276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Hands of Time: A Watchmaker's History

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Hands of Timeis 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. Acclaimed watchmaker Rebecca Struthers uses the most important watches throughout history to explore their attendant paradigm shifts in how we think about time, indeed how we think about our own humanity. From an up-close look at the birth of the fakes and forgeries industry which marked the watch as a valuable commodity, to the watches that helped us navigate trade expeditions, she reveals how these instruments have shaped how we build and then consequently make our way through the world. I love coming across new authors and their works. This was a great treasure in my mind. This is only book 1 in this series and I can not wait to read more....Stormi

An engaging survey through a period of intellectual history that reveals as much about people who wear watches as the objects on their wrists." – Wall Street Journal This book is a true gem! It delves into the world of watchmaking, offering a unique perspective from the eyes of a watchmaker. It reads like an autobiography, intertwining the history of time and watchmaking, and providing detailed insights into the creation of each component. The author's ethereal writing style adds a touch of fantasy to the reading experience. It's a book that captivates the curious mind.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. Early Swiss watches were low-cost fakes - or at least lower-cost imitations of the English handmade luxury items. Rolex was the brainchild of a German advertising expert, who bought cheap Swiss movements, assembled them in London and marketed the resulting wrist watches as the perfect tool for the macho adventurer, in an era when wrist watches were generally seen as effeminate.

Instead, it is a book that covers the full history of the world as it relates to timekeeping. How the measurement of time has been used to save lives, proclaim love, exploit workers, explore the world, fight wars, symbolise wealth, and sustain economies. In that way it's much more wide-reaching, and of wider appeal, than a book just about watches. It shows how timekeeping has underpinned, supported, or enabled a vast cross-section of historical events as wide-ranging as the French revolution and the moon landings - though the latter only garners a single short sentence. In watch circles people are often tribally divided into Omega or Rolex fans, and Struthers seems rather to be in the Rolex camp, dedicating at least a whole chapter to Rolex, and barely a sentence to Omega. I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of the Accutron, quartz, swatch, and digital watches, which felt like a fitting and complete way to finish the story. Also pleasing was the mature and socially aware discussion of difficult topics such as Nazi watches, British colonial history, the subjugation and exploitation of women, enslaved people, and children throughout history. Valarie has sex with Finn like, immediately after she gets there. Valarie gets pregnant and they do end up marrying.The book is also about your life and career. A recurring theme is people saying you can’t do something – and you proving them wrong. It starts with a teacher at school telling you Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days is too long and hard for you to read. You were eight. Have you chilled out a bit? I was somewhat expecting more than a memoir and more of a history of time measuring devices and watches, because the book’s subtitle states: “How humanity’s most profound technical achievement tells the story of time itself.” This was not the case. Timepieces are one of humanity’s most ingenious innovations. Their invention was more significant for human culture than the printing press, or even the wheel. They have travelled the world with us, from the depths of the oceans to the summit of Everest, and even to the Moon. They regulate our daily lives and have sculpted the social and economic development of society in surprising and dramatic ways. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

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.” –Simon Winchester, author of The Perfectionists and LandAn award-winning watchmaker—one of the few practicing the art in the world today—chronicles the invention of time through the centuries-long story of one of mankind’s most profound technological achievements: the watch. Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. A fascinating history of timekeeping from Harrison to Hamilton, from Sundials to Seikos. On the basis of the author's profession I had, I admit, mistaken it to be a book about watches. In fact only a handful of chapters at the end are dedicated to wrist watches.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment