“The worst job was the last,” he confessed, “adjusting the little steel check-pieces on the balance-springs; a process which I can only describe as like trying to thread a needle stuck into the tailboard of a motor-lorry which you are chasing on a bicycle. I finished this, with a gale lashing the rain on to the windows of my garret, about 4 P.M. on February 1st, 1933—and five minutes later No. 1 had begun to go again for the first time since June 17th, 1767: an interval of 165 years.”
