Watches
Daniels's watches have very clear and clean dials, usually with subsidiary dials interwoven with the main chapter ring, which is clearly a Breguet influence. Daniels's first watch was sold to Sam Clutton for £2,000 in 1970 and it is understood that he bought it back from Clutton five years later for £8,000. It sold recently at an auction in the United States for $285,000. He then built a watch more accurate than quartz, losing less than a second in a month.
After much experimenting, he patented a type of watch escapement called the co-axial escapement, which takes away the necessity to oil the escapement and has reduced friction to a very low level (since oil produces problems due to thickening). The co-axial escapement has now been put into production by Omega and has been described as the most important horological development in the last 250 years.
Watchmaking, which Daniels wrote and was published in 1981, is considered one of the best books on making watches.
By the time of his death he is said to have "completed 24 of the most extraordinary and technically advanced watches ever made".
Read more about this topic: George Daniels (watchmaker)
Famous quotes containing the word watches:
“The 1950s to me is darkness, hidden history, perversion behind most doors waiting to creep out. The 1950s to most people is kitsch and Mickey Mouse watches and all this intolerable stuff.”
—James Ellroy (b. 1948)
“Whoever considers morality the main objective of human existence, seems to me like a person who defines the purpose of a clock as not going wrong. The first objective for a clock, is, however, that it does run; not going wrong is an additional regulative function. If not a watch’s greatest accomplishment were not going wrong, unwound watches might be the best.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“A petty bureaucrat always watches his superior’s countenance, just as a boatman trims his sails according to the force of the wind.”
—Chinese proverb.