The Importance of Learning to Make New Watches

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I really love the 18th century watchmaking. Sadly, a lot of them have been scrapped over the years. The movements can be quite temperamental and they're not particularly accurate. There's no spare parts supply for something that's several hundred years old. We use 150 year old steel to suit it. So we can match things like steel and brass in turn to the age. I think something's 150 years old and it needs a new part. And that's a really important part of learning restoration. It's like giving somebody an artificial heart or a new, you know, a plastic heart valve.

Called "a poem in clockwork," the self-winding Breguet watch made for Marie Antoinette was meant to be the most beautiful example of mechanical art in the world. Yet when she was imprisoned in the Tour du Temple, she wanted only a simple watch that would mark the passing of the hours until her meeting with the guillotine. Listen as Rebecca Struthers, the watchmaker, antiquarian horologist, and author of the Hands of Time talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about how our need to keep time has shaped watchmaking history, and how, in turn, the development of watches has shaped human culture and society. Other topics include the precise and painstaking craft of bespoke watchmaking and the challenge of restoring watches from another time.