Latest / What's on Your Riste? A Watch Podcast / S01E18: The Country That Invented the Marine Chronometer and Then Forgot It Had/British-ish Watches

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S01E18: The Country That Invented the Marine Chronometer and Then Forgot It Had/British-ish Watches · What's on Your Riste? A Watch Podcast

0:00
The year is 1759. British Parliament has been
0:04
sitting on a problem for 40-5 years.
0:07
Ships are dying. Merchant vessels, naval
0:10
frigates, exploration craft, sailing into the Atlantic and
0:15
the Pacific and the Indian Oceans and failing to come home
0:18
because the captains don't know where they are.
0:21
Specifically, they can't solve longitude.
0:24
They can't solve and calculate latitude.
0:27
They have no idea how far north or South they are from the sun,
0:31
longitude, how Far East or West. Knowing the exact time back from
0:37
home and no clock made in 1759 can keep accurate time through
0:43
weeks at sea. The rolling of the ship, the
0:46
changes in temperature, the humidity, the constant
0:48
vibrations, these destroy the rates of even the finest
0:53
mechanical timepieces of the time.
0:54
In 1714 the British Parliament passed the Longitude Act and it
0:59
offered a prize of £20,000, the equivalent of roughly 3,000,000
1:04
lbs today to anyone who could solve this problem.
1:07
And the prize went unclaimed for decades.
1:10
And in 1759-A self-taught clock maker from Lincolnshire named
1:14
John Harrison. He delivered to the board of
1:17
Longitude an object the size of a large pocket watch.
1:21
It had taken him 17 years to build it and he called it the
1:25
H4. And the H4 kept time on a sea
1:28
voyage to the West Indies within 5 seconds over 81 days, 5
1:34
seconds across an entire ocean. Harrison solved the longitude
1:39
problem. He a British watchmaker working
1:42
alone with hand tools in the 18th century.
1:45
That's where this story is going to start.
2:02
small backroom by the bench, I file a loo and a atient hand.
2:09
Welcome back to What's on Your Restate.
2:10
I'm Wachowski and I want to before I begin, I want to say
2:14
hello and welcome to the listeners that we have in
2:17
different countries, obviously the ones in the United States,
2:20
but we also have folks listening from Japan, Ireland, Costa Rica,
2:24
Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Belgium, the United Kingdom.
2:27
And so if you are listening in one of those countries, just
2:29
know that I appreciate you listening.
2:31
I appreciate being able to share this across, you know, oceans
2:34
and continents. And if you share this to other
2:37
folks in other countries, I genuinely appreciate it means a
2:40
lot. And the fact that the this
2:41
storytelling that I get to do in Southern California, which was a
2:44
crazy idea, is being shared across the world is it's
2:48
humbling. And it's just a reminder that
2:51
there are a few folks out there that enjoy this kind of stuff as
2:55
well. And so just know that we are a
2:56
small but mighty tribe. And I appreciate you all and I
3:00
appreciate you sharing it with folks that you care about.
3:02
Just know it means a lot. So let's get into what's on your
3:05
Reese day for Boy, oh boy, I cannot believe this is our 18th
3:09
episode. So we've spent the last, you
3:12
know, 3 episodes outside of Witzerland.
3:14
We talked about tool watches, American watches.
3:17
We were in Japan for two episodes, right?
3:19
And today we're going to stay outside Switzerland, you know,
3:22
just one more time. We're going to go somewhere
3:24
that, for me, has particular resonance.
3:27
We're going. We're going to Britain.
3:28
And not because British watchmaking is the biggest story
3:31
in the hobby right now. It isn't.
3:33
Not because British, and specifically Britain, has the
3:36
most brands or the deepest infrastructure or the largest
3:38
output, but because Britain's history in this craft is
3:43
extraordinary. And because the modern revival
3:47
quiet, small. And I love to use this word for
3:49
my British brothers and sisters out there, stubborn in the most
3:53
respectful way I can say it. They're producing some of the
3:55
most interesting watchmaking right now.
3:57
So settle in. We're going to go into telling
4:00
you a story here. So segment one, we're going to
4:03
call the line Harrison, Mudge and Daniels.
4:07
So let me give you the shape of what Britain and specifically
4:11
their contribution to horology is because I think most watch
4:14
enthusiasts, even serious ones, may not fully see it.
4:17
And it took me a little while to even gather the information for
4:19
this episode. Britain gave Watch the Watch
4:22
World 3 foundational inventions and they span across 3
4:27
centuries. The first, the marine
4:28
chronometer John Harrison 1759. I just told you that story in
4:33
kind of my open the H4 solve the longitude problem.
4:36
It made global navigation reliable.
4:39
It changed the course of tradition, exploration and
4:42
empire. And it was built by a clockmaker
4:45
from a small English town who had almost no formal education.
4:49
The H4 is now in the National Maritime Museum in in Greenwich
4:53
and it guess what, it still runs.
4:56
The second was the lever escapement.
4:58
Lever escapement, right? A watchmaker named Thomas Mudge.
5:02
It's MUDGE. He invented it in 1755 and
5:07
roughly the same era as Harrison, the lever escapement
5:10
replaced the kind of verge escapement that had powered
5:13
mechanical watches for like 3 centuries.
5:16
And the system of it's the system of pallets and forks on
5:20
these kind of banking pins that regulate the release of energy
5:23
to the balance wheel. And virtually like every modern
5:26
mechanical watch that we have, it's that tick and tock that we
5:28
see. So every Swiss lever escapement,
5:32
even in like Rolex, every pat tech, every AP, every Omega is
5:36
basically a direct descendant of Thomas Mudge's invention.
5:40
He's an Englishman and the 18th century and again forgotten
5:43
outside of like the horological world.
5:45
But you know, present in on roughly a billion wrists, right?
5:49
And the third is going to be the coaxial escapement.
5:51
A watchmaker named George Daniels working alone in London
5:55
in like the second-half of the 20th century developed an
5:58
escapement that delivers energy to the balance wheel in a way
6:02
that reduces sliding friction. So most escapements work through
6:06
this sliding contact. The pallet pushes against the
6:10
escape wheel and specifically the escape wheel teeth.
6:13
And Daniels coaxial design uses uses kind of like a combination
6:17
of direct impulse and then separate coaxial wheels to
6:22
significantly reduce this friction.
6:24
And obviously less friction means longer service intervals.
6:28
So you might go from something that has like a five year
6:30
interval or a three to five year interval to 10 or 15 years,
6:33
right. And Omega licensed this design
6:35
in 1999 and it's now the only alternative escapement in
6:39
widespread commercial production.
6:41
So 3 inventions. Harrison's chronometer made the
6:44
seas navigatable, Mudge's lever escapement is inside of
6:48
basically every mechanical watch made today, and Daniels coaxial
6:52
escapement is inside of pretty much every modern Omega.
6:56
All British. And there is a fourth thing
6:59
Britain contributed, which is not really an invention, but
7:02
like a person, George Daniels, working alone.
7:05
In the 20th century, when British commercial watchmaking
7:08
had almost entirely collapsed, Daniels kept making watches by
7:12
hand, like complete watches from raw metal to finished pieces by
7:16
one person using traditional methods.
7:18
Again, the Daniels method, the complete individual fabrication
7:22
of a watch, was something Daniels essentially reinvented
7:24
as a deliberate artistic and horological statement.
7:29
He made 56 watches and approximately, I think 32 pocket
7:34
watches in his career, every one of them by hand alone in his
7:38
workshop. And when Daniels passed in 2011,
7:41
he left his workshop to his only apprentice.
7:44
And that apprentice is who we need to talk about first.
7:47
So segment 2, we're going to talk about Rodger W Smith, the
7:50
last keeper. He was born in 1970 and in
7:53
Bolton, and it's a town in kind of Greater Manchester.
7:57
And he grew up, in his own words, with no interest in
8:00
academic subjects whatsoever. He, what he had was kind of this
8:04
talent for making things with his hands.
8:07
So at 16, his father suggested that he, you know, enroll in the
8:11
Manchester School of Horology. And he did.
8:13
And he finished top of his class.
8:14
And he won the British Horological Institute's bronze
8:17
medal award. And it was given to him as the
8:20
most outstanding graduate student of the year.
8:23
So don't assume that bronze medal means that he got third
8:26
right. The bronze medal is the the most
8:28
outstanding graduate student of the year.
8:30
And during that time at the institute, George Daniels came
8:33
to speak and Rodger Smith said that from the moment he heard
8:37
Daniels talk about watchmaking and what it could be, you know,
8:40
the idea of one person, raw materials, complete creation, he
8:45
knew that that was his path. And so he left the institution
8:49
and spent years teaching himself to make watches by hand using
8:53
Daniels his own book again. The book named watchmaking as
8:57
his guide. His first attempt at a pocket
8:59
watch, including including this one minute turbion and a detent
9:03
escapement, it took him 18 months to complete.
9:06
He took it to Daniels on the Isle of Man and Daniels turn it
9:09
over, studied it and said in what has become kind of one of
9:12
the greatest lines in modern watchmaking, go back and start
9:16
again. It looks too handmade, not
9:19
poorly made, not technically deficient.
9:22
It looked too handmade, meaning the watch had evidence of the
9:26
hand was still visible in a way that it should not be.
9:29
A truly well made watch finish to the standard Daniels required
9:34
should look inevitable. It like it could never have been
9:38
made any other way. And this is humbling.
9:40
I think for me as well as someone who works with with
9:42
students, they will. I'll give you an example.
9:45
When I was doing my doctoral studies and I had written my
9:48
what I would consider my first complete draft of my
9:51
dissertation and the document was almost 500 pages.
9:54
They gave it to my dissertation chair and I thought he was going
9:57
to say, this is the most beautiful piece of literature
10:00
and, and, and prose and essay that I've ever read.
10:03
Right. And what I got back was I like
10:06
it. Now make it shorter as in cut it
10:08
down to if you can get it into the two hundred 250 page range,
10:12
no one's going to read your thing.
10:14
So it's kind of one of those reminders of I think it was Mark
10:17
Twain or someone has quoted Mark Twain and saying, you know, he
10:19
wrote his friend a three page paper.
10:21
And at the end he says, if I would have had more time, I
10:23
would have made it shorter as in it's very difficult to get to
10:26
the point. It's very simple to ramble on.
10:28
And I think what what was happening here between, you
10:32
know, Daniels and and Rodger were was was profound.
10:36
It was a teacher mentoring, right?
10:40
It was this moment of I'm not doing this because I dislike
10:42
you. I'm doing it because I I want to
10:44
show you the right way to do this.
10:46
And sometimes if you're thinking of sports analogies, it means
10:48
you're grabbing someone's face mask and you're getting in their
10:50
face a little bit and you're coaching them and you're saying
10:52
this is what you're going to do and then you go do it right now.
10:55
Again, not poorly made, just not there two handmade.
10:59
So Rodger, he went back and he spent the next 5 1/2 years
11:03
making his second pocket watch, making it and remaking it,
11:07
rebuilding sections as he improved his skills.
11:10
Four times he went back and rebuilt parts of the movement,
11:13
and then nine. Finally, in 1997, he took it to
11:16
the Isle of Man again. And Daniels held the watch,
11:19
looked at it closely and asked who made the case.
11:22
And Rodger said I did. And Daniels asked him who made
11:26
the dial, and Rodger said, I did.
11:28
And who made the escapement wheel also I did.
11:31
And who made this tour beyond cage response?
11:34
I did. Daniels closed the back of the
11:36
watch, stood up and said, congratulations, you're a
11:39
watchmaker. Rodger moved to the Isle of Man
11:41
that year, and he worked alongside Daniels on the
11:44
Millennium Wristwatch series, the first production watches
11:48
that Daniels that use Daniels as coaxial escapement in
11:51
partnership with Omega. And after the Millennium Project
11:55
concluded, Rodger opened his own studio in 2001, making watches
12:00
under his own name. Now when Daniels passed in 2011
12:04
of October 2011, he bequeathed his entire workshop to Roger
12:09
Smith. The lads, the tools, the hand
12:12
engine, turning equipment, some of that stuff dates back to
12:15
like, the 1820s. And the workshop had been home
12:19
to the most significant watchmaker in the 20th century.
12:22
And now it was the home of the only person that Daniels had
12:26
ever fully trained. The workshop today is on the
12:28
Isle of Man. It's a small island in the Irish
12:31
Sea between Britain and Ireland. It's best known for like,
12:35
motorcycle races and some offshore banking.
12:38
And occasionally you get a cyclist that's kind of awesome
12:41
from there as well. And Rodger Smith is small team,
12:45
you know, is 15 to 20 watches per year and every component
12:50
made by hand in the studio, every dial engine turned in
12:54
silver, every bridge hand bevelled and polished heat blued
12:59
hands. The series he makes are called
13:01
the Series one through the Series 6 and each offer a
13:04
different complication or displays architecture from time
13:08
only through like power reserves and open dials and traveling
13:12
date apertures and more. And they're all usually within
13:15
the 34 or 38 to 40mm. They're all made by Daniels's
13:19
method and they start well above £150,000.
13:24
And the wait times are now approaching, I think three years
13:26
of the time of this recording. Convert those to U.S. dollars
13:29
and it gets real pricey now. Rodger Smith was awarded an OBE,
13:34
which is the Order of British Empire in 2018 for services to
13:37
British watchmaking. Here's what I want you to
13:39
understand about Roger Smith. He's not just a watchmaker
13:42
making expensive watches on this like remote island.
13:45
He is the custodian of tradition, the British or the
13:49
tradition of British precision horology, the one that produced
13:53
Harrison and Mudge and Daniels. It almost died in the 20th
13:57
century. Like commercial British
13:59
watchmaking is essentially gone. What Rodger Smith does in that
14:03
workshop with these tools is the living continuation of something
14:07
that would have otherwise only existed in museums.
14:10
So every year, 15 watches leave that island, and the tradition
14:15
continues on for one more year. And that is, in my view, one of
14:19
the most quietly important things that's ever happened in
14:22
watchmaking today. And again, people talk about the
14:25
names and the brands and the watches, but they don't talk
14:27
about the history or the story behind it.
14:29
And so I hope that these stories land with you.
14:32
Segment 3, I'm going to get into Christopher Ward.
14:34
I'm going to call this the disruptor section.
14:37
OK, I want to take you completely in a different
14:40
direction somewhere totally different, same country, but
14:43
completely different energy, right?
14:45
In May 2004, on a boat on the River Thames, right?
14:50
Three friends, all entrepreneurs, all watch
14:52
enthusiasts, but none of them watch makers, Mike France and
14:55
Peter Ellis. They just sold their company,
14:58
you know, a British educational toy retailer that they called
15:01
that, you know, it was for the early Learning Center.
15:04
They had money and energy and this kind of post exit
15:07
restlessness, which I think if any of us are our business
15:10
owners and those of you that have done this before and any
15:12
businesses, my wife and I have sold businesses.
15:14
You don't just sell businesses typically and just stop.
15:17
The entrepreneurial spirit doesn't ever die.
15:19
And so it just gets redirected or reframed.
15:21
And they had a third friend called Chris Ward and again, no
15:25
relation to the watch industry, just a man whose name happened
15:28
to sound very English. And the three of them spent the
15:31
that afternoon on the river talking about watches,
15:34
specifically why a well made watch that had to cost so much
15:38
more than its components and manufacture kind of justified.
15:41
And the answer they landed on was the retail supply chain, the
15:45
layers of distribution, regional importers, these authorized
15:48
dealer networks, the boutiques and marketing budgets.
15:52
They all sat between with the factory and the buyer's wrist.
15:55
So they had a question. And again, you know, I love
15:57
questions. And this is the question that
15:59
these guys came up with. What if you cut all of that out
16:03
and the name they kept name the company was Christopher Ward
16:06
because as Mike France says, a kind of an early interviews, it
16:09
sounded the most typical English of all of their three names.
16:12
And so they were humble enough to be able to put someone else's
16:16
name on the dot. And the company launched in 2005
16:19
as the world's first exclusively online luxury watch retailer.
16:23
So no boutiques, no authorized dealers, no celebrity
16:27
ambassadors, just direct to consumer watches that were at a
16:30
price that reflected what the watch is kind of actually costed
16:33
to make. Now.
16:35
Early operations were run from literally a chicken shed in
16:39
Berkshire. By the time they were making
16:41
some serious money, they were merging with their Swiss
16:44
manufacturing partners and a company called Synergies and
16:48
they're kind of run by the Bader family in Beal and developing
16:52
their own in house calibers and SH21IN conjunction with
16:55
watchmaker named Johannes Yanka. And now today Christopher Ward
16:59
is a is British in design and ownership.
17:02
But really Swiss manufacturer watches are designed in England,
17:05
but they're made in Switzerland. So the cases, dials, movements
17:08
are all produced in Beal and then the design direction, the
17:11
brand's voice and the customer relationship that all comes
17:14
from, you know, it's all coming from the British.
17:17
And the lineup covers a ton of ground.
17:20
The C60 Trident dive line, the C65 vintage inspired dress
17:23
pieces, the C63 Sealander GMT, the C1 moon glow moon phase.
17:29
And then the change the watch that kind of changed the entire
17:32
concept of the conversation was the C1 Bel canto.
17:35
Now the Bel Canto is a charming watch.
17:37
Specifically, it's this Sonari passage and it's it's it's
17:42
fascinating. It's a watch that chimes passing
17:46
of each hour, but it's it's not a minute repeater.
17:48
You don't push a button to trigger it at the top of every
17:51
hour. The watch chimes automatically
17:53
on AD note. So it sounds sounding like the
17:56
number of the hours have passed. And it's kind of this really
17:59
fascinating movement architecture.
18:01
It runs on something called the FS01 and it was developed with
18:05
Yonka, the complications team there.
18:07
And it was calibrated to strike with a quality of sound that
18:12
with a watch in this price point, it genuinely surprised
18:15
people to hear it for the first time.
18:17
The Bel canto launched in November 2022 in the 1st 300
18:21
pieces. They immediately sold out.
18:24
In November of 2023, the Grand Prix in Geneva, it's kind of
18:28
again the Oscars of watchmaking. The C1 Bel Canto won the Petit
18:34
Agui award, which is It's the prize for the best watch price
18:39
between 2008 thousand Swiss francs.
18:42
A British brand making watches designed in England and built in
18:45
Switzerland beat Bulgari and Tudor and a room full of much
18:50
older, much more prestigious houses to win watchmaking's most
18:54
recognized international competition.
18:56
Even it was for the first time a British brand had ever won at
18:59
the GPHG. If I want you to feel the weight
19:01
weight of that for a second. Christopher Ward is 20 years
19:05
old. Their workshop started in a
19:06
chicken shed. Their Co founder is a man who
19:09
used to run a toy company and they just beat established Swiss
19:12
watch industry at its own ceremony.
19:15
Mike France and his acceptance speech said this is a victory
19:18
for the whole of UK horology and he wasn't wrong.
19:22
You know, I know before I leave Christopher Ward, the Co founder
19:25
Chris Ward himself left the company in 2020 and the brand
19:28
continues under Mike France and Peter Ellis.
19:31
And the direction, the, the quality, the community, they're
19:33
all intact. But it's worth noting that if
19:35
you look up the brand for the first time that Chris Ward
19:37
himself isn't a part of the affiliation for that brand
19:40
anymore. Now in segment 4, we're going to
19:43
get into fears and then Garrick crafted in Bristol and Norfolk.
19:47
Let me get into two brands that most, most listeners haven't
19:50
heard of. Hopefully you have with Fears
19:52
because I've discussed them in the past and I, I, I have a real
19:55
soft spot for Fears. And then both of these are
19:57
brands that I think you need to get to know a little bit better.
19:59
So Fears. FEARS Basin, Bristol, founded by
20:02
Nicholas Bowman Scargill and carrying the name of the
20:05
original Fears watch company, again established in 1846.
20:09
That makes Fears the oldest surviving British watch brand
20:13
name over 170. Years of horological presence if
20:18
you count you know the lineage now the modern fierce watches
20:22
are small production, carefully made, anchored in traditional
20:25
British watch language. They have clean dials, hand
20:28
finished cases. They are beautifully
20:30
proportioned. And we mentioned fears.
20:32
I can think briefly in episode 2 of the show right when I was
20:35
getting started and I think they deserve a little bit more
20:37
attention than what they got then.
20:39
What makes Fears particularly interesting to talk about like
20:42
today is a piece that they made in collaboration with Garrick,
20:46
and it's Garrick the Fierce. Garrick is a time only watch
20:51
that featured a hand man, handmade in house movement, a
20:55
42mm case that was finished in Norfolk, and a production run of
20:59
just fewer than like 5 pieces per year.
21:02
There's 2 build slots available annually with a delivery time
21:05
that stretches well into a couple of years, and this is a
21:09
basically as micro as micro production gets.
21:12
Garrick itself deserves kind of its own moment now.
21:16
Founded in 2014 by David Brills Ford and Simon Mikkelmeyer in
21:22
Norfolk, England, they make a maximum of about 50 watches per
21:26
year. Now.
21:26
The dials, hands and significant movement components are all made
21:30
in house in their Norfolk workshop cases are manufactured
21:34
locally and then they finish them in house.
21:36
And the characteristic Garrick aesthetic is this kind of Guild
21:40
type dial layout has this anchor profile hands.
21:44
They're thermally blued by a hand over a flame.
21:47
And the Guild inspired bridge design is deeply English in
21:51
reference now. And this is the detail I've been
21:53
waiting to kind of mention since like episode 12 of the show, the
21:56
Garrick in house movement, the UTG 01, which also powers the
22:01
fierce Garrick was designed in partnership with Andreas
22:05
Streller. Now if you listen to episode 12,
22:08
you'll recognize that name. Andreas Streller was one of the
22:10
watchmakers working at R&P Vanilla Poppy in the lock in
22:15
like the late 1990s and early 2000's, the same workshop that
22:18
produced Gruble 4Z and the Gronenfeld.
22:21
Streller went on to design complications for major watch
22:26
complication designers and then somehow he found his way to
22:29
collaborate with two men in Norfolk who were building tiny
22:33
quantities of hand finished English watches.
22:36
So the bloodline of modern independent watchmaking that we
22:38
can trace all the way back to like episode 12, it's going to
22:41
show up in a 2 building operation on the English coast.
22:44
And again, the watch world is very, very small.
22:48
And again, that's why I want to share these stories with you is
22:50
because I feel like the the more that we can share them, I think
22:54
even though we are a small but mighty community, we are small.
22:57
And I think these short stories deserve to be told.
22:59
Now Garrick produces their, their, their watches can start,
23:03
you know, at a very entry level of about £2500 and then they can
23:07
go very much higher above that. They have hand wound unit toss
23:12
6497 movements that are based and then they they finish them
23:16
up to Garrick standards and they have these bespoke complicated
23:19
pieces that go well above that price range.
23:21
And again, maximum of about 50 per year.
23:24
Every one of them is built to order.
23:25
And again, don't hold me to the prices because as the time of
23:28
this recording, they can. They can.
23:29
You never know what happens with prices these days.
23:32
Segment 5. I want to talk about my brief
23:33
mentions. I'm going to talk about Bremont
23:35
and Smith's and then also a brand that I think maybe folks
23:38
have never heard of before, which is going to be fraud sham.
23:43
OK, so three brands that I want to get into Bremont, founded in
23:46
2002 by Nicholas and Giles English.
23:49
And they were the first British watch company to build at like a
23:53
genuine scale and had kind of this manufacturing facility wing
23:58
they had 35,000 square feet on, I believe it was on the Henley
24:02
on Thames. And they opened in, they opened
24:04
that in 2021. And they had like real military
24:07
contracts with the Ministry of Defense.
24:09
The triptych case that they had, it was this three-part hardened
24:13
steel barrel assembly. And it was like genuinely anti
24:16
shock. And it was a legitimate
24:18
engineering innovation. The, the, the English brothers,
24:21
they built something I think meaningful.
24:22
I also have to be honest about where the brand sits right now
24:25
because this podcast deals in like current reality.
24:28
Nick and Giles English, They stepped down from the board in
24:30
in April of 2025 and the brand was taken over by an American
24:33
billionaire, Bill Ackman. He acts as new, the new CEO and
24:38
David Serato, CERRATO, formerly of like Tutor and Mont Blanc,
24:43
he's their new acting CEO and they're 2024, they had a
24:46
rebrand, a new logo, the Terra Nova collection, a departure
24:50
from the trip to cases. And it was met with this
24:53
significant community backlash. And the brand basically posted
24:57
these operating losses of £10,000,000 in their 2024 year.
25:02
And the story itself is unresolved.
25:04
I think Bremont may work to kind of find its footing under its
25:07
new leadership or it may not. And so I tell, tell, tell folks
25:11
to kind of watch this space now. The English brothers, they built
25:14
something real. What it becomes is going to be a
25:17
different question for probably another episode, maybe years
25:19
from now. Now, Smith's and time factors,
25:22
some of you have been waiting for this one since like episode
25:24
3. You know, I am biased towards
25:26
Smith's and time factors and Eddie and Dave, the the Smith's
25:30
Everest that I wore when my son was born is very special to me.
25:35
And that one was stolen and it's been subsequently replaced with
25:38
one very, very similar. And The Smiths Watch Company was
25:42
one of Britain's most important mid century manufacturers.
25:46
They made everything from military issue watches to The
25:50
Smiths Everest, the watch Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing
25:54
Norgay wore on the 1st ascent of Everest in 1953.
25:59
The British watch industry largely died in like the 1970s
26:02
and Smith's commercial watch production ended.
26:05
Now what kept them alive was something special, right?
26:10
And what allowed me to own a Smith's Everest on my rich to
26:14
risk to the present day is the fact that these people have
26:17
brought back this brand. And so, you know, having these
26:21
continuation watches under historically British brands and
26:25
specifically the the Smith's name using what I would hope
26:29
would be kind of similar case sizes and dimensions.
26:33
And again, I always tell folks this, The Smiths, the time
26:36
factor Smiths Everest is not a replica.
26:39
I argue that it's a continuation of a genuine British watch.
26:43
And in some instances, depending on the models that you get, some
26:45
of them are hand wound, some of them are using Swiss movements.
26:48
And they're, they're fascinating watches.
26:51
Again, they're not necessarily cheap.
26:53
And I, I say this in like the most respectful way possible.
26:56
They're inexpensive watches that are made very, very well, but
27:00
they don't cost a lot. And I think that's, that's
27:02
fascinating again, in this time and space and stuff.
27:04
And so I'm just depending on where you get them there.
27:06
I think they're just, they're just really special little,
27:08
little pieces that you can add to your collection.
27:10
Again, my bias comes through and all that kind of stuff because I
27:13
have a connection to the brand and I also have a connection to
27:15
the specific watches that I've worn in very insignificant
27:18
moments in my life. So again, the, the idea that
27:21
people want to wear a Smith's Everest is that you don't want
27:25
to wear it in a 36mm example for it is how I would wear it.
27:29
Now that watch, again, it's in my collection and it was there
27:32
before I started this podcast and it was there when I was
27:35
thinking about making this podcast.
27:37
And it was on my wrist when my my son came into this world.
27:40
And I don't know how anybody could love a watch or a brand
27:44
more than that when those things are kind of connected.
27:46
Now we're going to get to Charles Fordham real quick.
27:50
He's a historical London clockmaker, and it's a
27:53
watchmaking firm. They were established in the
27:54
1820s, and they had quietly continued into the modern era,
27:59
making extremely limited quantities of traditionally hand
28:02
finished watches, but also clocks.
28:04
And that's probably why you haven't heard of them.
28:05
And if you're the kind of person who wants a hand finished
28:08
English watch with like 2 centuries of lineage, I'll just
28:11
tell you that I'll end this kind of section here.
28:13
That fraud sham. It's FRODSH AM is kind of a name
28:17
to know. Just look them up.
28:18
OK, now segment 6, let's get into the thesis of what this is
28:21
and let's pull it all together and we'll end this section as
28:24
the thesis what the British revival is.
28:27
So here's what the British watchmaking revival is and what
28:31
it is not. Now, if you look at like, you
28:34
know, British watchmakers and the the organization that
28:37
they've become and the community of band of brothers and sisters
28:41
that they're building and their annual events that they have,
28:44
you see that something is building and it's it's pretty
28:46
amazing. Now, it is not Switzerland.
28:48
It doesn't have the infrastructure, it doesn't have
28:50
the supply chain, it doesn't have the industry density and
28:54
the centuries of scale production.
28:56
And I don't think it ever will. And I don't think it's trying to
28:58
become Switzerland. And I think if they try to
29:00
become Switzerland, I think that's the wrong ambition.
29:02
But it's also, it's not America. The American revival is the
29:06
story of an industry that's being rebuilt brand by brand,
29:09
movement by movement, supply chain, components by components.
29:13
Britain's situation is different.
29:15
There is no American equivalent of Rodger Smith keeping the
29:18
flame burning along, You know, alone with these decades of of
29:23
his historical achievements, right?
29:26
You know, when everything else went quiet, there was just this
29:28
one person. I would argue that the British
29:31
revival is instead, it's a continuation, but it's also
29:34
reimagination. A single watchmaker on an island
29:38
in the Irish Sea, working with tools from the 1820s, producing
29:42
15 watches a year in the direct tradition of the British.
29:45
Greatest British watchmaker of the 20th century, A brand that
29:49
was launched on a riverboat and a Berkshire chicken shed that
29:53
just won watchmaking's most recognized international
29:57
competition with a chiming watch that cost like 3500 lbs.
30:01
A two person operation in Norfolk making 50 watches a
30:03
year. Collaborating on movements with
30:05
an alum from the locks workshop that produced Google 4Z.
30:09
None of those things are the same story, but they share a
30:11
quality. They are done by people who do
30:14
not need permission to love this craft.
30:16
Harrison was not formally trained as a clockmaker.
30:19
You know this from our episodes in Japan.
30:21
Rodger Smith was rejected by Daniels the first time.
30:25
Mike France used to run a toy company, the Garrick Founders.
30:29
They showed up in Norfolk and started, you know, making
30:32
watches. So Britain's contribution to
30:34
horology has always come from people who ignored what was
30:37
supposed to be possible. Harrison loved and solved this
30:42
longitude challenge. When the scientific
30:45
establishment said it couldn't be done with a mechanical clock,
30:48
Daniels invented the coaxial escapement.
30:51
When Swiss manufacturers weren't interested, Rodger Smith kept
30:54
the Daniels method alive. When it would have been much
30:57
easier for them to, you know, financially just find a sensible
31:00
place to stop. And that's where I'm going to go
31:02
with this. I'm going to say that they're
31:04
stubborn individuals. There is a stubborn
31:07
individualism for my brothers and sisters in in in England.
31:11
That willingness to work on something that nobody asks for
31:15
because it matters to you, it matters to them.
31:18
It's much more, I think, in line with what we're seeing with our
31:22
brothers in Japan. They're sisters in Japan,
31:25
they're brothers in the US. It's not about these defining
31:30
characteristics of the specific watch.
31:32
They're defining characteristics of the British tradition, not
31:36
scale, not prestige, commitment. And that is in the end, I think
31:40
what this hobby is about. The watches that matter the most
31:43
are made by the people who just couldn't help themselves to stop
31:47
making them. They wanted to make them.
31:49
Now, Segment 7, let's talk about what's next.
31:51
I'm going to tease episode 19 and I'm going to tell you right
31:54
now I'm going to give you a kind of little, little teaser.
31:57
FP Jorn. This one is the show that I
32:00
think we've been trying to earn since like episode 13, and I
32:04
didn't think I was ready to discuss it yet.
32:06
Next episode, we're going to go back to Switzerland.
32:08
We're going to go back to Geneva, specifically to one of
32:11
those people who just couldn't stop.
32:13
Since episode 13 of this show, since the episode of Rechep
32:16
Rechepi, there has been a name sitting in the background of
32:20
like everything. The man who trained at a ship.
32:23
The watchmaker whose operational philosophy Reshap absorbed and
32:27
made the foundation of Ekrivia. The man who, when asked which
32:32
young maker watchmaker he admired most, said one word and
32:36
then added with a smile. Especially now that he stopped
32:39
copying me. We're going to talk about
32:41
Francois Paul Jorn, who goes by FP Jorn.
32:45
FP Jorn is, by the reckoning of the most serious collectors and
32:50
the most serious watchmaker journalist, the most important
32:53
living watchmaker on the planet. He's an independent watchmaker.
32:57
And I think he's the most he's more influential than most of
33:00
the brands that we've covered on this show, more technically
33:03
innovative than anyone or almost anything at scale anywhere in
33:08
the world. And he started making turbines
33:10
at the age of 20 in his uncle's bathroom.
33:12
And that's a story we'll have to tell someday.
33:14
He wore the same trousers every day for years while he saved up
33:18
enough money to build a proper workshop.
33:19
He invented mechanisms that the Swiss establishment said were
33:23
unnecessary, impractical or impossible.
33:26
And then this guy proved that by making watches that work.
33:30
All three objections to him were wrong.
33:33
His watches are made in Geneva in small quantities by a team of
33:36
watchmakers working on the Jorn principle and the Jorn principle
33:39
we've discussed. But I'm going to reiterate one
33:41
watch with one watchmaker, start to finish.
33:44
One watchmaker, one watch, start to finish.
33:47
His prices are formidable. I don't I don't claim to have FP
33:51
Jorn money on this podcast. Trust me, don't break into my
33:55
house again. I don't have it.
33:56
The wait lists are real. His relationships to hype are
34:01
contentious at times, and his technical output is, by any
34:04
serious measure, one of the most remarkable bodies of work in
34:07
modern horology. So we have been earning this
34:10
episode for 18 installments. And next week I think we're
34:13
going to finally do it justice. And so FP Jorn, that's next on
34:17
our project hit list. All right, so that is episode 18
34:20
of What's on your Restate. If you are British and if you're
34:23
listening and you felt slightly overlooked in a hobby that talks
34:26
almost exclusively about Switzerland and Japan and even
34:29
sneaking in America, I hope this episode was something.
34:33
The tradition is real, the revival is real, and the people
34:36
doing the work deserve to be known.
34:38
If you've ever held a Roger Smith, send me a message.
34:41
Tell me what it was like to George Daniels, who invented an
34:44
escapement the Swiss didn't want, trained the one person who
34:48
could carry it forward and left his entire workshop to that
34:52
person when he died. Thank you.
34:54
The craft again, is bigger because you refuse to let it
34:57
shrink. And to the Smith's Everest on my
34:59
wrist when my son was born. Thanks for being there there,
35:02
even if you're on somebody else's wrist right now.
35:04
I like the one that I have just fine.
35:06
I'm watch offski. Take care of yourselves and wear
35:08
something good. Maybe that watch is going to be
35:10
a Fears or a Garrick Christopher Ward or something else from our
35:13
brothers and sisters in Britain.