Taking Its Time - The Resurrection Of British Watchmaking

We are excited to have recently recruited Ali Raja, an MEng graduate of Mechanical Engineering at Queen's University Belfast. One of his passions is watches and he recently prepared this brief history of watchmaking in Britain. It provides a useful insight into the complexities of watches, and their movements.

Britain was once the home of horology. Scientists and mathematicians worked together in the streets of London to develop technologies that became the bedrock of modern timekeeping:

Robert Hooke invented the balance spring in 1657 which, when attached to the balance wheel in a mechanical timepiece caused it to oscillate with a resonant frequency. As a result, it controlled the speed at which the wheels of the watch turn, and thus the rate of movement of the hands.