Dear Friends, Since The topic of watches has been broached, I would like to point you to a watch dealer's page which includes excellent photographs of early watches - watches which were set from sundials since in many cases that was the only source of time available.
The URL takes you to the page on which the watches are sorted BY DATE. Look at the early ones, and if you get lost, click on BY DATE in the extreme upper left of the page to return. A click on the picture of a given watch will reveal pictures of the movements. On these older watches you will see on the back of the movement a very ornate pierced and engraved circular piece which covers and protects the balance wheel. These are called "watchcocks". I have a collection of over 8,000 of these watchcocks, probably the largest collection in the world. Unfortunately each one represents a watch that was scrapped sometime in history. Here is the URL of the antique watch dealer: http://www.antique-watch.com/idx/date_f.html And here is my own page about watchcocks: http://www.shadow.net/~bobt/cocks/cocks.htm Bob Terwilliger
