My Fault...When I said Uniform standards I should have been more precise-I refer to the change in regulations requiring employees under time inspection to have a certain class of watch, keeping time within certain accepted guidelines, as opposed to wearing anything they happened to come by.

By the turn of the century this most often consisted of:

An open faced watch(no lid), winding at the twelve and lever seting(set by pulling a lever at the edge of the dial, near the numeral "1"(in Waltham's case, often the numeral 11)and turninng the crown, with greater than 15 Jewels(17 or greater) and commonly a safety roller on the escapement, as opposed to the older practice of fitting a pin to the top of the horns of the pallet fork which passes through a crescent-shaped notch milled just to the outside of the jewel of the roller table.

The watch had to be sized 16 or larger.

The adjustments you speak of are performed in the shop in hopes that the watch will perform in the same mannor in the field, which it usually will, but on some occasions a watch will remain immune to all mannor of correction.
There are six positions in the shop that roughly approximate the carrying positions in use. The are Pendant up, right, left, dial up, dial down, and on the highest of the high [Bunn specials, Sangamos, 950's 992's, etc.] pendant down. Pendant down is the position horologists (horologi?) are least concerned with, as the watch seldom gets into this position on its own. The watch chain usually prevents it. Adjustments for position error are made:
by poising the balance wheel (taking weight from the heaviest point of the wheel, when the wheel is at rest in a poising tool or calliper, with the hairspring and collet off, but both rollers (impulse and safety) on.
by moving the pinning point of the hairspring collet
by making certian that both balance hole and cap jewels are uniform and perfect
by flattening the ends of the staff pivots ever so lightly (causes a watch to lose in the dial positions.)
by slight minipulation of the regulator pins (questionable in theory, but sometimes works in practice)
Some watches also have a poised pallet fork, having as part of their being an extension oppisite the horn.

Isochronism is the ability of the watch to keep the same time nearly wound down as when fully wound. The first step to an isochronous(is that a word?) watch is clean, hard burnished pivots and good clean jewels and bearings, followed by a clean and well lubricated mainspring. Some firms used a stopworks, that only the more uniform center coils of the mainspring be used. Breuget(sp?) developed a method of overcoiling hairsprings early in the 1800's that made it possible to pin the outer end of the hairspring much closer to the center of the wheel(and hairspring), which helped matters much. Alloy mainsprings and hairsprings have done much to alleviate isochronal error. Usually, judicious shifting of the screws in thhe rim of the balance wheel was also required.

Temperature adjustments are made:
by placing the watch movement, cased, in a cold box (30 deg F) and noting the time deviance that follows. The screws are then shifted away from ot towards the cut ends of the balance wheel rim as the situation calls for (an uncompensated watch will gain in cold temperature, as the hairspring contracts, and a compensated balance wheel will counteract that to an extant).
the same is done for heat (around 100 deg F, if memory serves). Modern Alloy ballance wheel and hairsprings have gone far in eliminating temperature error.

The dials usually had to be white in color, with the numerals (Arabic, not Roman) in bold black, with exception of the minute markers, which were usually in red. The hands were to be Blue or Black in color. The maker's name was to have been clearly placed on the dial.

The Grade designation (grade number or name) had to be stamped plainly into the back(upper) plate of the movement, (later on) also with adjustment designations.

FWIW Webb Ball made few if any of his own movements. He contracted them out From Elgin, Waltham, Hamilton, and I think Illinois. He and John Dueber (owner of Hampden Watch company and Dueber Watch Case Company in Canton Ohio) disagreed about jeweling practices, and nearly anything else they could think of. Hampden made some of the first high-jewel movements in the country, and Webb Ball was along the lines of Edward Howard, in that he thought a full jeweled watch to have seventeen and later nineteen jewels(the two extra jewels were either on the mainspring barrel or as cap jewels in the escapement).

IMHO THE Best railway watch ever made was the Hamilton 992B and 950B-never had a lick of trouble with either. Could clean oil restaff and recase one in 40 minutes or less....nice friction staff so the wheel seldom has to be poised unless some moron had gone to town on it. Nice solid balance wheel because they had a inert hairspring, and they were nicely finished too. Wonder one doesn't see anymore than they do, good as they were. Only gripe I had was Hamilton's lator day plastic dials that cracked like the devil with age-often the older porcelan dials look far better than their newer counterparts.

Ugh. Now it's timme for a nap.
Chaz