“Hands of Time: A Watchmaker History of Time” by Rebecca Struthers
This is a well-rounded book about time keeping, written by a professional watchmaker who just happens to have a PhD in Horology. An expert in many sense of the word.
The book is mainly a history of watches, but it is so much more than just focusing on the timepieces. And instead, the book also provides an impressive range of world history for the context of the development of timepiece technology, from primitive sundial, to water clock, sand clock, pocket watch, to the many first wrist watches, the complicated perpetual calendar timepieces, to the rise of Quartz and digital watches, and so much more in between.
This is also a story about our relationship with time, how we utilize time very differently in the past, how we record time in the pre-GMT era, about quirks such as the human alarm job (the knocker-uppers) in the medieval era.
But ultimately this is a watchmaker’s notes, that goes into intricate details about all the components that make a watch, the trial and errors of using many different materials, the revolutionary breakthroughs that made watchmaking smaller and lighter and stronger, and most incredibly in the last chapter it provides a guide to repair a mechanical watch from start to finish.
Along the way, in between the amusing stories, we get abundance of facts around Horology, such as why we use “clockwise” movement, where the word “clock” comes from, the fact that the small pocket in the right pocket of a jeans was intended for a place to put our pocket watch, and many personal stories about a timepiece and its historical figure owner such as my favourite (if not tragic) story of Queen Mary of Scots.
And of course, with this book being a history book of watchmaking, we get to learn about the earliest watchmakers in history, the development of fake watches and forgeries, and plenty of stories of horology heroes such as Abraham-Louis Breguet, Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis the founders of Rolex, or even the author’s personal tutor Paul Thurlby who was a watchmaker for Omega.
All in all, it is quite simply a complete book on everything we need to know about timepieces and our relationship with time. A delightful read from the beginning to the end.
THE CHAOS THEORY 