Hands of Time: A Watchmaker's History

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Beautifully written and endlessly fascinating, it feels like this was a story waiting to be written . Hands of Time is a journey through watchmaking history, from the earliest attempts at time-keeping, to the breakthrough in engineering that gave us the first watch, to today - where the timepieces hold cultural and historical significance beyond what its first creators could have imagined.

They have travelled the world with us, from the depths of the oceans to the summit of Everest, and even to the Moon. I found this book by a student watchmaker to be an excellent example of the study of time or horology. Struthers approaches this history with a eye for interesting stories which sum up large portions of the human relationship with time. This history provides insight into the cultural and historical significance of time and the shifts in human behavior that have gone hand-in-hand with changes in the way we think about and use time.Just as interesting as this history are Struthers' cultural insights and her tracking of the evolution of the watch, from an elite status symbol to a popular tool to a status symbol all over again. We go with her through her journey as a watchmaker and get flashed back in time like a montage when the author sees any particular historical watch.

In fact, I was considering canceling my Audible subscription, but fortunately, I had a remaining credit which I wisely used to prebook this gem. All still work, all get batteries when needed, though some like the Burger watches were never meant to last. It's the first book I read about watchmaking and it was a fascinating travel that involves more than I thought.As impeccably crafted and precisely engineered as any of the watches on which the author has worked so lovingly over the years, this book is a joy to behold and a wonder to enjoy. Struthers finishes the book with a hypothetical walkthrough of a typical watch cleaning/repair session, and as she puts the finishing touches on her repairs, I found myself reflecting on the nature of our relationship with time and what the future might hold for mechanical watch movements as we plunge deeper into the digital age. Rebecca Struthers (who keeps her PhD quiet, which seems to reflect the way she comes across from writing) does an outstanding job reflecting on the history of time-keeping and the impact that time has on our lives.

Struthers's uses watches that she has worked on, examples from the natural world along with art, history and more. Their enthusiasm leaps off the page so if, like me, you love getting someone talking about their special interest and you like to hear about watches or just areas of history and engineering that don't usually come up outside of textbooks then I highly suggest you grab this book. As someone who has a large watch collection this captured for me a lot of what makes these devices so special, and why I refuse to migrate over to an Apple Watch.If you imagine the former but much longer and written by the latter, you'd have a fair idea of how this book reads. If an 18th-century watch turned up on my workbench, I would struggle to tell whether it had belonged to a man or woman. Very insightful and provided enough knowledge to keep it incredibly interesting without becoming a text just for watchmakers! This is a captivating exploration of horology that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone seeking a comprehensive overview. It does mention the names of milestone mechanisms to note improvement through time, but there aren't even diagrams of many of them.