Thank you for reading! Our project is exclusively reader-supported.
Here’s how you can help:
If neither of those options are feasible for you right now, you can still support us by sharing our books with your fellow watch & clock enthusiasts.
Supporting us helps preserve clock- and watchmaking history. Your contributions enable us to acquire rare books, conduct research, upgrade our scanning equipment, and keep our books free for everyone.
Since 2022, Horological History has preserved:
14
Horology Books
775+
Illustrations
2,000+
Pages Total
We’re at a critical juncture. We have access to more clock- and watchmaking knowledge than ever before, but we risk losing it if we don’t preserve it now.
If you’ve tried to learn more about watchmaking online, you know the situation: only a small selection of old books, many with disfigured illustrations and practically illegible text. Even physical copies are not exempt from these issues. You can either buy expensive original printings or settle for more affordable “reprints” that are really just printed copies of the freely-available scans.
Horological History was created to solve those problems.
Rather than simply printing scans, we restore and redesign each book by hand—minimizing mistakes in the text and faithfully reproducing the original formatting. Many of the books we preserved have not been in print for decades and would have faded into obscurity without our efforts.
By offering our books completely free, we encourage sharing. Widely-shared information is durable: even if Horological History no longer exists, our books will live on and be shared among watch & clock enthusiasts for years.
With your help, we can ensure that the riveting stories and ingenious techniques of clock- and watchmaking are not lost to time, but celebrated and passed on. Without your support, the knowledge of the craftsmen of old may be lost forever.
Action of lever escapement. Taken from The Drexler Simplified System… John Drexler, 1914.
