The grandeur of Place Vendôme is hard to match, and to say that about a location in a city like Paris is quite a statement. Follow Martin Green’s tour of the horological history of the square and discover what makes this place so special.
Watch- and clockmaking has a long history in Germany, as evidenced by the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century timepieces from the Nuremberg/Augsburg area and the academic discussions of Peter Henlein, who is said to have made the world’s first pocket watch around 1505. But the country’s roots in great watchmaking do not stop there: Elizabeth Doerr takes us on an historical journey of Glashütte, the birthplace of modern Germany’s fine watches.
Glashütte celebrates 175 years of watchmaking and unveils a memorial statue of Walter Lange. Elizabeth Doerr was one of the few journalists at the COVID-19-restricted event and shares a recap of it with us here.
Close to 120 years after Abraham-Louis Breguet patented the tourbillon, master watchmaker Alfred Helwig (1886-1974) created a “flying” tourbillon at the German School of Watchmaking in Glashütte. The flying tourbillon became somewhat characteristic of Glashütte and lives on in a few very special watches today. Who was Alfred Helwig? Find out here.
Here we present the full three-part series about the making of Derek Pratt’s John Harrison H4 reconstruction, originally written by Roger Stevenson, chief watchmaker at Frodsham.
If you’ve been lucky enough to travel to the “four corners” area of the southwestern United States (where U.S. states Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico “meet”), then you may have seen or even visited some of the cliff dwellings built by ancient native peoples. Read on to find out what we know about how this ancient tribe now known as the Ancestral Puebloans kept time and why.
The majority of today’s numerous flieger-style watches are inspired by the now-iconic German pilot’s and navigator’s watches of World War II, becoming a genre unto themselves. Bhanu Chopra flies high to take a deep dive into the long history of this popular style.
You may have heard of a few or more of the following historical people and events: Thomas Mudge, George Graham, John Harrison, the Longitude Prize, Captain James Cook, and the mutiny on the ‘HMS Bounty.’ However, you are less likely to have heard the name of a horologist who played a pivotal role in all of the above: Larcum Kendall (1719–1790). Come with me on a worldwide adventure involving timekeeping and history.
In 1783, just as the queen of France, Marie Antoinette, was sitting for a portrait, an officer of the queen’s guard visited Abraham-Louis Breguet’s workshop: Queen Marie Antoinette desired a pocket watch containing all known horological complications at the time. It took 44 years to complete and is perhaps the most famous watch in history, as much for its intriguing story as its ingenious mechanics.
Post-war United States boasted unique market conditions that allowed for diamond-set men’s watches from a variety of brands to thrive. Martin Green takes us on a journey to discover how and why diamond-set watches for men became part of the American Dream.