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On 8 Jul 2008 at 11:21, George Huxtable wrote:

> Ken Muldrew wrote-
> 
> The following quote from _The_Industrious_Revolution_ by Jan de Vries
> (CUP
> 2008) doesn't answer George's question, but it gives a context:
> 
> "European watch production rose from the tens of thousands per year at
> the
> time of the pocket globe�s introduction [1697] to nearly 400,000 per
> year
> in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. ... Parisian inventories
> reveal that as early as 1700, 13 percent of servants and 5 percent of
> wage
> earners owned a watch."
> 
> =======================
> 
> Interesting stuff. Thank you, Ken. That information is all quite new to
> me. 
> Is there any reference quoted?

David Landes. Revolution in Time. Clocks and the making of the modern 
world. 
Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1983. p. 231; p. 442.

> In the meantime, I wonder whether the text provided any more information
> about that "pocket globe", a term that's unfamiliar to me. Does the text
> say 
> whether that was a balance-wheel and spring device, as had recently been
> invented by Huyghens and Hooke (separately)? Did it have a minute-hand?

It seems like a miniature astrolabe, perhaps with the stars rotating 
through a watch mechanism (though he doesn't say whether there was any 
spring-driven mechanism in it). He only references a Dutch advertisement 
from 1697 for the pocket globe. It seems it's meant as an example of what 
Adam Smith called "trinkets of frivolous utility"--an early modern example 
of conspicuous consumption.

Ken Muldrew.

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