Watch Maker
6/13/23
Watch Maker
Since we were on the subject of therapeutic handicrafts, Russ Roberts’s guest on EconTalk this week was all the more poignant. The guest was Rebecca Struthers, and she is a watchmaker who recently published The Hands of Time: A Watchmaker’s History.
As we learn, the fine craft of watchmaking is a scarce trade indeed, with specialists worldwide numbering in the hundreds, Struthers reckons. Part of the conversation is about the craft and its rarity. Other parts examine the history of modern-era precision watchmaking, a great deal of which will sound familiar to those who have read Dava Sobel’s book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (2005).
That best seller recounted the story of how the ability to keep time accurately greatly improved seafaring for the British Royal Navy. Figuring out your location on the world map had been possible for millennia along the north-south axis thanks to the astrolabe. But until you could take an instrument along shipboard that told you the time at home, you had little hope of figuring out your location on the east-west dimension of travel.
The Struthers interview is another appreciation of the human ability to create amazing physical works with our hands. You could say this blog is an appreciation of other’s abilities to put forth and examine human ideas and experiences, such as Roberts’s interviews across many different disciplines beyond his own field of economics. The interview, along with the Goodreads reviews linked above, make the book sound irresistible.
At any rate, give it a listen or, uh, a watch…
Audio podcast version here; YouTube version below:
Today's special animal friend is the Nautilus, a cephalopod in a really cool shell. There are lots of extinct ones, but only six extant species in two genera, Nautilus and Allonautilus. The two Allonautilus species are believed to be descended from the Nautilus; this taxonomy was sorted out in the late 1990s. Allonautilids are found near Bali, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.
Nautiluses, like all cephalopods, are weirdly fascinating. Unlike octopi and squid, which have tentacles, nautiluses have 60-90 appendages called "cirri." A cirrus is something like a tentacle, but it lacks the strength, flexibility, thickness, and sensitivity, so ... not all that useful? Maybe that's why they have so many. The very many cirri are ridged, and when they wrap around an object, the grip is very powerful. Cirri located near the eyes are different and may be used for smelling. Nautiluses have poor vision and are believed to locate prey by smell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmE2gZMYC8A
Nautiluses eat mostly shellfish, which they either hunt or scavenge. Like the giant squid, they have a sharp, powerful beak and a radula or serrated tongue. The largest species, Nautilus pompilius, grows up to 10 inches long, but most species are 8 inches or smaller, so you don't have to imagine them tearing and shredding you. Although it is hard to measure the intelligence of a shellfish, some experiments have been conducted that associated food with flashing lights, and the nautiluses were able to remember the correlation for up to 24 hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UYFCiV0r4c
The nautilus is the only cephalopod that lives inside a shell. The animal can withdraw entirely into the shell and close the opening with a leathery "hood" using specialized appendages. The shell is made of aragonite, a type of calcium carbonate. The nautilus is famously "chambered," building out its shell as a "phragmocone" of "camerae" that increase in size as the animal grows. The camerae are separated by "septa" (plural of "septum," like in your nose), each pierced by a duct called a "siphuncle." At hatching, a nautilus has 2 to 4 tiny camerae, while an adult has around 30 of increasing size.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXPEH_wsZBM
The arrangement is a logarithmic spiral and is really beautiful, especially because the interior is nacreous, that is, formed from a very smooth, iridescent, organic-inorganic composite material that is also known as "mother of pearl." Biology and mineralogy and chemistry aren't really different subjects, when you think about it. The shell is resistant to pressure up to about 2,600 feet deep; deeper than that, it implodes. The animal is able to survive at the surface as well as at depth.
Nautiluses reproduce very slowly, reaching maturity at 15 years of age; total lifespan is about 20 years. Females lay eggs one-by-one or in small batches attached to rocks in warm water. The eggs take up to a year to hatch, and both the eggs and the one-inch hatchlings are vulnerable to predators. Natural predators of adults include octopi and large fish such as triggerfish and grouper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLfk6U0eiFE
For thousands of years, nautilus shells have been collected as a curiosity and for the manufacture of ornaments. They are now protected from trade by CITES, but you know how that goes. Nautilus pompilius is listed as Vulnerable by IUCN, and there is concern about all six species.
Speaking of watches and clocks and in line with a note I posted yesterday about the use of words, this one comes to mind. There is a world of difference between saying "Your beauty could halt the passage of time" and "Your face could stop a clock." Be careful with the words you choose.