MARVELS OF MINIATURE WORKMANSHIP.

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 49, 27 July 1908, Page 2

MARVELS OF MINIATURE WORKMANSHIP.

More than one person imagines himself to be the possessor of "the smallest watch in the world," though the watch now owned by a Cincinnati man certainly wants a lot of beating. It is said to measure less than a quarter of an inch in diameter, and the face is about the size of of the head of a large tack or nail. The case is niade throughout of gold. The face is covered, the case being opened by pressing the stem, as is ordinarily done. The length of both hands if placed end to end, would not be more than five twenty-fourths of an inch. The second-hand is one-six-teenth of an inch in length. The numerals are in Arabic, and aro engraved in rod, to be more easily discernible. The works and hands are made of the finest tempered steel, and the works throughout are set in diamond chips. The smallest steam-engine in the world is one made by an American clockmaker.i A-n ordinary thimble would serve as its engine-house, and its weight is barely fifteen grains. The stroke of the piston is a little over one-twelfth of an inch, and its diameter is a little less than one ninth of an inch. Yet, despite its minuteness, the engine is built of 140 distinct pieces, fastened byi fifty-two screws, and three drops of water fill the boiler and set the engine in motion.

Another marvel of ingenuity in the same .line is a little engine of the upright pattern, made of silver and gold. Its bed-plate is a 25-cent gold piece ; its cylinder is a little less than oiie-sixteenth of an inch in diameter, With a stroko of one thirty-second of an inch. The balance wheel is onethird of an inch in diameter, and can make something like 1,000 revolutions a minute.

An Italian has made a tiny boat, formed of a single pearl. Its sail is of beaten gold, studded with diamonds, and its head.light, carried at the hrow, is a’perfect ruby. An emerald serves as its rudder, and its stand is a slab of ivory. It weighs less than half an ounce, and its price is said to be £I,OOO. Indeed, the . Italians are adept at minute work, for there are artists in Florence who will take particles of stone and glass no larger than a mustard seed and piece them together on the head of a shirt. stud with such nice adjustment of delicate shades of colour that minute flowers and insects are represented in perfect detail, with all the truthfulness of Nature. An Italian lady, too, has painted a landscape in which appear a windmill, millers, a cart and horse, and passengers, with such diminutive neatness- that half a grain of corn can cover the whole composition. The German Emperor has in his possession a fairy-like little tea service. The tea-tray is beaten out of an old Prussian halfpenny, the teapot is made out of a German farthing, and the tiny cups from coins of the different German principali-ties.-—"Tit-Bits."