Qualla: Clockmakers' Museum https://qualla.com/clockmakers-museum en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clockmakers-museum-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Clockmakers' Museum https://qualla.com/clockmakers-museum Clockmakers' Museum: Introduction https://qualla.com/clockmakers-museum/ Photo credit Racklever at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5. John Harrison spent forty years of his life trying to win a prize. The British government had offered a fortune in 1714 to anyone who could solve the longitude problem, the navigational riddle that had drowned sailors for centuries. Harrison's answer was a watch. His fifth and final timekeeper, H5, sits today in a hushed gallery on the second floor of the Science Museum in South Kensington, surrounded by 660 other watches and the curious tools that built them. This is the Clockmakers' Museum, the oldest collection of clocks and watches anywhere on Earth, and it began in 1814 when a London livery company decided to keep some books.

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Image: Racklever at English Wikipedia | CC BY 2.5

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clockmakers-museum-wp/gcpv-clockmakers-museum-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Clockmakers' Museum: The Bureau and the Bookcase https://qualla.com/clockmakers-museum/ Photo credit Daderot, CC0. The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers received its royal charter from Charles I in 1631, making it the oldest horological body in continuous existence. For nearly two centuries it was a trade guild rather than a museum. Then in 1814 the Company formed a library committee, and a q...

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Image: Daderot | CC0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clockmakers-museum-wp/gcpv-clockmakers-museum-the-bureau-and-the-bookcase.mp3 0:06 2 full Clockmakers' Museum: Harrison's H5 https://qualla.com/clockmakers-museum/ Photo credit Daderot, CC0. The most important acquisition came in 1891, when the Reverend Harry Leonard Nelthropp persuaded the Company to buy John Harrison's fifth marine timekeeper. To understand why this matters, picture a ship pitching in the Atlantic in 1714, the captain knowing his latitude from the ...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clockmakers-museum-wp/gcpv-clockmakers-museum-harrisons-h5.mp3 0:06 3 full Clockmakers' Museum: Tompion, Graham, Breguet https://qualla.com/clockmakers-museum/ Photo credit Daderot, CC0. The collection reads like a list of horology's greatest names. Thomas Tompion, the "father of English clockmaking," is here. So is his pupil George Graham, who invented the deadbeat escapement that made pendulum clocks accurate enough to time astronomical observations. David Rams...

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Image: Daderot | CC0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clockmakers-museum-wp/gcpv-clockmakers-museum-tompion-graham-breguet.mp3 0:06 4 full Clockmakers' Museum: Edmund Hillary's Wristwatch https://qualla.com/clockmakers-museum/ Photo credit Clocksco, CC BY-SA 4.0. Among the precision instruments sits a more modest object: a Smiths wristwatch. Sir Edmund Hillary wore it to the summit of Mount Everest on 29 May 1953. The watch worked at minus thirty degrees, in oxygen-thin air no clock had ever been asked to keep time in. Smiths, a British c...

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Image: Clocksco | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clockmakers-museum-wp/gcpv-clockmakers-museum-edmund-hillarys-wristwatch.mp3 0:06 5 full Clockmakers' Museum: Guildhall to South Kensington https://qualla.com/clockmakers-museum/ Photo credit Daderot, CC0. For 141 years the collection lived in the Guildhall complex in the City, where it had opened to the public in 1874. In 2015 it moved across London. The Company's lease at Guildhall had expired, and Sir George White, who had served as Keeper since 1988, negotiated a new home with ...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clockmakers-museum-wp/gcpv-clockmakers-museum-guildhall-to-south-kensington.mp3 0:06 6 full