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Show WHAT A1LSTHE WATCH Hundreds of Timepieces Go Crazy Because the Electrical Fluid Magnetizes Magne-tizes the Works PEOM EIDIN&0N AN ELECTRIC CAE. Jewelers Hare Manj Complaints Electrioal Electri-oal Eoads Responsible How to Care for a Watoh, ' "What Is the matter with my V&tch?" The speaker, well dressed, middle aged man, laid his handsome gold stem winder on the showcase of a big Broadway Broad-way jowelry store and looked daggers at the clerk. While the attendant was quietly opening open-ing the case and giving a little twist to the winder preliminary to a fuller examination exam-ination the angry gentleman continued to air his grievances. He had purchased the timepiece at that very establishment, he asserted, about a year before, and had paid a good round price for it, too. That was all right; he didn't care about the cost, but he did object ob-ject to a firm guaranteeing that a watch was first class in every respect when it didn't keep as good time as a second hand hand-organ. While he had been speaking the clerk had taken a small needle magnet out of the case and placed it in front of the irato watoh owner. "Excuse me, but whore do yon live, sir?" asked the clerk as the man stopped talking for a moment to wipe off his forehead and regain his breath. "Live?" said he; "why, at Jamaica, L. I., and that watch has caused me to miss four trains out of five during the three weeks I've been down there." "Been riding on the electrics railway, haven't you, sir?" said the clerk with a mile of satisfaction; "for your watch is about as thoroughly magnetized as any lever saw." ELECTRIC) RAILWAYS TO BLAME. For the first time light dawned on the customer's mind. He was one of a large number of New Yorkers who were spending the summer months on the line of the electric road that runs between East New York and Jamaica. He had never had any trouble with his timepiece before, and he now remembered remem-bered that he had heard many like complaints com-plaints of watches going wrong among his fellow passengers. When the needle of the magnet had become perfectly stationary the clerk held the works of the watch squarely above it Instantly the needle began to vibrate, first one way and then another, until the man was convinced that the clerk's diagnosis was the correct one. "That was the third case of the kind we have had today," said the jeweler when the gentleman had gone. Several workmen, he said, were kept constantly busy on that kind of repairing repair-ing alone. When a watch had been tested and found to be magnetized it waa at once taken apart and the works, even to the most minute portions, were then subjected to an individual test. Then came the process of demagnetizing, which usually took from three to five days, according ac-cording to the strength and quantity of the magnetic fluid with which they had become charged. It is only those parts which are made of" steel, he continued, that were much affeated, as gold and nickel would not ordinarly take in a sufficient quantity to cause any trouble. Numerous other stores were visited by the reporter, and in every instance the employes reported that scarcely a day passed without from, one to a half dozen watches being left to be demagnetized. AN AMUSWO INCIDENT. "A peculiarity of a magnetized watch," said one clerk, "is that it will change from fast to slow a half dozen times a day. "A rather amusing incident occurred the other day," said the clerk, "when a young lady, who had juBt conie up from Asbnry park, walked in and said she 'just wanted to see that man who had told her that he had demagnetized her watou."' She had been in some two weeks before, be-fore, it seomed, and left her watch, and a few days afterward had received it from the oJerk with the assnrance that it had been thoroughly demagnetized. "Before night had fallen on that same day," the clerk went on, "she was once more a passenger on an electrio car and once more was her watch charged with the eleotricity." ' It took considerable argument to con vince her, ho said, that demagnetizing a , watch did not make it forever proof against the ravages of the electric fluid, awdid vaccination against those of smallpox, small-pox, i The storage batteries on the Fourth avenue horse care were hold responsible by another jeweler for the magnetizing of many watches. Most people did not suspect the cause, he said, and it was only after they had suffered great inoon-vanienoe inoon-vanienoe as a result of the eccentricities of their theretofore reliable timekeepers that they learned from their jeweler what the matter was. The more delicate the works the more susceptible they were, he said, to magnetic mag-netic inflnenoe. This accounted for the f act that theJarger percentage of watches brought to him were those that were of the finest manufacture and consequently f the greatest value. New York Journal. |