The Review
Taking Time Apart
Hands of Time: A Watchmaker’s History, by Rebecca Struthers, New York: Harper, 2023, 280 pages, hardcover.

Taking Time Apart

William P. Hoar
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

Many think that counting time is not nearly as important as making time count. A few do both well. Here we have one such. Rebecca Struthers, the author of Hands of Time, has for years honed her skills in making delicate, accurate heritage watches, and now she has crafted a valuable chronicle that skillfully relates how timepieces relate to humanity’s history.

Along the way, we meet crowned heads and the impoverished, journey from the Mariana Trench in the Pacific to the top of Mount Everest, and reach the Earth’s poles, the moon, and beyond. On close examination, our literary loop includes a look through a magnifying loupe at, for instance, a “detached lever escapement” first developed in 1754 that is still used in virtually all mechanical watches today. 

At one point, we are examining the possible origins of the 24-hour day in an early Mesopotamian civilization; at another moment, we learn of the potential importance of a “Deep Space Atomic Clock.” Helping our passage is an examination of the maritime navigational “quest for longitude.”

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