Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 by Various

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My companion ticked so indignantly that my friend the manager evidently
suspected what question I had asked, and he answered at once,--

"The experiment is already perfectly successful. We have had our
critical moments, but"----

"But now," proudly ticked my watch, "now we have weathered the Cape Horn
of adversity and doubt, and ride secure upon the deep Pacific sea of
prosperity and certainty. You had better blow a note like that through
your Atlantic Bugle. Set your tune high, and play it up loud and
lively."

"It seems to me," answered I, "that the tune plays itself. There is no
need of puffing at the instrument."

While my watch was thus pleasantly jesting, we had passed through a low
pine wood and come out upon the banks of the Charles River. Just before
us, upon the very edge of a river-basin, was a low two-story building
full of windows, and beyond, over the trees, were spires. They were the
steeples of Waltham, and the many-windowed building was the factory of
the American Watch Company. It stands upon a private road opened by
the Company in a domain of about seventy acres belonging to them. The
building thus secures quiet and freedom from dust, which are essential
conditions of so delicate and exquisite a manufacture.

The counting-room, which you enter first, is cheerful and elegant. A new
building, which the Company is adding to the factory, will give them
part of the ampler room the manufacture now demands; and within the last
few months the Company has absorbed the machinery and labor of a rival
company at Nashua, which was formed of some of the graduate workmen of
Waltham, but which was not successful. Every room in the factory is full
of light. The benches of polished cherry, the length of all of them
together being about three-quarters of a mile, are ranged along the
sides of the rooms, from the windows in which the prospect is rural and
peaceful. There is a low hum, but no loud roar or jar in the building.
There is no unpleasant smell, and all the processes are so neat and
exquisite that an air of elegance pervades the whole.

The first impression, upon hearing that a watch is made by machinery,
is, that it must be rather coarse and clumsy. No machine so cunning as
the human hand, we are fond of saying. But, if you will look at this
gauge, for instance, and then at any of these dainty and delicate
machines upon the benches, miniature lathes of steel, and contrivances
which combine the skill of innumerable exquisite fingers upon single
points, you will feel at once, that, when the machinery itself is
so almost poetic and sensitive, the result of its work must be
correspondingly perfect.

My friend--not the watch, but the watchmaker--said quietly, "By your
leave," and, pulling a single hair from my head, touched it to a fine
gauge, which indicated exactly the thickness of the hair. It was a test
of the twenty-five hundredth part of an inch. But there are also gauges
graduated to the ten-thousandth part of an inch. Here is a workman
making screws. Can you just see them? That hardly visible point exuding
from the almost imperceptible hole is one of them. A hundred and fifty
thousand of them make a pound. The wire costs a dollar; the screws are
worth nine hundred and fifty dollars. The magic touch of the machine
makes that wire nine hundred and fifty times more valuable. The operator
sets them in regular rows upon a thin plate. When the plate is full, it
is passed to another machine, which cuts the little groove upon the top
of each,--and of course exactly in the same spot. Every one of those
hundred and fifty thousand screws in every pound is accurately the same
as every other, and any and all of them, in this pound or any pound, any
one of the millions or ten millions of this size, will fit precisely
every hole made for this sized screw in every plate of every watch made
in the factory. They are kept in little glass phials, like those in
which the homoeopathic doctors keep their pellets.

The fineness and variety of the machinery are so amazing, so
beautiful,--there is such an exquisite combination of form and
movement,--such sensitive teeth and fingers and wheels and points of
steel,--such fairy knives of sapphire, with which King Oberon the first
might have been beheaded, had he insisted upon levying dew-taxes upon
primroses without the authority of his elves,--such smooth cylinders,
and flying points so rapidly revolving that they seem perfectly
still.--such dainty oscillations of parts with the air of intelligent
consciousness of movement,--that a machinery so extensive in details, so
complex, so harmonious, at length entirely magnetizes you with wonder
and delight, and you are firmly persuaded that you behold the magnified
parts of a huge brain in the very act of thinking out watches.

In various rooms, by various machines, the work of perfecting the parts
from the first blank form cut out of Connecticut brass goes on. Shades
of size are adjusted by the friction of whirring cylinders coated with
diamond dust. A flying steel point touched with diamond paste pierces
the heart of the "jewels." Wheels rimmed with brass wisps hum steadily,
as they frost the plates with sparkling gold. Shaving of metal peel off,
as other edges turn, so impalpably fine that five thousand must be laid
side by side to make an inch. But there is no dust, no unseemly noise.
All is cheerful and airy, the faces of the workers most of all. You pass
on from point to point, from room to room. Every machine is a day's
study and a life's admiration, if you could only tarry. No wonder the
director says to me, as we move on, that his whole consciousness is
possessed by the elaborate works he superintends.

He opens a door, while we speak, and you would not be in the least
surprised, in the exalted condition to which the wonderful spectacle has
brought you, to hear him say, "In this room we keep the Equator." In
fact, as the door opens, and the gush of hot air breathes out upon your
excited brain, it seems to you as if it undoubtedly were the back-door
to--the Tropics. It is the dial-room, in which the enamel is set. The
porcelain is made in London. It is reduced to a paste in this room, and
fused upon thin copperplates at white heat. When cooled, it is ground
off smoothly, then baked to acquire a smooth glaze. It is then ready for
painting with the figures.

When all the pieces of the watch-movement are thus prepared, they are
gathered in sets, and carried to the putting-up room, where each part
is thoroughly tested and regulated. The pieces move in processions of
boxes, each part by itself; and each watch, when put together, is as
good as every other. In an old English lever-watch there are between
eight and nine hundred pieces. In the American there are but about a
hundred and twenty parts. My friend the director says, that, if you put
a single American against a single European watch, the foreign may vary
a second less in a certain time; but if you will put fifty or a hundred
native against the same number of foreign watches, the native group will
be uniformly more accurate. In the case of two watches of exactly the
same excellence, the regulator of one may be adjusted to the precise
point, while that of the other may imperceptibly vary from that point.
But that is a chance. The true test is in a number.

"If now we add," ticked the faithful friend in my pocket, "that
watch-movements of a similar grade without the cases are produced here
at half the cost of the foreign, doesn't it seem to you that we have
Lancashire and Warwickshire in England and Locle and La Chaux de Fond in
Switzerland upon the hip?"

"It certainly does," I answered,--for what else could I say?

Five different sizes of watches are made at Waltham. The latest is the
Lady's Watch, for which no parent or lover need longer go to Geneva. And
the affectionate pride with which the manager took up one of the finest
specimens of the work and turned it round for me to see was that of a
parent showing a precious child.

While we strolled through every room, the workers were not less
interesting to see than the work. There are now about three hundred and
fifty of them, of whom nearly a third are women. Scarcely twenty are
foreigners, and they are not employed upon the finest work. Of course,
as the machinery is peculiar to this factory, the workers must be
specially instructed. The foremen are not only overseers, but teachers;
and I do not often feel myself to be in a more intelligent and valuable
society than that which surrounded me, a wondering, staring, smiling,
inquiring, utterly unskilful body in the ancestral halls of my tried
friend and trusty counsellor, The American Watch.

* * * * *

BENJAMIN BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER.

In these days, when strong interests, embodied in fierce parties, are
clashing, one recalls the French proverb of those who make so much noise
that you cannot hear God thunder. It does not take much noise to drown
the notes of a violin; but go to the hill a fourth of a mile off, and
the noises shall die away at its base, whilst the music shall be heard.
Those who can remove themselves away from and above the plane of
party-din can hear God's modulated thunder in the midst of it, uttering
ever a "certain tune and measured music." And such can hear now the
great voice at the sepulchre's door of a race, saying, Come forth! This
war is utterly inexplicable except as the historic method of delivering
the African race in America from slavery, and this nation from the crime
and curse inevitably linked therewith in the counsels of God, which are
the laws of Nature. If the friends of freedom in the Government do
not understand this, it is plain enough that the myrmidons of slavery
throughout the land understand it. And hence it is that we are
witnessing their unremitting efforts to exasperate the prejudices of the
vulgar against the negro, and to prove degradation, and slavery to be
his normal condition. They point to his figure as sculptured on ancient
monuments, bearing chains, and claim that his enslavement is lawful as
immemorial custom; but as well point to the brass collars on our Saxon
forefathers' necks to prove _their_ enslavement lawful. The fact that
slavery belonged to a patriarchal age is the very reason why it is
impracticable in a republican age,--as its special guardians in this
country seem to have discovered. But this question is now scarcely
actual. The South, by its first blow against the Union and the
Constitution, whose neutrality toward it was its last and only
protection from the spirit of the age, did, like the simple fisherman,
unseal the casket in which the Afreet had been so long dwarfed. He is
now escaping. Thus far, indeed, he is so much escaped force; for he
might be bearing our burdens for us, if we only rubbed up the lamp which
the genie obeys. But whether we shall do this or not, it is very certain
that he is now emerging from the sea and the casket, and into it will
descend no more. Henceforth the negro is to take his place in the family
of races; and no studies can be more suitable to our times than those
which recognize his special capacity.

The questions raised by military exigencies have brought before the
public the many interesting facts drawn from the history of Hayti and
from our own Revolution, showing the heroism of the negro, though we
doubt whether they can surpass the stories of Tatnall, Small, and
others, which have led a high European authority to observe that in this
war no individual heroism among the whites has equalled that of the
blacks. But the forthcoming social questions concerning the negro will
be even more exciting than the military. What are we to expect from the
unsealed Afreet,--good or evil? It was whilst studying in this direction
that I came upon the few facts which relate to Benjamin Banneker,--facts
which, though not difficult of access, are scarcely known beyond the
district in Maryland where, on the spot where he was born, his unadorned
grave receives now and then a visit from some pilgrim of his own race
who has found out the nobleness which Jefferson recognized and Condorcet
admired.

Benjamin Banneker was born in Baltimore County, near the village of
Ellicott's Mills, in the year 1732. There was not a drop of the white
man's blood in his veins. His father was born in Africa, and his
mother's parents were both natives of Africa. What genius he had, then,
must be credited to that race. Benjamin's mother was a remarkable woman,
and of a remarkable family. Her name was Morton, before marriage, and a
nephew of hers, Greenbury Morton, was gifted with a lively and impetuous
eloquence which made its mark in his neighborhood. Of him it is related
that he once came to a certain election-precinct in Baltimore County
to deposit his vote; for, prior to the year 1809, negroes with certain
property-qualifications voted in Maryland. It was in this year, in which
the law restricting the right of voting to free whites was passed, that
Morton, who had not heard of its passage, came to the polls. When his
vote was refused, Morton in a state of excitement took his stand on
a door-step, and was immediately surrounded by the crowd, whom he
addressed in a strain of passionate and prophetic eloquence which bore
all hearts and minds with him. He warned them that the new law was a
step backward from the standard which their fathers had raised in
the Declaration, and which they had hoped would soon be realized in
universal freedom; that that step, unless retraced, would end in bitter
and remorseless revolutions. The crowd was held in breathless attention,
and none were found to favor the new law.

This man, we have said, was the nephew of Benjamin's mother. She was a
woman of remarkable energy, and after she was seventy years of age was
accustomed to run down the chickens she wished to catch. Her husband was
a slave when she married him, but it was a very small part of her life's
task to purchase his freedom. Together they soon bought a farm of one
hundred acres, which we find conveyed by Richard Gist to Robert Bannaky,
(as the name was then spelt,) and Benjamin Bannaky, his son, (then five
years old,) on the tenth of March, 1737, for the consideration of seven
thousand pounds of tobacco. The region in which Benjamin was born was
almost a wilderness; for in 1732 Elkridge Landing was of more importance
than Baltimore; and even in 1754 this city consisted only of some twenty
poor houses straggling on the hills to the right of Jones's Falls. The
residence of the Bannekers was ten miles into the wilderness from these.

It was under these unpromising circumstances that little Benjamin grew
up, his destiny being apparently nothing more than to work on the little
farm beside his poor and ignorant parents. When he was approaching
manhood, he went, in the intervals of toil, to an obscure and remote
country-school; for, until the cotton-gin made negroes too valuable on
the animal side for the human side to be allowed anything so perilous as
education, there were to be found here and there in the South fountains
whereat even negroes might slake their thirst for learning. At this
school Benjamin acquired a knowledge of reading and writing, and
advanced in arithmetic as far as "Double Position." Beyond these
rudiments he was entirely his own teacher. After leaving school he had
to labor constantly for his own support; but he lost nothing of what he
had acquired. It is a frequent remark that up to a certain point the
negroes learn even more rapidly than white children under the same
teaching, but that afterward, in the higher branches, they are slow,
and, some maintain, incapable. Young Banneker had no books at all, but
in the midst of his labor he so improved upon and evolved what he had
gained in arithmetic that his intelligence became a matter of general
observation. He was such an acute observer of the natural world, and had
so diligently observed the signs of the times in society, that it
is very doubtful whether at forty years of age this African had his
superior in Maryland.

Perhaps the first wonder amongst his comparatively illiterate neighbors
was excited, when, about the thirtieth year of his age, Benjamin made
a clock. It is probable that this was the first clock of which every
portion was made in America; it is certain that it was as purely his own
invention as if none had ever been made before. He had seen a watch, but
never a clock, such an article not being within fifty miles of him. The
watch was his model. He was a long time at work on the clock,--his chief
difficulty, as he used often to relate, being to make the hour, minute,
and second hands correspond in their motion. But at last the work was
completed, and raised the admiration for Banneker to quite a high pitch
among his few neighbors.

The making of the clock proved to be of great importance in assisting
the young man to fulfil his destiny. It attracted the attention of the
Ellicott family, who had just begun a settlement at Ellicott's Mills.
They were well-educated men, with much mechanical knowledge, and some of
them Quakers. They sought out the ingenious negro, and he could not have
fallen into better hands. It was in 1787 that Benjamin received from
Mr. George Ellicott Mayer's "Tables," Ferguson's "Astronomy," and
Leadbetter's "Lunar Tables." Along with these, some astronomical
instruments, also, were given him. Mr. Ellicott, prevented from telling
Benjamin anything concerning the use of the instruments for some time
after they were given, went over to repair this omission one day, but
found that the negro had discovered all about them and was already quite
independent of instruction. From this time astronomy became the great
object of Banneker's life, and in its study he almost disappeared from
the sight of his neighbors. He was unmarried, and lived alone in the
cabin and on the farm which he had inherited from his parents. He had
still to labor for his living; but he so simplified his wants as to
be enabled to devote the greater portion of his time to astronomical
studies. He slept much during the day, that he might the more devotedly
observe at night the heavenly bodies whose laws he was slowly, but
surely, mastering.

And now he began to have a taste of that persecution to which every
genius under similar circumstances is subject. He was no longer seen in
the field, where formerly his constancy had gained him a reputation for
industry, and some who called at his cabin during the day-time found him
asleep; so he began to be spoken of as a lazy fellow, who would come to
no good, and whose age would disappoint the promise of his youth. There
was a time when this so excited his neighbors against him that he had
serious fears of disturbance. A memorandum in his hand-writing, dated
December 18, 1790, states:--

"------ ------informed me that ------ stole my horse and great-coat,
and that the said ------ intended to murder me when opportunity
presented. ------ ------ gave me a caution to let no one come into my
house after dark."

The names were originally written in full; but they were afterward
carefully cancelled, as though Banneker had reflected that it was wrong
to leave on record an unauthenticated assertion against an individual,
which, if untrue, might prejudice him by the mere fact that it had been
made.

Very soon after the possession of the books already mentioned, Banneker
determined to compile an almanac, that being the most familiar use that
occurred to him of the information he had acquired. To make an almanac
was a very different thing then from what it would be now, when there is
an abundance of accurate tables and rules. Banneker had no aid whatever
from men or tables; and Mr. George Ellicott, who procured some tables
and took them to him, states that he had advanced far in the preparation
of the logarithms necessary for his purpose. A memorandum in his
calculations at this time thus corrects an error in Ferguson's
Astronomy:--

"It appears to me that the wisest men may at times be in error: for
instance, Dr. Ferguson informs us, that, when the sun is within 12 deg. of
either node at the time of full, the moon will be eclipsed; but I find,
that, according to his method of projecting a lunar eclipse, there will
be none by the above elements, and yet the sun is within 11 deg. 46' 11" of
the moon's ascending node. But the moon being in her apogee prevents the
appearance of this eclipse."

Another memorandum makes the following corrections:--

"Errors that ought to be corrected in my Astronomical Tables are
these:--2d vol. Leadbetter, p. 201, when [symbol] anomaly is 4^s 30 deg.,
the equation 3 deg. 30' 41" ought to have been 3 deg. 28' 41". In [symbol]
equation, p. 155, the logarithm of his distance from [symbol] ought to
have been 6 in the second place from the index, instead of 7, that is,
from the time that his anomaly is 3^s 24 deg. until it is 4^s O deg.."

Both Ferguson and Leadbetter would have been amazed, had they been
informed that their elaborate works had been reviewed and corrected by a
negro in the then unheard-of valley of the Patapsco.

The first almanac prepared by Banneker for publication was for the year
1792. By this time his acquirements had become generally known, and
amongst those who were attracted by them was James McHenry, Esq. Mr.
McHenry wrote to Goddard and Angell, then the almanac-publishers of
Baltimore, and procured the publication of this work, which contained,
from the pen of Mr. McHenry, a brief notice of Banneker. In their
editorial notice Goddard and Angell say, "They feel gratified in the
opportunity of presenting to the public through their press what must
be considered as an extraordinary effort of genius,--a complete and
accurate Ephemeris for the year 1792, calculated by a sable son of
Africa," etc. And they further say that "they flatter themselves that a
philanthropic public, in this enlightened era, will be induced to give
their patronage and support to this work, not only on account of its
intrinsic merits, (it having met the approbation of several of the most
distinguished astronomers of America, particularly the celebrated Mr.
Rittenhouse,) but from similar motives to those which induced the
editors to give this calculation the preference, the ardent desire
of drawing modest merit from obscurity, and controverting the
long-established illiberal prejudice against the blacks."

Banneker was himself entirely conscious of the bearings of his case
upon the position of his people; and though remarkable for an habitual
modesty, he solemnly claimed that his works had earned respect for
the African race. In this spirit he wrote to Thomas Jefferson, then
Secretary of State under Washington, transmitting a manuscript copy of
his almanac. The letter is a fervent appeal for the down-trodden negro,
and a protest against the injustice and inconsistency of the United
States toward that color. Mr. Jefferson's reply is as follows:--

"_Philadelphia, Pa._, August 30, 1791.

"Sir,--I thank you sincerely for your letter of the 19th instant, and
for the almanac it contained. Nobody wishes more than I do to see such
proofs as you exhibit, that Nature has given to our black brethren
talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the
appearance of a want of them is owing only to the degraded condition of
their existence both in Africa and America. I can add with truth that no
one wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the
condition both of their body and mind to what it ought to be, as fast as
the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances which
cannot be neglected, will admit. I have taken the liberty of sending
your almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of
Sciences at Paris, and Member of the Philanthropic Society, because I
considered it a document to which your whole color had a right for their
justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them.

"I am, with great esteem, Sir,

"Your most obedient serv't,

"THO. JEFFERSON."

When his first almanac was published, Banneker was fifty-nine years of
age, and had received tokens of respect from all the scientific men
of the country. The commissioners appointed after the adoption of the
Constitution in 1789 to run the lines of the District of Columbia
invited the presence and assistance of Banneker, and treated him as an
equal. They invited him to take a seat at their table; but he declined,
and requested a separate table.

Banneker continued to calculate and publish almanacs until the year
1802. Besides numerous valuable astronomical and mathematical notes
found amongst his papers are observations of passing events, showing
that he had the mind of a philosopher. For instance:--

"_27th Aug. 1797._ Standing at my door, I heard the discharge of a gun,
and in four or five seconds of time the small shot came rattling about
me, one or two of which struck the house; which plainly demonstrates
that the velocity of sound is greater than that of a cannon-bullet."

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