Hands of Time: A Watchmaker's History

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This is a wonderful accounting of time-telling and pocket- and wristwatches throughout the last five centuries or so during which they've been around. As well as all the history, there are personal anecdotes relating to the author's own journey as a watchmaker - the studying, the struggle to set up a business with her husband, the tools and machinery they use. Struthers's uses watches that she has worked on, examples from the natural world along with art, history and more. An 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. Forty-thousand years of our relationship with time condensed into 288 pages: a hugely entertaining achievement.

I had spent years being stressed, anxious, and exhausted, but I hadn't allowed for happiness, and now I might be out of time. 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. She eventually brings us all the way up to today, when many of us have Apple watches strapped to our wrists. Struthers is such an ideal author for this book, because her decades of experience of studying and working with watches is embedded within every page: "Now watchmakers like Craig and me are a rare breed.A fascinating and elucidating trip through the history of human timekeeping, told by a master clock maker with the ability to appreciate the engineering and design of each new invention and improvement.

If you imagine the former but much longer and written by the latter, you'd have a fair idea of how this book reads. She lives in Staffordshire with Craig; her dog, Archie; cats Isla and Alabama; and Morrissey the mouse.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.