George Daniels (watchmaker)
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George Daniels,
CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
, FBHI, FSA,
AHCI The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is a technical standard defined by Intel that specifies the register-level interface of Serial ATA (SATA) host controllers in a non-implementation-specific manner in its motherboard chipsets. The ...
(19 August 1926 – 21 October 2011) was an English
horologist Horology (; related to Latin '; ; , interfix ''-o-'', and suffix ''-logy''), . is the study of the measurement of time. Clocks, watches, clockwork, sundials, hourglasses, clepsydras, timers, time recorders, marine chronometers, and atomic clo ...
who was considered by some to be one of the best in the world in the field of luxury mechanical watches and timepieces during his lifetime. He was a watchmaker who built complete watches by hand (including the case and dial). But it was his creation of the coaxial escapement for which he is most remembered. The movement, which theoretically removed the need to add a lubricant, has been used by
Omega Omega (; capital: Ω, lowercase: ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and final letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value of 800. The wo ...
in most of their collections since 1999 with the exception of the Speedmaster Moonwatch (until the release of the Speedmaster Moonwatch Caliber 3861 in 2021). A gold
chronograph A chronograph is a specific type of watch that is used as a stopwatch combined with a display watch. A basic chronograph has an independent sweep second hand and a minute sub-dial; it can be started, stopped, and returned to zero by successive ...
pocket watch A pocket watch (or pocketwatch) is a watch that is made to be carried in a pocket, as opposed to a watch, wristwatch, which is strapped to the wrist. They were the most common type of watch from their development in the 16th century until wr ...
made by George Daniels, the ''Space Traveller's Watch I'', ranks as one of the 20 most expensive watches ever sold at auction, fetching £ 3,615,000 in London on 2 July 2019.


Early career

Daniels was born in
Sunderland Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...
in 1926. His mother was unmarried so she fled London and travelled north. After Daniels was born he and his mother returned to London, where she married Daniels' father. In 1944, Daniels entered the
British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
; he already had an interest in watches and did some repairs for army friends. On leaving the army in 1947 with a gratuity of £50, he bought some tools and got a job as a watch repairer. From studying
horology Horology (; related to Latin '; ; , interfix ''-o-'', and suffix ''-logy''), . is the study of the measurement of time. Clocks, watches, clockwork, sundials, hourglasses, clepsydras, timers, time recorders, marine chronometers, and atomic cl ...
at night classes, he became a Fellow of the
British Horological Institute The British Horological Institute (BHI) is the representative body of the horological industry in the United Kingdom. It was founded by a group of clockmakers in 1858, and has its current premises at Upton Hall in Nottinghamshire, which includes ...
. After a decade of hard work, Daniels opened his first watch repair and cleaning shop in 1960 in London. Becoming interested in the works of the notable early 19th-century French watchmaker
Abraham-Louis Breguet Abraham-Louis Breguet (10 January 1747 – 17 September 1823), born in Neuchâtel, then a Prussian principality, was a horologist who made many innovations in the course of a career in watchmaking industry. He was the founder of the Bregue ...
, Daniels soon became the 1960s' leading expert on Breguet and was often involved in advising on his work.


Rise to prominence

His friend named Sam Clutton introduced Daniels to the upscale timepiece market and convinced him that he had a future in expensive handcrafted watches. In 1969, Daniels constructed, for £2,000, his first pocket watch for Clutton. When his friend showed the piece to fellow collectors, it created great interest. Five years later, Daniels bought the watch back for £8,000. In 2012, it sold at auction in the United States for $285,000. Throughout his career, Daniels made signature timepieces for personally selected customers, stating "I never made watches for people if I didn't care for them." The watches, which cost tens of thousands of pounds, took more than 2,500 hours to make. His signature was to give them clear and clean dials with subsidiary dials interwoven with the main chapter ring.


Coaxial escapement

During the
quartz crisis The quartz crisis was the upheaval in the watchmaking industry caused by the advent of quartz watches in the 1970s and early 1980s, that largely replaced mechanical watches around the world.
, George Daniels accepted a commission from American industrialist and watch collector Seth G. Atwood to create a timepiece that would fundamentally improve the performance of mechanical watches. After much experimentation, Daniels had designed a new type of watch
escapement An escapement is a mechanical linkage in mechanical watches and clocks that gives impulses to the timekeeping element and periodically releases the gear train to move forward, advancing the clock's hands. The impulse action transfers energy to ...
by 1974. The mechanism, which was first unveiled in 1976 as the ''Atwood watch'' and patented in 1980, was called the coaxial escapement. Its design avoided the need to add oil to the escapement because the mechanism operated with very low
friction Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction: *Dry friction is a force that opposes the relative lateral motion of t ...
. Traditional escapements had to use lubricants but this eventually caused problems with accuracy as oil thickened over time. However, the coaxial escapement used radial friction instead of sliding friction, making lubricants theoretically unnecessary. In practice a small amount of lubrication is used on the impulse and locking surfaces of the pallet stones. Daniels' mechanism has since been described by some as the most important development in horology in the past 250 years. Although the horological industry was first introduced to the concept in 1976, Daniels' escapement was met with scepticism and lack of interest. It was not until the 1980s that
Swatch Group The Swatch Group Ltd is a Swiss manufacturer of watches and jewellery. The company was founded in 1983 by the merger of ASUAG and SSIH to move to manufacturing quartz-crystal watches to resolve the quartz crisis threatening the traditional Sw ...
chairman
Nicolas Hayek Nicolas George Hayek (19 February 1928 – 28 June 2010), was a Swiss businessman of Lebanese descent, and the co-founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of The Swatch Group. Early life and education Hayek was born the second of three children, ...
adopted the concept, using it in his upmarket Omega brand. The company unveiled, to great acclaim, its first automatic watch using Daniels' coaxial escapement at the 1999 Basel Watch and Jewellery Fair.


Later life

Daniels, who was a member of the Swiss ''Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants, continued to make watches well into later life. In total he created 37 handmade watches completely by himself and a 50-piece wristwatch series in conjunction with independent watchmaker,
Roger W. Smith Roger W. Smith OBE (born 1970) is a British independent watchmaker. Smith was a Bronze Medallist of the British Horological Institute (awarded to the most outstanding graduating student of any given year). Biography Born in Bolton near Manches ...
, using a basic Omega movement. By the time of his death he is said to have "completed 24 of the most extraordinary and technically advanced watches ever made". His mechanical watches were more accurate than
quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...
watches, with some losing less than a second per month. Daniels, who was a Master of the
Clockmakers' Company The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers was established under a royal charter granted by King Charles I in 1631. It ranks sixty-first among the livery companies of the City of London, and comes under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council. The ...
of London, was given their Gold Medal, a rare honour. He also received the Gold Medal of the British Horological Institute, the Gold Medal of the City of London and the Kullberg Medal from the Stockholm Watchmakers' Guild. In 2006, to celebrate his work and his 80th birthday,
Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...
and Bobinet (the antique watch dealer) held a retrospective exhibition of his work, featuring every watch Daniels had made, except one which is held by the
British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
. He was given an honorary doctorate by
City University London City, University of London, is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, and a member institution of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute, and became a university when The City Univ ...
in 2007. In 2010 Daniels, who was already an
MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...
, was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
(CBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours.


Personal life

He married, in 1964, Juliet Marryat, with whom he had a daughter. The marriage was later dissolved. He is the uncle of philosopher
Stephen Neale Stephen Roy Albert Neale (born 9 January 1958) is a British philosopher and specialist in the philosophy of language who has written extensively about meaning, information, interpretation, and communication, and more generally about issues a ...
. Daniels died on 21 October 2011. Daniels was a collector of classic cars. His collection included: *1908 Itala 100 hp Grand Prix Car: won the 1908 French Grand Prix and 1910 Brooklands All-comers Plate (fastest lap at 101.8 mph) *1954 Bentley R-Type Continental Fastback by H.J. Mulliner: ex-Frank Taylor of Taylor Woodrow Construction *1929 4½-litre Bentley Tourer by Vanden Plas: ex-Maharaja of Bhavnagar *1907 Daimler 45 hp Roi-de-Belges Tourer: built for the Earl of Craven *1929–32 Bentley 4½-Litre Supercharged Single-Seater: known as Bentley Blower No.1, developed and driven by Birkin, it set the Brooklands Outer Circuit Lap Record at more than 137 mph in 1931 *1932 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 : Formerly Birkin Le Mans Works car and owned by Italo Balbo


Legacy

''Watchmaking'', written by Daniels and first published in 1981, remains one of the most definitive books on horology. It was the first of another six books, some of which have been translated and published in French, Italian and German, that remain in print. ''Watchmaking'', now in its third edition, was revised and reprinted in 1999. On 6 November 2012 part of Daniels' collection, including some pieces he made, was sold by Sotheby's in a 134-lot sale. The auction raised over £8 million for the George Daniels Educational Trust, which helps students seeking higher education in the fields of horology, engineering, medicine, building or construction. The most expensive item was his "Space Traveller's Watch" which was sold for £1,329,250 in 2012 and then for £3,196,250 when it was resold in 2017.


Published works

*''Watches'', Clutton, Cecil and George Daniels, B. T. Batsford, Ltd., London, 1965 *''English and American Watches'', George Daniels, 1966 *''The Art of Breguet'', George Daniels, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1974 *''Clocks & Watches in the Collection of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers'', Clutton, Cecil and George Daniels, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1975 *''Watchmaking'', George Daniels, Sotheby's, London, 1981 (2011 edition ) *'' The Practical Watch Escapement'', George Daniels, Isle of Man, Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, 2010. *''All in Good Time: Reflections of a Watchmaker'', George Daniels Isle of Man (UK), 2000


See also

*
List of watch manufacturers Watchmakers This list is a duplicate of :Watchmakers, which will likely be more up-to-date and complete. Manufacturers that are named after the founder are sorted by surname. Names in this list require an article about the watch brand or watchma ...


References


External links

*
George Daniels tells his life story
at
Web of Stories Web of Stories is an online collection of thousands of autobiographical video-stories. Web of Stories, originally known as Science Archive, was set up to record the life stories of scientists. When it expanded to include the lives of authors, mov ...
* *http://www.omegawatches.com/index.php?id=332.php?id=332Short biography and photograph
BBC obituaryGeorge Daniels Biography
by Michael Weare {{DEFAULTSORT:Daniels, George English watchmakers (people) English inventors English non-fiction writers Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London 1926 births 2011 deaths English male non-fiction writers British Army personnel of World War II