Here is a brief insight of what a watchmaker actually does. Its a dieing trade and I think its such a shame that all these skills of yester year are not being passed on because of the mass produced watches that we have today are mostly throw away items when they are broken unless you are willing to spend $1000 + on a time piece. Alot of money yes but if you buy quality you can guarantee it will be a heirloom for generations to come. Also alot of these old watches are being destroyed because of their gold value, in the future I can see one of these old mechanical watches being quite rare as on ebay you quite often see the movements for sale without the case, which has obviously been scrapped. Give me a mechanical watch over a quartz battery opperated watch any day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoV7phNVBu8&playnext=1&list=PL42562F913D3E963F&feature=results_video
That was really interesting, except for when the guy talked at the end. I'm the kind of person that would put something back together and nearly always have 2 or 3 bits left over. I guess i'd be bad at Horology then Also this video was interesting - it's one of those old-style ones [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQd-0YXqmR0[/youtube]
I have always loved watches. If silver and gold goes to lunar orbit, then this is the one on my list: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AnyED9ark0 Until then, I will just have to stick to the GShock for the time being.
That second one is awesome. I have a mechanical (self-winding) watch where you can see most of the mechanism through see through windows etc. Now I (basically) know what the various bits are for. Edit: Coincidentally, my current avatar (which I changed in homage to hiho's recent switch) was actually the guy who invented the hair spring and arguably the first watch that kept decent time.
