Revolution in Time

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A book about the history of the mechanical clock. Its inventors, investors and consumers. I really enjoyed reading this. It’s like reading a history book but looking through a very specific lens. I like it as a concept and after reading this book I added a lot more ‘history of industry’ books to my list.

The mechanical clock

  1. Weight driven
  2. Transmitted energy of falling weight through a gear train
  3. Used oscillation to track the flow of time

1. Why Innovation Was Focused in Europe

  • China

    • Astronomical clock

    • Water wheel clocks & clepsydras (sand timers with water)

      • Froze in winter (same as in Europe)

  • Middle East

    • No trouble with cloudy skies or cold weather

    • Hence sundials and water clocks worked fine –> No innovation

  • Room for error

  • Europeans brought clocks to China

  • China did not take opportunity to copy and improve them

  • China did not need to know the time like Europe did

  • Communist china –> You do things when government says, not at a certain time

  • Clocks represented an insult to china

    • Clocks very Christian (telling you when to pray etc)

  • Interest in time measurement –> The clock (Not the other way around)

  • Popularity of clocks grew in line with developments in Astronomy

  • Also grew as Christianity grew (prayer times)

  • Monestary bells –> Timings for monks to increase productivity for God

  • Early turret clocks

    • Very expensive

    • A mark of prestige

2. History of Horological Techniques

  • Personalisation of time

    • Miniturisation (1400s)

      • Allowed for portability

      • Birth of the watch

      • Who’s watch was most accurate? <– Status symbol

      • “Privatisation”/personalisation of time –> Individualism –> Growth of horology in Europe

    • War

      • Personal time was useful for military organisation

  • Regional Focuses

    • Main parts of horology development

      1. English/Dutch: Greater accuracy & measurement precision
      2. Germans: Greater complexity (minaturisation, advanced engineering)
      3. French: Development of the watch as an ornament of beauty

    • Drivers of accurate time measurement

      1. Astronomers

      2. Calculation of longitude at sea (longitude can be inferred from time differences at sea)

        • “Dead reckoning”

        • Britain announced big prize for whoever could solve this longitude problem

  • Further Precision

    • 1600s – Introduction of a minute hand

    • Galileo vs Huygens: Who invented the pendulum clock?

    • Industry ran into the verification problem

      • How do you know if your watch is accurate if you dont have an accurate watch to compare it to?

    • 1690s – Introduction of second and fractional second hands

      • In Britain to ensure bookies knew the winner of Horse races

  • Reaching an Asymptote

    • The last gains are the hardest and this was the point the industry was at

    • Improvements generally came in reduction of friction

      • Using crystals/rubies in watches

      • Adding oil regularly

  • Longitude Problem Solved

    • John Harrison

      • Englishman that solved the longitude problem with a clock he made from wood

      • His clock was called the H4

  • French rise to challenge English dominance

    • Pierre Le Roy

      • Arguably the greatest horologist to ever live

      • Chronometer (detend) escapement

    • Ferdinand Berthoud – Another french clockmaker

    • Patriotism drove the french horologists

  • Arnold v Earnshaw

    • In 1700s, John Arnold began to manufacture and industrialise the Chronometer

    • Ran into competition from Thomas Earnshaw

    • Large debate around the father of the English marine clock: Earnshaw vs Arnold

    • A pocket chronometer by either of these men would still work perfectly today

    • One Second = 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of ground state of the cesium-133 atom

3. Who Made Clocks, and How

  • Royal comissions

    • Something unique to clockmaking in the 1700s-1800s was that maintenance was as costly and time consuming as production

    • “Royally comissioned”

      • Watchmaking was expensive, so initially horologists were comissioned by royalty and the ultra wealthy to make custom pieces

  • Division of labour

    • Driven by specialisation

    • Clockmaking broke down into

      • Master clockmaker – Owner of the shop and maker of designs/manufacturing process

      • Apprentices – Doing apprenticeship under a master

      • Journeymen – Completed apprenticeship but had not yet opened their own shop

    • Clockmakers guilds

      • Made to protect against competition

      • Had to be in the guild to sell clocks

    • Prevention of competition = Decreased innovation

  • British Superiority

    • Britain vs France

    • Industrial revolution

      • British horology enjoyed a century of superiority in the 1700s

      • Demand for watches in Britain grew as people had more money

    • Initiation of import wars on watches from france

    • Importing watches to copy them was a big market too

  • Geneva

    • Place of refuge for protestants in France

    • Had a highly skilled population

    • Had access to cheap labour in the farms of the mountains

    • Travelling merchants grew in importance

      • Knew what was popular

      • Transported watches

  • The Swiss Jura

    • Abundance of cheap labour

    • Low cost mass production

    • Made very cheap watches

    • Standardised parts –> Replaceable

    • Geneva made the custom beautiful watches, the jura mass produced for the standard person

  • UK unable to compete with the Swiss

    • “Unification of time”

    • As everyone needed to know the time –> Increased demand –> Benefits mass producers (Swiss Jura)

    • Policy blockades preventing Jura watches in UK were avoided with smuggling, etc

    • Growth of common time from: Railways, industrial work

  • Growth of Swiss Industry

    • Improvement of both quality and quantity from the Swiss

    • New swiss watchmakers were popping up to make new styles (eg. Patek Phillipe)

    • Swiss market too small –> Needed to export –> Made the industry more flexible to change

  • American mass production

    • Driven by civil war of 1850s

    • Used machinery to make parts

      • High production and great quality + accuracy

    • US marketed their watches better than other nations

  • Swiss Response to the US

    • Swiss reacted to US much better than Britain did to the Swiss

    • Swiss stressed the quality of their pieces, which were better than the US

    • Marketed itself with a Swiss prestige

    • After this the US industry fell away

    • The Swiss became crazy dominant in the watch market

  • Quartz Watches

    • USA and Japan benefitted from this

      • Timex, Seiko, Casio

      • US did mass production right with Quartz watches

    • Swiss lacked the technological ability to compete

      • They stuck to the high quality, good prestige mechanical watches

    • Quartz kept better time than a lot of more expensive watches

    • Swiss lost a lot of market share as a result of not doing well with Quartz

    • Swiss are still untouchable in the prestige market

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