Sunday Rewind: Four Revolutions: A Concise History Of The Modern Watch World

Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time ; Joe Thompson wrote A Concise History Of The Modern Watch World . Both works are a fantastic entry point into a larger tradition. In this seminal piece of horological journalism, Thompson opens with a confession. After being assigned the watch beat, he "drove home from work that day depressed. Watches? Really? What can you possibly write about watches once a month?" But it wasn't long before he had discovered just how deep the watch world rabbit hole goes, finding that, "This beat had everything: a 500-year-old consumer product that was an object of both art and science, a global market, national industries in the throes of technological change, high stakes and high drama, with a cast of remarkable characters fighting ferociously on the marketing and technology fronts." That was 1977, and in 2021 much has changed, but just as much has stayed the same. Click here to read Four Revolutions: A Concise History Of The Modern Watch World.How things came to be.