Hands of Time: A Watchmaker's History

Product Information

Data enthusiasts will love the detailed footnotes, glossary of terms, bibliography, further rescues, and extensive notes. This book begins with the very first known evidence of humans' attempts to track time, to the first clocks every made to modern day timepieces. An intricate and personal history of watches and time from an extraordinary watchmaker and historianA watchmaker's world is not much bigger than a thumbnail.

This book is a must-read for anyone who cherishes the artistry of timekeeping and leaves you inspired to explore the world of horology with newfound vigor. If I look out from my office window, I see three huge buildings with 'Rolex' in discreet lettering on top, so it was interesting to read about how the Swiss watch industry grew as a mass market response to the high costs imposed by the strict guilds of London. Forty-thousand years of our relationship with time condensed into 288 pages: a hugely entertaining achievement.An intricate and personal history of watches and time from an extraordinary watchmaker and historian.

She brings the craft of making and repairing watches to life and even the glossary is an engaging read .

She explores this through the watches and other timepieces that were significant to technical design, changing fashions and society's attitudes to time. Hands of Time puts them into cultural and historical context, combines that with the story of Rebecca's singular career, and assembles the parts against a backdrop of the whole history of time. The book has black and white illustrations that give clarity to the text, and several colorful pictures in the middle of the book. Hardly a day goes by that I don't head over to my bookshelf to pick up a title about watches, but I'm not sure I've yet read one quite like Hands of Time: A Watchmaker's History by Rebecca Struthers.

It doesn't have great descriptions of how watches work or details about sophisticated complications. Horology is the name for the study and measurement of time, and I learned quite a bit from this book.

Meanwhile, pocket watches had been positioned as the choice for men, adventurers, and cowboys – when Levi Strauss introduced his 501 jeans in 1873, the small inner pocket at their front right was designed to hold a pocket watch, a quirk that persists to this day. Rather than just relaying the history, she makes this book personal through her own depth of knowledge.

Beautifully written and endlessly fascinating, it feels like this was a story waiting to be written. While I anticipated a tone reminiscent of “Sapiens,” the author surprised me by weaving in personal anecdotes from her journey in watchmaking.Hands of Time is an intricate exploration of the history, science, philosophy, and craft of timekeeping.