It seems apt that a display featuring rare and valuable watches takes place in a milestone year for timepieces.
As the world reaches the 500th anniversary of wearable watches, the History of Science Museum is celebrating the landmark with its exhibition 'Time and Timekeeping'.
The display, which opened on Tuesday and runs until December 14, features timepieces from across the globe, including an Italian prisoner of war and British explorer.
Many exhibits have already drawn rave reviews and Oxford University's Alexy Karenowska explained there is something for everyone.
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She said: “The human stories connected with the watches have really captured people’s imagination.
“It’s really wonderful to see a combination of objects, the lives they’ve touched and how visitors to respond to them.
“The stories represented by the watches are really diverse, from members of the old European aristocracy to aviation pioneers.
“There’s something really personal about a watch – these are objects carried by people through all these life experiences.”
The physicist and Magdalen College fellow has created a three-metre high sculpture named 'Heartbeat of the City', which will be unveiled today.
It is based on Thomas Mudge's 18th-century Queen Charlotte's Watch, which incorporated the lever escapement – commonly accepted as the greatest improvement ever applied to pocket watches.
It has built in vibration-sensing devices that will allow it to draw the impulse for its clockwork movement from the city itself.
The mechanism has featured in almost all wristwatches to the present day and pushed them into the mainstream.
Dr Karenowska said: “It was really this that made it practical for people to carry time around with them.”
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It is a landmark year for Mudge's design, with 2020 marking the 250th anniversary of the Queen Charlotte's Watch.
This reminds us that humans have not always lived to the same single timetable, says Roger Michel, director of Oxford's Institute for Digital Archaeology, which collaborated with the project.
He explained: “Before Mudge came along, time was a very relative thing and wasn’t standardised.
“This idea of everyone living on the same timetable was a nineteenth century invention.”
The display is also in collaboration with the world's oldest watchmaker, Vacheron Constantin, and Charles Frodsham & Co, the planet's oldest maker of chronometers – a specific type of timepiece.
It is held – literally – at a good time, with vintage watch customers comprising 45 per cent of new customers at Sotheby's auction house this year.
Visitors to the exhibition can see one of the rarest Rolex watches in existence – and it has a thrilling story to match.
The timepiece was worn by Italian 'human torpedo' commandos during the Second World War and seized by US Navy commander Anthony Marsloe in 1943 when he captured an enemy unit.
Also featured is the Smiths wristwatch issued to famed British mountaineer George Sutton for his 1954-55 expedition to South Georgia.
Tickets are available in advance and on the day, with the exhibition heading to New York, Geneva and Dubai after leaving Oxford.
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