; see "necessity is the mother of invention". While the maternal bond is the closest in nature, there are others as well, and I'm convinced there are other relationships to invention, many ways to get to the place. The father of invention would be probably something that I think of as based in machismo, that would result in things like more horsepower. The drinking buddy of invention gets you stuff like the hat that holds beer.

Things like the remontoir belong to my favorite class of invention, the improvement that while definitely useful and remarkably innovative, wasn't necessary, and to compare it to a kind of relationship, I'll pick my favorite kind of those, too, the one that resembles it the most, the flirtative relationship, the one that blooms, and is held only within the context of blooming. When one person is outdoing everything they've ever done in order to impress another, you get some pretty wild and beautiful stuff, and I think that's highly analogous to the situation of the remontoir.

We haven't covered it in school and I have to do the legwork on it myself, so more on what that is when I get some more time.

posted by dale @ 9:18 AM