This post is the second in a new series, Reading Time at HSNY, written by HSNY’s librarian, Miranda Marraccini. Find the first post here.
Our current exhibit at HSNY is "Watches from the James Arthur Collection,” which is open to the public by appointment through Winter 2023. The exhibit showcases 14 items from the collection of James Arthur (1842-1930), an immigrant, mechanic, businessman, and inveterate tinkerer who never stopped building watches and clocks.
James Arthur also published Time and its Measurement in 1909, a book reprinted from a series of articles he wrote for the magazine Popular Mechanics. The heavily illustrated volume is brief (only 64 pages) but wide-ranging, covering such topics as Chinese and Japanese methods of telling time, how pendulums work, the Zodiac, and Arthur’s modest proposal to “throw local time out totally and establish one, invariable, universal time.” We have the book in our library at HSNY.
A caption below a picture of Arthur on the frontispiece of his book (shown at left) calls him “an enthusiastic scientist, a successful inventor and extensive traveler” with “the finest collection in the world” numbering over 1500 timepieces. He is “a pleasing exception to the average business man” because of his appetite for scientific study and research. Although the caption claims to have been written by the editor of Popular Mechanics, Henry Haven Windsor, it no doubt reflects the image Arthur wanted to project: not only a successful entrepreneur, but also a learned one, interested in new science and exciting innovation. He was an exception to the usual collector type, too, since he was more interested in mechanical detail than a watch’s purported value or rarity. He liked to alter his watches and take them apart to display how they worked.
Arthur’s book demonstrates, more than anything, that he viewed himself as a horologist of the people, popular in the broadest sense. Popular Mechanics had a tagline at the time, emblazoned on the front page of each issue: “written so you can understand it.” In his series of articles, which became the book, Arthur fully embraces this ideal of accessibility. He writes familiarly, in the second person, addressing “you” as he carefully explains the history and mechanics of timekeeping. He makes it clear that he’s open to exploration and critique. For instance when trying to understand a particular feature of ancient water clocks, he writes, quite modestly: “I venture an explanation and hope the reader can do better, as we are all of a family and there is no jealousy” (19). Arthur even draws some of the illustrations himself, in an attempt to “make it plain” how a clock’s movement actually works (see image at left). All readers, including children, are welcome to learn and even speculate together.
Time and its Measurement also shows that Arthur couldn’t help talking about his tinkering. He writes about the “considerable number” of clocks he has built, “all for experimental purposes” (40). For example, he uses different jewels for bearings: “in one clock I used agates,” and in another, “running thirteen months with one winding, I used pallets jeweled with diamonds” (40). Arthur includes images, too, of clocks he designed, including the one at right ornamented with a figure of a bull. There’s no particular reason to include this information – Arthur is an enthusiastic amateur, and he wants his readers to feel that they are too.
James Arthur donated his collection to New York University in 1925, along with a generous cash bequest meant to preserve it intact as a museum. That’s not what happened, although the full story is beyond the scope of this article. Arthur’s collection lingered, suffered neglect, and was eventually divided and sold to different entities.¹ The watches we have in the exhibit now belong to the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors.
Despite the disappointing fate of his collection of clocks and watches, Arthur’s legacy lives on in multiple ways. As part of his endowment, Arthur stipulated that a themed lecture should be held every year on the topic of Time and its Mysteries. In the HSNY library, we have several of these lectures in print form, which include titles like “On the Lifetime of a Galaxy” and “The Geologic Records of Time.” The speakers have often taken on broadly philosophical topics, in keeping with Arthur’s chronic curiosity and sense of intellectual exploration. You can watch the 59th (and most recent) James Arthur lecture here.
HSNY’s permanent collection also includes one of Arthur’s tall case clocks, recently donated by our Exhibit Curator, Bob Frishman. Although it was an antique when he bought it, Arthur altered this clock to his particular specifications, noting its unusual thick ceramic dial, “just like a dinner plate.” At left is an image of the clock from a chronicle of the collection published in 1932 called The Lure of the Clock, and at right, a picture of the clock as it stands in our library today. It’s still keeping good time.
Toward the end of his book Time and its Measurement, Arthur laments the limited space he has left to discuss timekeeping. “Those wishing to follow up the subject would require a large ‘horological library’,” he explains. A “five-foot shelf would be altogether too short to hold the books” (42). We have around 800 feet of bookshelves at HSNY, and more archival material in our storage rooms. But it’s still never enough, and like Arthur, we’re always continuing to tinker with and expand our collection for enthusiasts and students of all kinds.
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¹ For more about Arthur’s legacy and how his collection was eventually split up, see Jeanne Schinto’s “James Arthur and His ‘Temple of Time’: A Cautionary Tale for Collector-Donors and Their Beneficiaries,” Maine Antique Digest, 2018-2019.