(Many clocks ticking.) (Gentle guitar music starts to play.) A Horologist is somebody who has an
interest in clocks and watches that includes practitioners so watchmakers, clockmakers, repairers but can also include historians, researchers and
writers. I became interested in Horology, clocks
and watches in secondary school and I think this was a byproduct of my boyhood
dismantling things and being surrounded by Lego, Meccano, Fischer Technic, had
always been fascinated about how things worked, taking things to pieces putting
them back together again and this eventually led me to watches and clocks. I'm somebody who loves creating things
and I have this, you know, pent up mechanical inclination and so it gives
me great satisfaction being able to create something, produce something, turn
a piece of metal into a working object. There's an immense satisfaction involved in that. I volunteer with a group that does
conservation work on artifacts belonging to the Museum of Timekeeping here at the BHI. I don't repair watches and clocks for a living, although I am a trained watch repairer, I sell watches and as a volunteer it has
given me the opportunity to explore all those aspects of practical Horology that
I'm so interested in. The project I'm currently working on is the restoration of my favorite clock, a Short Free Pendulum clock. It's the most accurate
pendulum clock ever made. The skills a Horologist needs include
patience, bags of patience, lots of discipline and dedication, the ability to
just keep on persevering repeating the same task over and over, trying, trying,
trying, being prepared to discard your work and start over until it's
absolutely perfect. The BHI or British Horological Institute
is an organization that's been in existence for 160 years and its aims are
for the promotion and preservation of the crafts and skills of Horology
and that means it's an educational organization dedicated to training clock
and watchmakers not only in the United Kingdom but from all over the world. The museum has an amazing collection of clocks going back to in excess of 350
years that show the progression of timekeeping, tools, how things were made. So some great examples from the museum that I love are the speaking clocks, four
different types of speaking clock that were used throughout the 20th century.
There are turret clocks galore, turret clocks of every kind. Amazing beautiful long case clocks, you know, very traditional clocks. There is my favorite the Short Free Pendulum clock. There is also the world class library which is one of the top three horological libraries in the world. For me there's an immense satisfaction
in creating something out of a piece of dead metal, turning it into a useful
object. Also seeing an object spring to life that has been dormant and gone
fallow for many years is great satisfaction in seeing that kind of
resurrection. So this is an IWC Navigator's watch made by the International Watch Company of Schaffhausen in Switzerland for the German Air Force in the Second World War. And so it's it's designed for aerial
navigation hence its size which helps in obtaining precision, precision of
timekeeping and also legibility and these watches are very rare and this
particular one comes from the collection of Watch Club in London. (The watch begins to tick.) We live in an age that is so digital and
disposable, I'm delighted to be a participant in a long and ancient craft
that values skill and craftsmanship and I'm happy to be part of a team that
helps keep this alive. (Watch ticks.)
