Who watches the watchman? We do

Thanks to all who came to our August meeting, when we were treated to a fascinating talk by James Barrett on the history and maintenance of pocket watches. Among other things, we learned about the evolution of personal timepieces from early examples that weren't accurate enough to make it worth having a minutes hand, to modern examples correct to within a fraction of a second day, how mechanisms have changed, the purpose of jewels within them (and how many is a good number) and the reason why wristwatches took over in popularity. Thanks also to Stuart Mitchell for these photos and for filming the talk for the live stream—dealing with the challenge of the first time a speaker has decided to talk from the side of the room rather than the front, by the projector screen, requiring some nimble panning of the camera between speaker and screen. You can see the deft results in this video of the full talk: https://www.youtube.com/live/cBdNybdkGx8