Marie Antoinette's Watch: Adultery, Larceny, & Perpetual Motion

I devoured this book on a long international flight. Overall, I liked it, with some major reservations. I am a watch aficionado, and there were too many little omissions or inaccuracies in this book.The book combines several narratives:- About A.L. Breguet, perhaps the most iconic individual watch maker of all time, and his life and career. I enjoyed this a lot. I did not know that Breguet created the first wristwatch in 1810, for example. I wish there was more detail about his work on escapements and springs.- About Marie Antoinette, her lover, and Revolutionary France. Fascinating mention: she and the king bought and owned hundreds of timepieces in their lifetimes!- About the theft and eventual recovery of the largest Beguet collection which happens to be in Israel. This I found to be by far the most dry and least interesting part of the story, wishing it weren't a major part of the book.- Documentary style exposes about horology or the watch industry. This part was most frustrating in its lack of detail and accuracy.I think that as a novel for general audiences, the book falls short of the fluidity and historical suspense one could find in the DaVinci Code.For watch and clock aficionados, this is a rare treat and glimpse into history. I admit I wasn't aware that Paris and France were the center of watchmaking in the late 1700s. Or that watches were so important back then. So it was a fascinating read and I learned a lot.However, as I was filling the blanks in my own knowledge of horology, I realized one needed some prior knowledge to appreciate the book (which I had) and I also found inaccuracies which were annoying.Some problematic examples:"Rolex ... is now joined by relative upstarts like Panerai, Omega, and Breitling" -- hmm, Omega and Breitling are older than Rolex, and especially Omega has been bigger than Rolex in many respects throughout most of its history until the quartz crisis."Seiko with its Seiko Grand watches and Citizen ... with their higher end wrist computers with features including barometers, altimeters" -- the brand name is Grand Seiko, and Citizen is not known for their altimeter watches."Omega, Breitling, and Movado all use ETA movements in even their most expensive watches" -- not entirely true for Omega in the past 10+ years with coaxial. In general the history and role of the Swatch Group and Swatch quartz watches are brushed over with a very, very broad brush."When Rolex began using silicon ... collectors sold or shelved their old models and picked up new ones - the equivalent of a Lexus owner selling or or garaging his hat because the company added a different trunk release button" - where do we even begin on this one? First of all, many people prize their old Rolexes and view silicon with suspicion, and secondly silicon is a major upgrade to the "engine" making the mechanical watch more accurate and less susceptible to magnetic fields, so it's worth an upgrade.Lastly, George Daniels is not given much credit as a watchmaker and is instead referred to mostly as a Breguet historian.Recommended only for watch lovers who can read with a critical eye. Overall, I expect you will enjoy it.

What is the big deal about clocks and watches? Before picking this up I expected a historical fiction for those that are already into watches enough to be aware of the one referred to in the title. Instead, I found a story that spanned centuries and continents while using that as a basis to both give incite into the minds of collectors and draw the role that the technology behind clocks and watches had in leading to other broad technological developments in modern times.It is an interesting read that covers the subject with a good balance of depth and breadth. It is an ambitious scope and I think John Biggs does a good job of keeping the narrative moving without sacrificing detail or clairity. I can see how people get the watch collecting bug. It isn't about the simple value or beauty of a device, but what it represets as a cultural artifact as well as a philosophical one.

There is a world out there you probably have no idea about. This is a place where people ruminate over the art of watch making. In this labor of love, John Biggs takes the reader on a journey through the history of watch making. Along the way we learn about the skill, artistry and science. He weaves in the historical context and we learn about the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette's love affair, and a very special watch made by the world's premiere watch maker. We find out about a theft from a museum and as we follow the queen of all watches, we begin to understand the industry and how it in many ways relates to today's high technology engineers. You'll note parallels between Breguet, the master watch maker and Steve Jobs in their sense of perfection, their devotion to design and their unique ability to take existing technology and make it better. I had no love or understanding of watch making when I picked up this book. I am colleagues with the author, but having read this book, I'm suddenly hungry to learn more and this book might just be the first step in my horology history education.

A fascinating story of watches, royalty, and grand theft. For a watch aficionado, it was lots of fun getting into the weeds of Abraham-Louis Breguet's workshop and the development of watches. But the story bounced around its three themes unevenly, creating more confusion than suspense.Although Biggs claims at the end to be a watch fancier, his mistakes are unforgivable. He says that "solar mean time" (actually called "mean solar time") is the time indicated by the sun. In fact, it's the time indicated by clocks and watches, which are adjusted to average out the annual deviation of the solar day from 24 clock hours. He makes similar errors in describing watch movements, not understanding that the escapement regulates the beat, for example.The editing was non-existent: mistaking 1793 for 1783 (a huge difference in the Paris of the Revolution); Baron RM de Klinckowstrom was described in 1878 as the great-uncle of Axel Fersen, who died in 1820, instead of the great-nephew of Fersen; he writes of "braising" metal--that's what you do to meat; you "braze" metal.Bottom line: the errors and typos are sufficiently annoying to significantly diminish the pleasure of reading this book.

I pretty much bought this on impulse, someone on Twitter suggested it, and seeing as it was only 99p at the time I thought it was worth a punt.The book spins together a variety of remarkable stories around an enthusiasm for classic watches, and the people involved with them. This is a short pacy book, and despite a range of topics it never drags.I would query the cover and the marketting, while plenty of folk will love this book, trying to present it as a historical romance is probably over-stretching it. The book is potentially that most difficult of genres, popular science. It does succeed for the most part in being clear and convincing, but it really needed a decent subeditor to sort out a few things. One character’s surname switches from Speer to Spear regularly, the exact prevalence of watches was hard to gauge, and it was not entirely convincing on the detail of what watchmakers actually did. However these are minor quibbles, this is a remarkably entertaining and well put together book, that plenty of folk will enjoy greatly.

A truly fascinating, interesting, amazing & true story, read it!!!

The book presented aspects of the history of watch making that really opened my eyes. The links between fashion, technological adaptation and history were very interesting.

A very interesting read for this fella that at one time collected timepieces.I especially liked the story of Monsieur Breguet having not heard of him until I read this book.I give it four stars.