Please note: This transcript was generated bu AI technology and has not been edited by a capable human for accuracy. Someday we'll get around to fixing it up.

Jim Flood on Pause to Go

[00:00:00] I am the proud daughter of a couple of nerds who also married a couple of nerds. I mean. My dad is a super history buff. My stepmother. Is Into genealogy and. Really 

[00:00:18] she's one of those remarkable people who gets an idea about something and then learns everything that she can about it. That's a theater person for you. Always researching time periods and people. I love it. and my mother. stepfather and I spent, oh, a good 25 minutes the other day. 

[00:00:44] Discussing the qualities of our favorite pens, which for the record. My favorite everyday pen is the Moogy 0.38 gel pen cap type. In black. I also have them in blue, black, but black is my favorite all to say. We can get a little nerdy. And so I really. Really. Enjoyed this conversation. With my new friend, Jim flood. 

[00:01:19] Who is a watchmaker and a clockmaker. Here in Charlottesville, Virginia. I reached out to him. Sort of on a whim. I thought, well, if I'm looking into time, I should probably speak with someone who knows. How to make clocks. And so I reached out to him. And I said, would you be willing to come on to talk about the history of clock making and. 

[00:01:48] He responded. With so much passion and knowledge. And joy. For the history of clock making and watchmaking that I knew this would be a fantastic conversation. And I was not wrong. In fact, After this conversation I seriously spent about two hours. Contemplating. getting trained in clock making. He just made it sound. 

[00:02:19] So intriguing 

[00:02:21] and, you know, what. Maybe that will appeal to you. In any case, I hope that you enjoy this conversation with Jim flood. As much as I did. let me know what you think. 

[00:02:31] Jim: Oh, it says we're recording in progress. 

[00:02:33] Bree: Jim, I'm so happy to have you on today because I reached out to you with kind of an impossible question, as I'm exploring time, which is I asked you to tell me the history of. of keeping time . 

[00:02:53] Jim: Yeah. Everything over the last 4,000 years.

[00:02:56] Yes. . then do it in 10 minutes, . That's right. so we're gonna try to do this. Let's see how much we can squeeze into 30 minutes here. It's a challenge. , it's a challenge. 

[00:03:04] and I did forward you notes and I probably will refer to 'em here as we're talking cause I wanna make sure I get particular dates correct.

[00:03:10] in my profession, accuracy is rewarded . I have a great passion for this particular field for a variety of reasons.

[00:03:19] Jim: And I'm still learning. it's enormous. And so the concepts that I had put together were some things that, and you have to make it interesting to people and, what mean, what does that mean in today's age versus what does it mean 4, 600 years ago? And so that's my context of where I'm going with this,so we'll take a step back cuz you are, do you say, clock repair? do you say timepiece repair? What do you say? What do you call 

[00:03:45] yourself? the layman's term goes back in, is a clock maker or a watchmaker. And essentially that is someone that is trained in the horological arts.

[00:04:00] and hoor. Horology is literally defined as the study of timekeeping. And so the vast majority of my work is not in actually making time pieces, although I have made watches and I've made clocks, but the vast majority of my work is in the restorations. and the vast majority of my work is restorations of antiquities that are being passed from family member to family member.

[00:04:29] great granddad's pocket watch who was working on the railroad. there is a lady in Ednam Forest who, is a client and she contacted me. she wanted to get this clock reconditioned to its optimum operating condition, because she was passing it to her son and when he graduated with his doctoral degree last summer, and that clock has been in her family for eight.

[00:04:55] Jim: Generations. He's the eighth generation that owns this clock. So these pieces, they're extremely interesting. and when you look at the technology and the mathematics and the engineering, it's absolutely amazing what goes into that. And you look at it and it's oh, it's telling time, but you gotta think backwards on what's really there.

[00:05:16] And that kind of goes, segues to when we first started talking about this. The concepts of timekeeping today are really amazing. everybody runs around with a cell phone or a smartphone or whatever you call it. but that computer or phone actually has a chip in it that is sole responsibly of keeping time accurately.

[00:05:41] Jim: And then so it's innocuous to our everyday society. . And, then the other part of that is, and I watch my nieces and nephews, that use it, for GPS activities and that gp PS I want to go from here to there and it plants a route for you. Well, what they don't really think about and don't understand in the background is that GPS system is requiring absolute exact timekeeping, and there are 24 satellites that are orbiting the earth, that are sending and connecting signals from when you go from this mile, that mile to next, and it keeps you on track.

[00:06:20] They don't give it a lot of thought to those satellites are controlled by a signal from an atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. And that clock, is the eighth generation of that clock. And,it's. Going to be accurate for an entire millennial, I think it's going to lose,a second or two over the next 300 million years.

[00:06:46] It, and they're doing this by the atomic decay of the atoms. So it's, it is astounding to me how that's actually constructed. and when you look at that, we live in this day and age, and timekeeping is, if you're 10 minutes late for a meeting, you're still 10 minutes late. but the time of early timekeeping, it was plus minus 15 minutes a day in accuracy.

[00:07:12] , and then , when you look at the, antiquity, the Egyptians and the Romans and the, mesopotamian era or the, the near East, they would use,sundials and they had observations of what was going on in the day sky and the night sky. And they were making these observations and they started to plot out how a point or a pedestal would shift and it would cast a shadow.

[00:07:37] Jim: And they were able to time things well. And they got really good now. It worked really good in sunny days and when it wasn't dark . And so they also started doing things with measuring time, with shifting sand or with water. And I've been reading a book recently about the details of how they actually created that, which is really neat.

[00:07:57] but the thought processes where they were timing these events, then it changed into instead of, shadows, shifting sand, shifting water, into something where they could measure oscillations of a mechanical thing. So a in most, all of early clocks were in towers because they needed that space.

[00:08:17] Jim: They were massive constructions. and they gears and they were done by blacksmiths because they had the tools. They couldn't work down to the, this,the small stuff we have today. But the, the weight was falling and it was oscillating back and forth. And it, and oftentimes those early clocks in the eighth, nine, 10th century were not like we see today.

[00:08:42] They didn't have a dial. They didn't have a hand that showed time. They actually would, announce in a bell or something what time it was. And it normally was. If you think of the monasteries, there were calls for time to get up, time to eat, time to work, time to pray, time to sing. And all these structures were controlled by the ringing of a bell.

[00:09:07] And then it graduated into and got more accurate, more needed control. And they started putting a display on it with a hand showing hours. And it's very similar to, if you go out to, Monticello, in the entrance hall, there is a clock on the front. It has only one hand. And it wasn't Jefferson's design, although it's heresy to Monticello

[00:09:30] the concept was that you outside, you only needed a relative idea of timekeeping. And there was a famous watchmaker that actually thought that through. back in Jefferson's time, and when Jefferson commissioned this outside, you only, and when you go inside, the clock has an hour a minute hand, and the second hand and it strikes the hours, but outside, it's different.

[00:09:52] Bree: and just, I'm gonna pause for a moment because you've just spoken about Monticello and not all of our listeners are in Charlottesville, In fact, only a small percentage of them are. So Monticello, was Thomas Jefferson's home and, and in the entrance is this, timekeeping feature

[00:10:10] That's pretty impressive if you have ever chance to see it. 

[00:10:13] Jim: Yeah. and it's, it's a funny thing because, when Mr. Jefferson commissioned the clock, it was built for a different building. when he was in Philadelphia. And then when he moved here, installed it here. He realized that he didn't make the anteroom tall enough.

[00:10:32] And so to make it run a full eight days, he had run by big cannonball kinda weights. He had to cut holes in the floor so the weights go to the basement because he didn't, and here he is very precise in all of his language and all of his butts, but he missed that step . It's oh. 

[00:10:49] Bree: And it's true. And you can see it when you go to Monticello, you can see the holes in the floor

[00:10:54] Yeah. And 

[00:10:55] Jim: actually when you are standing there in the gray hall, there are little placards that say Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And they gets down to the floor Friday and you have to go in the basement to see the Saturday placards . Because he was extremely precise about everything. And in fact, even there's a clock in his personal rooms in Monticello, and you open it up and on the back of the door are slash marks of his grandchildren's heights.

[00:11:19] Oh. So he was charting everything. And so these are really, and that's why I'm saying these, this concept of the woman that had the clock that's in her family for eight generations. There are things that you grow up with all of your lives that are there, that, and then you look back at some of the details like, whoa, that's really cool.

[00:11:36] It passed all that information. And it's noted inside the wa the door, the clock. so interesting. Yeah. and timekeeping, is something that, we take for granted. , but other things, and all of us, all of us really, really like the soothing sound of the ticking of a clock. And it is extremely maternal.

[00:11:58] All of us listened to our mother's heart when we were in the womb. And that ticking sound, intellectually and emotionally ties back to that feeling of comfort and safety. And I've, I work a lot with people that are,in retirement communities, and I find it interesting that, the people will sell their artwork, they'll sell their dishes, they'll sell their China, they'll sell their furniture, but 90% of their residents in retirement communities have clocks in their apartment.

[00:12:30] And they always keep their clocks. Part of it is the comforting thing of the sound. But the other part of it is really, and this is kind, I didn't learn this until recently. I had a client that came with a clock and, her husband was trying to save a dollar. I don't dissuade anybody from that, but he tried to do the service work himself, and it exploded in his hands.

[00:12:50] And so he came and I was evaluating it and talking about what was gonna be required and there was repairing, redoing this piece, or if I could buy. A piece in the aftermarket and take some parts in it. Then there were two different figures, and his wife and my wife were standing at the edge of the shop talking about gardening and other stuff.

[00:13:11] And he went over and he's saying, he says, oh, he's talking about a lot of money. And he was using the lower number and, which was funny. and without pausing, without taking a breath, without even stopping to think, she said, I don't care. and this is often true with people, but what then she launched into a story and she said that when my mother was in hospice care with terminal cancer, my aunt brought this clock to her room thinking that the ticking would be soothing and calming for her.

[00:13:43] what happened was that her mother would look at it and say, it's 10 30. At noon, I can get my next round of pain meds. And she would focus and watch the minute hand tick by every single minute until she got to the point where she got her pain meds. And that focus distracted her from thinking about the pain and was able to deal with it.

[00:14:09] Jim: And so the af after she passed, they were cleaning out the room and th this woman was giving it back to her aunt and said, and their aunt said,no. It meant so much to your mother. You should keep that clock. it wasn't an extremely valuable piece, but I couldn't have given her 15 or 20 gold bars and she would've thought it was an even exchange,Because it was so sentimental to her, because it was something that helped her mother. So I, these things, I look at these things as the ways that we're interacting with our environment and our possessions and,the calming nature. and when I look at the way that people can deal with issues, this is a really cool thing.

[00:14:46] Bree: it's so cool. it's interesting because you've talked about the precision, right? That absolute precision or near absolute, it's maybe not absolute exactly. Near absolute precision of modern timekeeping. And yet the stories that you're telling are quite emotional stories that are also using older time pieces that were probably not quite as exact

[00:15:15] they were never exact. And no, there's a couple of things that happened and when we were talking about the old tower clocks and old, table clocks that had, the oscillations and they had this bar that went back and forth and it looked like a inverted, actually not an inverted a crown in these big flappy teeth.

[00:15:32] Jim: And those clocks at the very best could run and be accurate to 15 and 20 minutes a day. the technology development and in fact it was Galileo that actually first observed the accuracy of a pendulum swinging, oscillating back and forth. He didn't apply that to clock keeping.

[00:15:52] But when he was doing his astrological observations, he had an assistant that was watching the pendulum and calling out loud each time it swung back and forth so he could time his observations when he was looking at the planets and the stars. And this is in 1602 or 1604, something like that. a few years later there was a Dutch, mathematician and don't hold me exactly as Hugins, H U Y G E N.

[00:16:22] Uhhuh. And to prove his , physics calculations and mathematical observations, he had a clock maker create a clock using a pendulum. And what was really cool about that was immediately that. Clock would keep time not in 15, 20 minutes a day, within 15 seconds a day. And so this massive structure and that leap all the way through the European community, and everybody shifted over to this pendulum clock because it was so much more accurate.

[00:16:55] . So even though that technology, you didn't think about it today, you look at it and go, that's obvious. it wasn't at that time . and this is really neat, and then, but you look at the way that the gears are inter meshing and the ratios and all of the, engineering and construction of that, and cutting the teeth so they all mesh very clean and smooth.

[00:17:15] all this stuff had to be developed by guys over years and years and years. guys, girls, guys and girls, uh, I am a member of an organization in London, the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers. . And, it is populated by a lot of people that are practitioners like myself. but about a third of the,members are women.

[00:17:37] and what's interesting about that is that,everybody can learn this, but they, this is a profession that does not require, physical strength. You have to mentally awareness, calculations, being able to look at something and try to figure out what is and what isn't what we're doing properly. and it's also a profession that is cool because, it's in a very controlled environment. It's always warm and it's always cool in the shop.

[00:18:01] , you don't have to be out carrying boards around or pounding nails or whatever other activity is. interestingly, and I think, and when you look at the factories in the Swiss watchmaking industry, 99% of all of the employees are women. are women. Interesting.

[00:18:17] part of that is because women have much better fine motor skills. And so being able to pick up small parts for the tweezers and being able to work accurately and so those fine motor skills are really important to the assembly of time pieces. . And and then even today in the schools that are teaching this, the, about a quarter to a third of the students are young women,

[00:18:41] and it's an interesting thought process. it's more of an equalization. it's. 

[00:18:44] Bree: and gender equality and clock making. Yes, exactly. Exactly. . . 

[00:18:47] Jim: Exactly. actually,the, there, the, most of the stuff in Switzerland is all about watches, not necessarily clocks. and there are big distinctions for me anyway,it clocks you can hold the parts with your fingers and the tools aren't nearly as small watches when you disassemble 'em.

[00:19:05] you cannot pick up the parts with your fingers. You have to use tweezers. You have to figure out how to put the parts in and hold them securely until you can fasten it with the screwdrivers. And people come to my shop all the time and I show 'em a set of screwdrivers and the screwdriver is basically the same size or maybe smaller than a hypodermic needle.

[00:19:27] Jim: And it's how do you work with those? that's one, one of the things they teach you. And,fascinating. Oh, it is. and so I, I think we kinda cut off topic of the thought processes 

[00:19:35] Bree: of we can get back. so we were, in terms of, thought processes, we were back at, so we'd gone through Galileo with the pendulum and then the Dutch man.

[00:19:47] Huggins probably, 

[00:19:48] Jim: so when you go back to that thought process, When he created the pendulum clock in the 17th and 18th and this, he was doing this in the 16, mid 1600, 16 55 or something like that. by the early 17 hundreds. The pendulum was universal in clock keeping. And, the, accuracy was driven by the length of the pendulum.

[00:20:11] Everyone has images of the quote unquote grandfather clock, which there really is no such thing. and I'll tell you why in a moment, but the tall case clock, or in the inning, England, they're called long case clock. the pendulum length is 39 and a half inches. And the reason it is that way is because it swings from side to side in a second

[00:20:31] and it goes back to that 15 seconds a day in accuracy. now the corollary to that is why people call 'em grandfather clocks. in the, colonial era here in this country, but in the 17th,and eight early 18th century clock making was an extremely expensive process. You would pay a clock maker like myself to build the movement, the gears and the weight, and the weights and the pendulum and the dial.

[00:20:57] And you'd probably pay somewhere in the equivalent of 50 to $70 and then you would take that set of components to a cabinet maker and he would make the case for it. And he would charge you 40 or $50. So you've got a hundred, $120 in a very expensive luxury item. And that.

[00:21:20] was equivalent time to when the average person was making like $20 a year. . So it's extremely expensive ratio. And so like the woman that I was talking about with the eight generations, these pieces were passed down from generation to generation and people would point at it and say, that is my grandfather's clock.

[00:21:42] And I just got possession of it, but they, it got shortened. The grandfather clock and the name stuck . There really is no such thing, but that's what people associate with it. . So there's other correlations of that, but it's just went back in the done a little bit of research on this. In the, late 18th century or early eight 19th century, clocks were a, they would hold their value and they would be passed on.

[00:22:05] And you see. Estate records where a big piece of a clock, the estate was, with the land and the house and everything was several thousand dollars. The clock was always in, the two, $300 value was passed in the estate to other members of the family. and other things were metalwork and things like salt and other things that were extremely valuable, which you don't think of today, we just blow by it.

[00:22:29] But,the in, in the, estate records was really interesting. You see that, and probably in that time, the biggest estates were always, timekeeping pieces. they say, oh, okay, so again, why is that? Well, it was really fashionable for the wealthy or the quote unquote British term, the gentleman, to want to demonstrate that they had contact with the arts and the science and math and all this. and they had these societies where they would debate things well as a way of showing that they were, and they were really intrigued with the instruments that were made for scientists.

[00:23:03] They would start acquiring these things in their homes, and one of the things they have was always a. Paul Case clock or a long case clock. And if it was extremely well decorated or if it had interesting functions, this was a conversation piece because oftentimes they didn't have a lot of recreational activities.

[00:23:24] they would sit and talk and had some conversation piece, which was really important those days. But then also there were things that were really important because usually the wealthy or the landowners or the people, especially the merchants, if they were in a coastal area, they would have very specific needs because everything in the host coastal area was driven by logistics.

[00:23:47] Jim: We have logistics issues today, but at that time, they needed to know when the tides were so they could safely exit the ships or enter the ships better. And so they needed time pieces to predict the high and low tides. And the other thing that influenced the. Navigation was the phases and age of the moon.

[00:24:10] So you'll see these functions in a clock today where you have these moon dials. They don't normally have tide capabilities anymore because it is now more traditional and not necessarily something that needs to be done. But these activities were really important at the time. And then the other part of that was that to show that they were more astute or displays of wealth, they would actually start creating these clocks that, would play musical tunes.

[00:24:37] And they would invite their friends over and they would listen to a play particular thing. And they had animation in the dial. So if the, there's a piece in the, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and it's a table clock. But on the top of the dial there are these musicians, and when the new tunes are playing, the cellist is moving his arm across the cello.

[00:25:03] The animation is there, and then these, all these things were going on. They were mechanically done, but, and in fact, that clock was acquired by a tavern keeper. and he would charge, puppets to, to the residents to come every Saturday night to listen to the performances. And they,they played six tunes, 

[00:25:23] And they'd buy their beverages and listen to music. It's whoa. Again, the thought processes of what was going on in our society, that was really 

[00:25:31] Bree: interesting. he had to make back the investment on the 

[00:25:33] Jim: clock . Exactly. Because, if you paid a couple hundred pounds or a couple hundred dollars for the clock, and then you could charge, a penny or two for 30 people every Saturday night, I love it. Yeah. it's, there's so many really cool facets of this. 

[00:25:47] Bree: Is that how cuckoo clocks came about? Did they come about around that time too? 

[00:25:53] cuckoo clocks, started in the, probably. , 1500 timeframe. And they were very simple. and the inside of a cuckoo clock is the bellows.

[00:26:05] Jim: They go coo cooo cooo cooo and it just makes the sound. It's kinda like a whistle, but the cuckoo clock was, derived from the, there is truly a bird, a cuckoo bird. and it's in southern, central European community. and people were a amazed by it because it's also a very clever bird.

[00:26:23] It doesn't hatch its own eggs. it steals time from other birds. It will push its eggs into another bird's nest and they take care of it, and the bird goes off and does other things. but so I think it was, 

[00:26:37] Bree: oh, it's like modern parents. 

[00:26:38] Jim: Yeah, exactly. . So , parenthetically, it's a wise thing, so the clock should be wise,

[00:26:44] So there might be some threads in that I really haven't discovered or thought much about, but, so yeah. So early oftentimes you think of the, cuckoo clocks as the black forest. well, the black forest was, actually the center of clock making in all of Germany for the vast majority of time.

[00:27:00] so everything was there, but originally cuckoo clocks were, wall clocks. they didn't have the cases of the tall clocks, and they were generally less expensive, and there was a whole strategy that, they could be easily transported and there were. Pedalers and they would pack up a backpack of 20 or 30 clocks and they would go around and sell the clocks and trade whatnot.

[00:27:27] and so this happened all over the place. And those, pedalers were something that was unique to that particular clock. the cuckoo clock and then other wall clocks from the black forest. and in fact, there was a cuckoo clock, I saw a number of years ago that actually had, instead of the bird, the and the deer and everything, it actually had a carving of a man with a backpack, with clocks on it.

[00:27:50] Bree: It's oh, that's really, that was really cool. Because that's a meta clock 

[00:27:53] Jim: exactly. We were talking about you gonna shift back again to , the accuracy, and we were talking about Galileo and his ideas of, observations and the pendulum and that re, that quest for accuracy extended.

[00:28:07] all the way up to modern times. And in fact, Einstein when he was trying to prove out his theory of relativity and all of the observations he was predicting, all of those activities were timed with extremely accurate mechanical clocks. So you, and those ac those clocks were accurate to subseconds per month in timekeeping.

[00:28:33] so this evolution of activities, is just ongoing all the time. and usually those clocks were a large, wall clock with a very,long 39 and a half inch pendulum. But they would also have, vials of mercury because the coex expansion of mercury. Was consistent.

[00:28:54] Jim: And because in timekeeping, the metal, temperature control varies. And we didn't have really accurate, controls of buildings at that time. it was in summertime, it was hot, wintertime, it was cold, and the drafts and all that. And so they would start doing these things with,controlling of the pendulum length accurately.

[00:29:12] And so they would, and this whole grid iron of different, and you see it today, they're, but they're fake where the grid, iron or liar has a silver bar and a yellow bar and a silver bar, yellow bar. Well, that, it's called a liar, pendulum. originally those were actually pinned in different positions because the steel and the brass would expand and contract in different times in different ways with the temperature changes.

[00:29:36] The, pendulum, Bob, it was a vial of mercury. And Mercury doesn't expand or contract with temperature changes very often. So it's really consistent. All these different little things that people figured out over time,they just amazing that, how did you think about that?

[00:29:50] Bree: I'd like to pause for a moment to talk about a project that I'm super excited about, and that is the rehearsal room. 

[00:30:00] The rehearsal room is an online open coaching membership. 

[00:30:05] Bree: So people can join at any time. And bring a project. Or something that you're working on that could be. 

[00:30:13] Uh, Ted talk, it could be a board presentation. It could be an audition piece. It could be a one-woman show. It could even be a difficult conversation that, you know, you need to have with a loved one. Or an employee. 

[00:30:28] And whatever it is, you can bring it to these weekly meetings. 

[00:30:33] And in these meetings, I offer open hot seat coaching. And we also have a really supportive community. 

[00:30:41] Bree: So you can get feedback if you want it from the whole community. 

[00:30:46] The rehearsal room is designed to be affordable. I wanted to offer something. That could really fit any price point. So the membership starts at just $9 a month. And again, you can sign up at any time. So if you're interested in joining the rehearsal room, And bringing a project to the table or just being a part of a community. 

[00:31:07] Then head over to the lovely unbecoming.com. Click on the rehearsal room. I fill out a quick application and you'll be on your way to being a member. I'd love to get in the rehearsal room with you. 

[00:31:21] And now back to our conversation with Jim flood. 

[00:31:27] Jim: Going back to that thought process of the Egyptians and Romans. They had powers of observation and they would take time to look at things, which is different than today. We don't take time to look at things, to see the patterns really very deep deeply.

[00:31:43] we just accept it and go forward. But they would think about it and they'd say, they experiment with it, and, Perform better or different. Oh, okay. This is, we'll, we'll continue going in this path. So 

[00:31:55] Jim: Just hearing you tell this history and tell me if you agree with this, cuz I could be completely wrong, and I know that I tend to maybe romanticize bygone eras, 

[00:32:06] in many ways and there are many things that are horrible too. But in terms of timekeeping, yes, it seems that in, in earlier eras people were living their lives according to, a less accurate, perception of time. Oh, Absolut, , it was more, organic, an organic understanding of time.

[00:32:29] Like I move, I moved through my day according to a mor organic understanding of time, but I used the timekeeping piece to make observations about the world that I can't without it. So I'm looking at it to have more accurate understanding of how something works or what's going on.

[00:32:49] Whereas now , it feels like our days are often dictated by these very accurate timekeeping, yes pieces, and yet we're making fewer observations about the world according to that 

[00:33:06] time. I agree. and I'll take that a little bit further in the context that,the gardeners, have calendars. That they have the actual signs, if it is in the head, is time to plant crops or if it's in the feet, it do not try to preserve your, because they would and they would plan their activities, around, you know,if you put a stone walkway down in the dark of the moon, the stones sink, if you put it down in the new moon, they rise.

[00:33:40] And how these things, I don't know how this actually works, but this is true. And so when you go back to the phases of the moon and some of those things, people are actually using the signs and the phases of the moon to try to predict when to plant crops, harvest crops, preserve crops, when to put a new roof on a building.

[00:34:01] Because at that time the shingles were usually split wood. and if you put it down in the wrong side, they would curl. And so you didn't wanna do that. So you did, you checked with the signs to try to do this. So yes, when you're saying romanticism about it, I think people had more.

[00:34:20] And deeper touch with the natural environment that they do today, because we just do stuff today and we get it done and we go on, we get 

[00:34:29] Bree: it done because the clock tells us that we have to get it done. . Yeah. 

[00:34:32] Jim: I think we have become more dependent upon the clock to tell us what time it is.

[00:34:37] it's eight o'clock I gotta be at the office to do my work, or it's five o'clock I can go home. or, and, or at eight o'clock Dallas is on , throw back, whatever that was. But, I guess it's yellow's thought now, but, but, but

[00:34:48] Jim: who's really in control? is the time in control or is the people in control? I'm not a hundred percent certain. I know with what that, that is. So depends on the day . Yes, exactly. Exactly. but yeah, this is,of going full circle with this whole conversation, 

[00:35:02] you had asked early on what people that do this kind of work are called in the clockmaker or a watchmaker. it also, needs to be thought about how someone would get into this profession. And there is a tremendous shortage of people that are trained for this, in today's age. today in the United States, there may be 7,000 practicing watchmakers that may be 25 or 30,000 clockmakers.

[00:35:29] Jim: To give that a little bit of context. in 1949 in this country, when the population was only a third of what it is today, there were 700,000 watchmakers in the United States. Part of that was driven by, the demand because there were a lot of work. but the other part of it was driven by after World War ii, a lot of people came back from the war effort that had been injured.

[00:35:54] They might be in a wheelchair, they might have lost a limb, and they couldn't do the agricultural forestry, construction activities that everyone could go and become a learned individual professional. And so a lot of individuals went to the watch school and learned this profession. and then what happened was, like a lot of people in the late seventies, early eighties, The world changed from mechanical watches and clocks to the quartz era where you would change batteries and you'd have a very accurate timepiece.

[00:36:26] But the instead, at that time when I was first starting this, it was 80, 90, a hundred dollars for a service of a piece. And, it would take a period of time now, you would put a battery in, it was $3 to put a battery in. And so people couldn't compete with that loss of income, and so they left the profession so But today there are five schools around the country that actually teach this. they teach watchmaking, but originally back in the, early 18th century or 17th century, you would go to a master and you would become an apprentice and you would work in his shop and do particular tasks, and you would learn.

[00:37:04] The mathematical and engineering activities from that master. And after a period of time you would become a journeyman. You might work in your shop or if you were a journeyman, you would actually be caught and start your own shop. and all of that training, in fact, it's interesting to me, and I look at old, old clocks and if you know who the master was that made it, and you know the timeframe that did it, you can actually know who was actually involved in turning some of the pieces on the lathe.

[00:37:34] The pillars of the old English clocks are the whim of the individual turning. And so you can actually find that stuff. , and then when you look at, the clocks, in fact, I just had a clock made in the 1840s. and, it never was signed on the outside by a master, but inside the journeyman scratched his name on the inside of the dial or inside of the plates of the clock.

[00:37:58] And so there's this thing like that. So sometimes you get into the masters and then you'll find evidence inside who the apprentices were, which is Ooh, that's cool. . everybody needs to be witnessed, I guess. Yeah.Yeah. . But, but you, when you going back to this, that whole process was a five to seven year apprenticeship to learn how to do all this.

[00:38:18] and then you would go out and start your process today. the schools, especially the watches, watch schools, it's about a two year program. 

[00:38:26] Jim: And what's really amazing about this is the Swiss manufacturers know that they've got a massive.

[00:38:32] Problem in this country because there's not a lot of talented watchmakers to do their work. So they are funding these schools. So your tuition and your lab fees and everything is covered by their scholarship. You have to pay for your room and board while you're there and you have to buy a small amount of personal hand tools.

[00:38:54] But it's a two year program you get done. And if you don't have a job that you've already accepted or there's seven or eight waiting for you so that people can do this and they can make a fine living. There's a school up in Pennsylvania that is sponsored by the Rolex organization.

[00:39:10] And what they do is after you've done that two years, they, will send you out to a store that is one of their,partners and they pay you, but they want you to work in the store cuz they want you to have the customer interaction experience. . And so you work on the score and you work on washes.

[00:39:28] And then after a few years of doing that, they'll take you back to the school and they'll send you through an advanced program. And , in another year, after the advanced program, you'll probably be knocking down 80, $90,000 a year. , and again, no debt. . And so it's just, it's astounding to me that there's just, most people don't know about it, so they don't really get into it.

[00:39:48] But I, there the, where young people could actually do this and, you can do this profession for many years if you so choose. The average age of a watchmaker in the United States is 80 years old. Wow. Yes. 

[00:40:01] I work in a shop that is 72 degrees, year round and, it, it is not hard to pick up a little piece. and so it's, and that's why I'm thinking the average age is so old, because you can do this so you're very old and earn a fine living, without having, you're not physically demanding of some of these things.

[00:40:20] so fine motor skills, mechanical aptitude. Problem solving. and quite frankly, interest, which is really interesting, cuz once you get into this,the bug will bite you and it's ooh. and then you start digging into it. But there are, again, there are five schools around, the country that are teaching this one is in Litt, Pennsylvania, that's sponsored by Rolex Company.

[00:40:40] Jim: There's one in Miami. Very tough place to go to school. and that's sponsored by the Swatch Group. And then there's a couple, there's one in North Seattle. there's one in Dallas and there's one in Oklahoma. Don't hold me to that. but the Swiss manufacturers are underwriting this because they know that they've got a aftermarket sales or after sales service problem.

[00:41:00] Cause there's not enough people to work on their pieces. and, it doesn't take, you have to know about it, but if they apply, they'll, if you have interest and passion, For this, they'll teach you everything you need to know. 

[00:41:12] Bree: Fascinating. So fascinating. Yeah. I Have two more questions for you. First, where did you go to school? How did you learn this? 

[00:41:20] Jim: I got into this,serendipitously. I was working in a jewelry store when I was in college. and the man that owned the shop, owned the store was a watchmaker.

[00:41:30] And he had a intense hatred of clocks because clocks, I'm sorry. Watches are predictable, clock clocks are not. And so he would work, he could work on five watches in a day's time and do the work where he'd have to take. Couple of days to work on a clock. So he didn't really wanna do 'em. And there was a watching clock school not far from that university town.

[00:41:53] and he asked me, he said if I would go there, and take the wa the clock school. And at that time, the watch school was two years full-time days, and the clock school was one night a week for 18 weeks. The theories of timekeeping are the same, but again, the size of the components and everything.

[00:42:12] and so I said I'd do that because what he told me was that he would pay me half of the rate of the repair bill when we were done, which was,at that time 80, 90 or a hundred dollars for the work. So that was 40 to $50. , and that was a whole lot better than the dollar. 30 an hour he was paying me

[00:42:30] Jim: So I started doing this on a mercenary level, . So I went up and I would go to the class, I would drive up, Monday afternoons, go to class from five until 10 o'clock, and then I would go stay at my parents overnight, get up really early the next day and drive back and go to day classes. and then I, as I started doing this, and then I started working in the shop on clocks and for two years.

[00:42:51] And then when I graduated from the university, I was so intrigued by the engineering, the mathematics, the technology, all the stuff that went into telling I, I need to go to the watch school. I wanted to earn more. And so I went, I applied and went to the watch school. And in the beginning of the second year, I applied for an opportunity as a scholarship to go to Switzerland to study advanced watchmaking.

[00:43:18] And, That was an eyeopening experience for me. and this was in the late seventies and we were in that transition between mechanical to the battery driven stuff. but when I came back, the world had changed significantly. , but, it was still just an amazing process. but I couldn't quite figure out how I was gonna make a living at it.

[00:43:37] I needed to rent a place to work, rent a place to live, buy some groceries occasionally, which I thought was important. and then, and he couldn't do that at $3 at pop for batteries. So I went back to the,degree that I have, business administration, took a job in the software world. I did this for years.

[00:43:53] but on nights and weekends I was buying, restoring, selling time pieces, so keeping active in it. And then I had some medical issues. Oh, 12 years or so ago. And the doctors were very candid. They said, you can't do that anymore. It's not if it's when it will kill you. And I said, okay. And so after I came home from that, I came home and I talked to my lovely bride and I said, here's what I wanna do.

[00:44:22] Jim: I'm gonna finish buying equipment. I need, I'm gonna put up a website. I'm gonna stay in work. And I've been doing this full-time for the last 12 years, and I'm happy as a glam. it's just,it's exciting, it's fun. I get to meet some really amazing people and I get to hear stories about stuff like the Lady With the Clock for eight generations.

[00:44:41] and,a woman came with a pocket watch and it was her great-grandfathers, and he had been on the railroad for many years. and and talked about all these different things. So it's really fun. 

[00:44:51] Bree: So in some ways, , it was your ticker that got you to keep the clocks ticking.

[00:44:57] Exactly. And maybe in reverse as well. . 

[00:45:00] Jim: Yeah. Yeah. so this is, there's very little stress of this. you work on it and it,the watches and clocks are laid out very logically, although they do behave il logically sometimes. But, it's, it, but it actually, it's so rewarding when you take something that is not working and you make it not only work, but keep time, which is an interesting set of mechanical things.

[00:45:25] Cause you can work on a car and you can make it work and it'll drive down the road, but the car doesn't keep time . And in fact, there was a guy that I went to school with year years ago and I talked to him and, He said, it is so cool, and it's, I'm not necessarily agreeing with this, but he said, you take something that's not working and you breathe life back into it.

[00:45:43] You know, it's like, oh, okay. I didn't go quite that far philosophically, but it is amazing when you take something that is, and most of the pieces that I come through my shop are, a hundred, 120, 150 years old. In fact, I have several pieces in the shop right now.

[00:46:00] I have a clock that,it was made in Scotland and it is, it was made about 1760. Wow. And yeah, see that to me isn't that old , but, but yeah, there's a couple other clocks that were from the 1880s and I was talking earlier about a clock that was in the 1840s. And pocket watches.

[00:46:21] Jim: You think about pocket watches, the railroad pocket watches. This watch is, 18 70, 18 80, right after the Civil War. They were making extremely precise parts, all 1870s, 1880s. And then we got into the railroad time, which is an entirely different concept for us. Talk about a threat. But the,railroad needed to have exact time because the trains were crashing and were killing lots of people.

[00:46:47] . And so it led into an act of Congress that became our standard Eastern Central Mountain Pacific Times. And there's a whole lot going into it, but the railroad people, they decided that time before this, the train would leave at. . every town got to decide when noon was, and then the trains were on single tracks, and they would collide and oops.

[00:47:11] so what they did is they set up this process that every morning at six o'clock in the morning, a telegraph message would leave from Grand Central Station and say, it is 6:00 AM New York Time. Set your watches and clocks accordingly. And set the clock in the railroad station, and then all of the engineers and conductors would come in and they would set their watch to that clock that was coordinated with the clock in New York.

[00:47:39] And then the accidents dissipated significantly because they they were all leaving accurately. so these things so fascinating. Come into play and there was, yeah. No, then there was, there were tremendous amount of stuff that went into the accuracy of a railroad pocket watch.

[00:47:54] Jim: And those things, when they were created, they could keep time within seconds a month. It's a little mechanical thing, but it seconds a month. If it didn't, they had to go get serviced. 

[00:48:06] so we did not make our 30 minute mark. We have gone far over the 30 minute mark, so worth it. worth being a little.

[00:48:14] we're running by organic time, not by, mechanical time. 

[00:48:17] Jim: . Yes, exactly. 

[00:48:18] Bree: And, but I do Good, good point. , I do have one more question for you, which is, what is your favorite piece for whatever reason that you've worked on over the years? 

[00:48:28] Jim: actually, I'm gonna put it in the context of,a style of a timepiece. and I am somewhat of a hybrid because I am a watchmaker and a clockmaker, and I do not specialize in one versus the other. However, my favorite, absolute favorite timepiece is called a carriage clock. And it's a little six inch tall piece and it's got,the gears of a clock.

[00:48:56] But in the top, when you look down through the glass, it's got the escapement, the balance wheel of a watch. And it was called a carriage clock because, and it actually goes back to, the first one was created by an order of Napoleon Bonaparte because he wanted to go from place to place in his carriage and know what time it was.

[00:49:15] . And so these carriage clocks, because they, I missed an entire topic that I really wanna revisit. I know we're way over time, but the concept of a pendulum clock could not work in a carriage cuz of the moving . And so the balance wheel of the escapement would actually tell time because it wasn't subjected to levelness and stability.

[00:49:35] and and they have things like alarms. They have, calendars, they have moon phases on these carriage clocks are phenomenal. I'm gonna go back now. One of the things that I, and that quest for accuracy, we were talking about, and we were talking about way early in the GPS activities.

[00:49:50] Jim: One of the things that was a major change in our world was being able to navigate over the ocean and latitude. The equator up and down was easy to predict. Longitude around the world was not. And in 1714, the British government lost an entire fleet of ships on the rocks of Sicily because they ran a ground and thousands and thousands of men were killed.

[00:50:21] And more importantly though, those ships were extremely expensive. And so they passed, they called it Longitude Act, and they offered a 20,000 pound prize to someone that could predict accurate navigation at sea. 20,000 pounds at that time was something equivalent to tens of millions of dollars today.

[00:50:44] there was a gentleman, his name was John Harrison. He actually created a strategy. they're called now chronometers. And it was a clock that could actually run on the deck of a pitching ship. Like we were talking about. The carriage clock moving, the pendulum wouldn't work. this was actually set and it set up gimbals and it would turn whatever the moving of the ship.

[00:51:07] Jim: And it was a, a kind of a balance wheel. But that timekeeper in 1764, I think, he, had it sent from, Plymouth, England. It sailed out to Jamaica and back over a five month period of time. And it lost only a few seconds and it was accurate to predict navigation within one nautical mile.

[00:51:33] And that changed maritime navigation forever. And it was astounding how that happened. Did he get the reward British government? it was a very political process. there's actually a book that was written a number of years ago by, David Soba. It's called, longitude, I think, is it, and the Parliament people, they appointed the Royal observe astronomy on the Atory.

[00:51:58] As the arbitrator of what was accurate. And it was a political fight cuz they wanted their celestial navigation looking at the stars and navigation, which wasn't very accurate, but they were wedded to that process. And so there was this whole political fight and it went on for 20 something years.

[00:52:15] And finally, the King of England said, it's done, it's accurate. Pay him his money. and Parliament did pay him. And unfortunately Mr. Harrison only saw the money for several years before he passed. But, but yes, he did win the prize , but the astronomer Royal was just throwing roadblocks at him.

[00:52:32] We couldn't believe. It's a fascinating read. If you have a chance to read it. 

[00:52:35] Bree: I will. I'm actually gonna put it in the show notes , so if anyone's interested in reading it, they can look it up. I'll put a link to it. Yeah. Really 

[00:52:42] Jim: fascinating. Yeah, it's called, I think it's called, I think it's called Longitude.

[00:52:46] And the offer was, David Sobel. I think it was 

[00:52:49] Bree: she also wrote Galileo's daughter. 

[00:52:52] Jim: Exactly. Yes. Yes. 

[00:52:54] Bree: So the name of this book is Longitude, the True Story of a Lone Genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time.

[00:53:04] Fascinating. Thank you so much , for that recommendation. And thank you for this. Wonderful conversation on time. for trying to meet my challenge . 

[00:53:15] and there's probably 50 or a hundred different subtopics we could go into if you'd like to do that. Your audience is interested. Have to do that.

[00:53:23] we may come back to you another time. . 

[00:53:25] Bree: thank you so much for this. I am grateful that you took the time to be with me today. 

[00:53:31] Jim: Oh. This has been fun. I've really enjoyed it. It actually, it, it causes a lot of things to prepare for this to try to organize your thoughts, although I seem to ramble, it is enjoyable.

[00:53:41] So I love it. 

[00:53:42] Bree: PS I think that the strength of podcasting is rambling. I think that what people really need is to hear real conversations about things. We don't always need things like tidied up into little sound bites. . So I love your stories. I think you're a beautiful storyteller,