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Show SAFETY DIAL Latest for WATCHES ""v OES danger lurk in the common watch dial? I 1 It would seem to be a fairly Innocent and harmless device. And yet when human . lives depend on reading ita indications to the fraction of a minute, and there is inadequate light for K, conditions may exist that were not anticipated by itariginal designer. Such, at least, ia the opinion of H. S. Montgomery, general gen-eral watch inspector of the Santa Fe railroad, whose "safety dial,' illustrated herewith, is used on several railroads in this country, including his awn, and should be, he thinks, adopted universally. univer-sally. "The highest railroad officials In America, gov- at such divisions as ITwhen 22, 87 when 4271s essily made. Numbered minutes prevent such an error. "When 'lights are dim and obscure' the safety dial presents the minutes, even though they might appear as a blur, in plain figures. The long lines - of the safety dial lead the eye to instantaneous -vision of the minute in figures at the end of the minute hand, and only a blind man could fail to read the time correctly. For the farmer or individual indi-vidual who only cares to read the time approximately, approxi-mately, large hour numerals may afford satis-. satis-. factory results, but for a railroad man, tha minutes min-utes are the essential factors. "Thr safety dial should be 'adopted as the standard of the nation because of its educational value. The people should be taught to read time as it expires and not in advance of ita possible occurrence. For instance, to quote the time aa '20 minutes to 1' Is a flagrant error. Correctly resd, the time would be 12:40. In the pleasure of Providence 1 o'clock might not arrive." I A Feature of the Safety Watch Dial U the Numbering of the Minutes. emment officials, wstch manufacturers, watch inspectors and over half a million conductors, engineers en-gineers and employes in all classes of service, who use the ssfety dial in daily practice," asserts Mr. Montgomery in The Railway Age, "certify that it is the grestest improvement msde in watchea in the past 60 years. As a safety device ii is aa easential as the watch itself. "To the practical, thinking man any device which offers a safeguard ia worthy of employment employ-ment in practice. The vital features on a watch dial are the minutes. The hour numerals are in- consequential in comparison. On the safety dial the minutes are numbered, thus absolutely insuring insur-ing correct reading. Large hour numerala interfere in-terfere with quick vision of the minutes and are therefore objectionable. Criticism would surely ' snd properly develop against the erection of obstructions ob-structions which would prevent an engineer from plainly viewing block signals. "There are 12 plain upright Arabic figures to indicate the hours in evidence on the safety dial It ia an easy matter to misread the time on the ordinary dial. - A mistake of an even five minutes |