This post is part of a series, Reading Time at HSNY, written by our librarians. Today’s post was written by Miranda Marraccini.

The Horological Society of New York was founded in 1866 by watchmakers for watchmakers–a community in which members leaned on each other if they got sick or needed help. As the Society grew and flourished, this element receded into the background. HSNY stopped providing sick benefits to members in the early 20th century. Although members continued to support each other in an informal way, their connections are not always visible decades later, through the obscuring screen of time.

In the late 1930s, HSNY began publishing the The Horologist’s Loupe, a newsletter for members keeping them informed about the Society’s events, as well as general developments in horology (many past issues are available on our website, and the originals reside in our library). Recently, with the help of our summer intern Michelle Julien, I read through some early issues of The Loupe as part of a project to better understand the Society’s history. As I read, however, I found that the contents of The Loupe were more personal, and more revealing, than I thought. I saw threads emerge–social threads. There was tragedy, celebration, consolation, and even a little mystery. Men took vacations and wives. They went to war and came back. They lost sons.

From the earliest days of The Loupe, the newsletter mentions casual social gatherings. Outside of the “smokers,” “banquets,” and more formal events that I’ve written about in previous articles, HSNY members liked to just hang out! In September 1938, “after the meeting about 45 members gathered for a congenial hour around a glass of beer and sandwiches in a nearby restaurant and thus were given an opportunity to meet friends and renew contacts” after the summer break.

In summer, particularly, The Loupe is full of bucolic vacation news. Members relax in Europe, Mexico, and more locally in upstate New York. When Barny Goldstein visited the Rockies on vacation, the editor made a joke about his “energetic” collecting habits, writing, “If one should suddenly encounter a 13,000 foot peak obstructing 59th street approach to the Queensboro Bridge, it should be sufficient notice to all that Barny is back (not empty-handed).”

Image 1 shows an original cartoon titled “Summer Time in the ‘Catskills’,” at the time a popular vacation destination for New Yorkers. In the cartoon, a man and a woman relax in a canoe, possibly at sunset, while the man sings a guitar ballad. The woman looks enchanted, her arm loosely dangling into the water. Emerging from the lake like an amphibian, a young man wearing a loupe peers at her wrist. Below the waterline, one fish remarks to the other “he’s a watchmaker on vacation!” I think the joke is that a watchmaker is never truly on vacation because he always finds a watch to work on somehow.

These vacation reports, full of inside jokes, demonstrate how well HSNY men knew each other (see another example, image 2). In summer 1949, Orville R. Hagans went on a fishing trip, and Barny Goldstein, serving as temporary editor, reported teasingly: “the wire service is very accurate in advising re Mr. Hagans’ negative catches!” Goldstein must have regretted his snarky tone, because in our copy of the issue, he added a signed note to this item that reads “I apologize – 22″ worth.” Orville showed him up with a pretty big catch!

Speaking of a good catch, another category of joyful article in The Loupe is the wedding announcement. In 1949, the editor reports that “Ben Cohen took unto himself a bride” and wishes him “best of luck and happiness, Ben!” In 1961, the editor asks playfully: “Congratulations to Leonard J. Oppenheimer, to be married November 12, 1961. Are you going to show us your new bride?” After weddings, naturally, children are born, and the community offers its generous best wishes.

Members’ interest in their friends’ families doesn’t end after birth, though. Sometimes articles show up that tell us what members’ adult children were doing, either personally or professionally. In April 1952, the editor writes: “Mr. Klein showed some photographs from ‘Bill’ at the last meeting (taken in Korea)....he looks ‘grown up’....handsome and rugged.” Bill Klein, son of member Morris Klein, was in Korea because he was serving in the Korean War.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, regular reports in The Loupe covered members’ service in the Second World War and Korean War, respectively. In December 1945, a member “back from the army and now in mufti, was a most welcome sight…[he] was a horological technician while in the Army.” (“Mufti” is a slang term for civilian clothes I wasn’t familiar with.) In January 1946, the Society welcomed back another veteran who was “an instructor of instrument repairs” in the army and “now senior instructor at the Bulova Watchmaking School.”

In 1951, Private J. W. Mandelbaum was “too tired” to repair some of his fellow soldiers’ broken watches during basic training. In the same year, The Loupe printed an excerpt from a lively letter written by member Walter J. Reif, who was stationed on a ship off Italy. Walter made friends with the local watchmaker, despite the language barrier: “we got along with a two-language dictionary and a pencil” (image 3).

As these snippets indicate, horological training served these men well both during their service and afterward, when they gained stable employment. I’ve written about veteran watchmakers before, but for the first time while reading The Loupe, I understood how service shaped HSNY. A significant percentage of men in HSNY were either servicemembers or the parents of servicemembers. The current of war runs through The Loupe and brings with it both anxiety and relief. Today, this legacy lives on in our free classes, memberships, and scholarship for veterans.

You might notice that I’ve been referring to members as men, and that’s because HSNY was an all-male organization for much of the 20th century, though women sometimes attended meetings and events. As early as 1946, a Loupe report notes approvingly that the “usual stag-like” demographic at a monthly meeting was “pleasantly interrupted” by women in the audience. These included “one female horologist who displayed a keen and genuine interest” in the technical topic of the lecture.

Naturally, with the passage of time, many members experienced family loss and grief, and they shared their burdens through the medium of The Loupe. In the October 1938 issue, there is the first appearance of an announcement expressing sympathy for a member “on the occasion of the untimely demise of his wife.”

More often, members are ill. It’s not unusual in The Loupe to read about someone’s “protracted illness” or surgery. What I find touching is that other members noticed when they didn’t see their friends for a while, and they would check on them and send updates. In February 1950, for example, “Mr. Foster Brown…was ill and Mr. Feller was requested to visit Mr. Brown and report if the society could be of some assistance.” Thankfully, in October 1951, he was looking “better than ever.”

Mr. Andrew Park (twice President of HSNY) had a turbulent health journey that weaves through the Loupe of the 1940s and 50s. In 1948, while President, he was “on his way to Europe for a much deserved rest.” He was “not feeling too well” but “still attending our meetings regularly” in March 1951. When he endured a “major operation” in fall 1951, the Loupe’s editor at the time reported on his recuperation, urging “hurry back Andy!” Park soon retired to Florida and died in 1953. The editor eulogized him as an “outstanding craftsman,” noting: “distance did not dim the affection of the membership for him.”

The “chatter column,” a regular feature during this period, reported not only major life events but also minor changes. For example, Henry B. Fried, HSNY President in the mid-1950s, was “putting on pounds” (image 4). I’m not sure if Fried had been ill or if this was an entirely unsolicited observation. Either way, I don’t think I’d want this level of detail memorialized in print, but then, members probably didn’t see The Loupe as something that would be scrutinized by researchers several decades later. To them, it was ephemera – a way to connect and share news of interest only to a small, comfortable in-group.

Another similar column notes that “Felix Klein, with his leg in a cast, attended our last meeting. Undaunted by his cast, he was, as usual, hard at work. We all wish him a speedy foot healing.” There’s a bit of a wink in the phrase “speedy foot healing” but really, these columns are saturated with a touching level of genuine concern. These men cared about each other and formed a tight network. They visited and nursed each other.

Although this mode of mutual support was a serious business, reading The Loupe showed me that these men had fun together, too. Of course, there were the summer vacations mentioned above, but even at monthly meetings, the atmosphere was not all straight-laced. Sometimes, the merriment was horological: In October 1945, HSNY hosted a “gadget night”: “At this meeting all members are invited to bring their pet odd gadgets and little tools that should prove of unusual interest to all – some of our members have promised to display a variety of odd ‘gadgets’” (image 5). In the photo below the announcement, showing the previous month’s meeting audience, most of the attendees look far too serious to be fooling around with “odd gadgets”– though I see a few smirks.

Sometimes there is levity unrelated to horology. For instance, in early 1950, one member demonstrated a surprising talent: “Hofsommer is [a] speed chess champ. While a small gathering watched, Walter Hofsommer quickly check-mated all comers.” Hofsommer and friends didn’t just come to meetings to discuss watch repair. They came for the atmosphere, the chance to socialize among like-minded people.

A considerable amount of space is taken up in mid-1946 issues of The Loupe by the planning and execution of a trip to the Hayden Planetarium (now called The Rose Center for Earth and Space) at the American Museum of Natural History. Image 6 conveys something of the level of excitement for this excursion, including a drawing of the building and the exhortation: “This interesting meeting has long been planned–Lets see you all there!!” While it may seem quaint to plan an earnest field trip like this for a group of adults, we have to remember that the planetarium was only around 10 years old at the time; its state-of-the-art projector showed views of the universe that people couldn’t see anywhere else, in mesmerizing detail.

The Loupe supplied a vivid preview of the event: “the walls and ceiling of what a moment ago was a great domed room have disappeared and we are out-of-doors with the darkening heavens above us…taking our breath with their beauty, the stars come out!...an involuntary gasp of amazement rises from the audience…we enter that other world of the sky.” Despite the over-the-top prose, there’s a sense of real excitement among members to connect with something bigger than themselves. Over 225 people attended that month’s meeting.

According to The Loupe, HSNY members also took part in another popular pastime: the movies. Hollywood came knocking in 1948, when Paramount produced the film “The Big Clock.” The studio apparently consulted with members of HSNY’s executive committee on the project. The Loupe credits the film for “making the country clock conscious.” In image 7, President Andrew Park presents some sort of “commendation” to Paramount representative Anita Colby, who was an actor and a studio executive (though not actually in the movie). Without spoiling the plot, the thriller does indeed include a big clock in a pivotal role (hint: someone hides inside). Today, HSNY performs a similar role in entertainment, with our Executive Director, Nicholas Manousos, recently advising HBO in the production of a clock-related storyline for The Gilded Age.

Throughout the period of The Loupe I researched, HSNY members frolicked, grieved, and worked hard–but whatever they did, they did it together. A note to “new members” in 1951 reads: “Sometimes you may attend a meeting and feel kind of ‘lonesome’ and you may feel ignored. Think nothing of it. We don’t mean it that way. We’re no snobs. As a matter of fact, we are glad you are there. Gradually you’ll become acquainted. C-U-A-gain.” That’s still the spirit in which we welcome new members, and even nonmembers, in our library and at our lectures. And of course, you can still sign up to receive The Loupe, digitally of course. We hope to C-U soon, and we’re glad you’re here!

Reading Time at HSNY: Life in The Loupe

Upcoming Lecture: The Conservation of the Great Clock of Westminster – Big Ben