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1 Harwood, John
SUBJECT AREA: Horology[br]b. 1893 Bolton, Englandd. 9 August 1964[br]English watchmaker, inventor and producer of the first commercial self-winding wrist watch.[br]John Harwood served an apprenticeship as a watch repairer in Bolton, and after service in the First World War he obtained a post with a firm of jewellers in Douglas, Isle of Man. He became interested in the self-winding wrist watch, not because of the convenience of not having to wind it, but because of its potential to keep the mainspring fully wound and to exclude dust and moisture from the watch movement. His experience at the bench had taught him that these were the most common factors to affect adversely the reliability of watches. Completely unaware of previous work in this area, in 1922 he started experimenting and two years later he had produced a serviceable model for which he was granted a patent in 1924. The watch operated on the pedometer principle, the mainspring being wound by a pivoted weight that oscillated in the watch case as a result of the motion of the arm. The hands of his watch were set by rotating the bezel surrounding the dial, dispensing with the usual winding/hand-setting stem which allowed dust and moisture to enter the watch case. He took the watch to Switzerland, but he was unable to persuade the watchmaking firms to produce it until he had secured independent finance to cover the cost of tooling. The Harwood Self-Winding Watch Company Ltd was set up in 1928 to market the watches, but although several thousand were produced the company became a victim of the slump and closed down in 1932. The first practical self-winding watch also operated on the pedometer principle and is attributed to Abraham-Louis Perrellet (1770). The method was refined by Breguet in France and by Recordon, who patented the device in England, but it proved troublesome and went out of fashion. There was a brief revival of interest in self-winding watches towards the end of the nineteenth century, but they never achieved great popularity until after the Second World War, when they used either self-winding mechanisms similar to that devised by Harwood or weights which rotated in the case.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsBritish Horological Institute Gold Medal 1957.Bibliography1 September 1924, Swiss patent no. 106,582.Further ReadingA.Chapuis and E.Jaquet, 1956, The History of the Self-Winding Watch, London (provides general information)."How the automatic wrist watch was invented", 1957, Horological Journal 99:612–61 (for specific information).DV -
2 Mercer, John
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 21 February 1791 Great Harwood, Lancashire, Englandd. 30 November 1866 Oakenshaw, Lancashire, England[br]English pioneer in textile chemistry.[br]Mercer began work at the age of 9 as a bobbinwinder and then a hand-loom weaver. He had no formal education in chemistry but taught himself and revealed remarkable ability in both theoretical and applied aspects of the subject. He became the acknowledged "father of textile chemistry" and the Royal Society elected him Fellow in 1850. His name is remembered in connection with the lustrous "mercerized" cotton which, although not developed commercially until 1890, arose from his discovery, c. 1844, of the effect of caustic soda on cotton linters. He also discovered that cotton could be dissolved in a solution of copper oxide in ammonia, a phenomenon later exploited in the manufacture of artificial silk. As a youth, Mercer experimented at home with dyeing processes and soon acquired sufficient skill to set up as an independent dyer. Most of his working life was, however, spent with the calico-printing firm of Oakenshaw Print Works in which he eventually became a partner, and it was there that most of his experimental work was done. The association was a very appropriate one, for it was a member of this firm's staff who first recognized Mercer's potential talent and took the trouble in his spare time to teach him reading, writing and arithmetic. Mercer developed manganese-bronze colours and researched into catalysis and the ferrocyanides. Among his innovations was the chlorination of wool in order to make it print as easily as cotton. It was many years later that it was realized that this treatment also conferred valuable shrink-resisting qualities. Becoming interested in photochemistry, he devised processes for photographic printing on fabric. Queen Victoria was presented with a handkerchief printed in this way when she visited the Great Exhibition of 1851, of which Mercer was a juror. A photograph of Mercer himself on cloth is preserved in the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. He presented papers to the British Association and was a member of the Chemical Society.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1850.Further ReadingObituary, Manchester Memoirs, Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.Dictionary of National Biography.E.A.Parnell, 1886. The Life and Labours of John Mercer, F.R.S., London (biography). 1867, biography, Journal of the Chemical Society.A.E.Musson and E.Robinson, 1969, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester (includes a brief reference to Mercer's work).RLH -
3 Horology
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Ctesibius of AlexandriaGrimthorpe, Edmund Beckett, BaronSu SongYi-XingZhang Sixun
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