Essays: Georges Daniels At 100 And A Personal Reflection By Roger W. Smith OBE

On the 100th anniversary of the birth of the legendary horologist and watchmaker Dr. George Daniels CBE, Hodinkee is honored to publish an essay from Daniels protege and friend, Roger W. Smith OBE, who has taken up the mantle of continuing the legacy of Daniels and his method of watchmaking. The bond between the two of them, though decades apart in age, has revitalized the rich legacy of British watchmaking. After the article, we’ll share excerpts from an interview with Smith about his relationship with Daniels. — Hodinkee

George Daniels at 100, A Personal Reflection by Roger W. Smith OBE

On 19 August 2026, Dr. George Daniels CBE would have celebrated his 100th birthday. For most people, a centenary is an opportunity to look back. For those of us fortunate enough to have known him, it is also an opportunity to reflect on ideas that remain remarkably relevant today.

Throughout his lifetime, George made just twenty-four pocket watches and two wristwatches. I remember chatting with him on the opening night of his ‘Retrospective Exhibition’ at Sotheby’s in 2006. Before the exhibition cases had been filled, he told me he had been sitting beside the assembled collection of his life’s work. It fitted into just two A4-sized foam-lined metal trays.

Yet those twenty-six watches contained ideas that fundamentally changed modern mechanical timekeeping. Few, if any, watchmakers have produced so little, yet influenced so much.

George began making his first pocket watch in the late 1960s, although in reality that watch had begun many years earlier. Through his passion for motoring, he met a remarkable circle of collectors, historians and enthusiasts who shared his fascination not only with vintage motor cars but also with horology. George was the practical member of that group. While others discussed the history of watchmaking, George could examine the watches themselves and explain why they worked, why they failed and, perhaps more importantly, how they might be improved. His practical understanding allowed him to bridge the gap between the historian and the horologist.

Nowhere is the depth of that understanding better demonstrated than in ‘Watches’ by Clutton and Daniels. Within the covers there are over fifty plates illustrating every known escapement then devised. George wasn’t interested in escapements simply because they were historically interesting. He wanted to understand why they worked and where they failed. George understood the strengths and weaknesses of each design, and it was this breadth of understanding that enabled him to become the twentieth century’s most formidable horologist.

It was already evident in the first pocket watch he completed in 1969. Until then, the detent escapement had never been self-starting and required a slight rotational movement by the winder to bring the escapement into action. George quietly solved the problem by redesigning its geometry, producing a self-starting detent escapement while simultaneously reducing its tendency to stop in service.

That achievement was more than an isolated improvement. It marked the beginning of a lifelong exploration into the escapement itself. George came to believe that if the mechanical watch was to survive, its greatest weakness, an escapement dependent upon lubrication to function, had to be fundamentally reconsidered. That journey culminated in 1974 with what was arguably his greatest technical contribution: the invention of the co-axial escapement. He then devoted the next quarter of a century to persuading a skeptical Swiss watch industry that this new escapement offered a genuine route towards rejuvenating an industry that had been brought to its knees by the quartz revolution.

My introduction to George came during his visit to the college where I was studying in 1987, a day that left a lasting impression on me. I can still picture him arriving in his tailored blue pinstripe three-piece suit and immaculately polished black shoes, carrying himself with an authority that immediately commanded attention. That impression was only deepened through his book, Watchmaking, which became my constant companion during the seven years it took me to make my first two pocket watches. I studied every sentence and every illustration, and when I finally walked into George’s Isle of Man workshop in 1998 to begin work on the Millennium Project, it felt as though I had stepped into the three-dimensional reality of his book.

The workshop itself was fascinating. During my first weeks and months, George painstakingly introduced me to every machine, tool, and process that we would employ in the making of the Millennium wristwatch series. His instructions were delivered with remarkable clarity, something that surprised me because, outside the workshop, he had acquired a reputation for being a difficult man. It was only through working alongside him that I came to understand the truth. George simply had no patience for time wasters, and, as the saying goes, he didn’t suffer fools gladly. He expected the same standards from others that he demanded of himself.

Since inheriting The Daniels Workshop Collection in 2011, my study of his watches, his drawings and his methods have continued. The more closely I examine his work, the more I appreciate the extraordinary mind behind it. What continues to surprise me is his willingness to rethink problems that everyone else had accepted. There is an audacity to many of his mechanical solutions – a willingness to completely dismantle conventional thinking – that still surprises me today. 

One of my current projects is to complete George’s unfinished pocket watch – George’s final work.  Although time itself was ultimately the winner, the piece offers a fascinating dive into George’s soul through the clarity of its thought and design.

There was perhaps no greater example of this than the Space Traveller pocket watch, which I first saw during George’s visit to my college and later had the privilege of servicing following its sale after his death. The watch was a masterclass in design, with its beauty derived from the simplicity and clarity of its construction. Nothing was superfluous; every component had purpose.

One standout feature of the watch was its double-wheel escapement, where one escape wheel has a single tooth fewer than its mate on the opposite side of the lever. This seemingly simple alteration completed the train calculations that allowed one train of wheels to display Mean Solar time and the other Sidereal time. To me, it perfectly illustrates George’s deep understanding of the escapement and his ability to translate an idea into an elegant mechanical solution. It is details such as these that reveal George’s genius. They are not immediately obvious, yet they speak volumes about the way his mind worked, always questioning, always refining, and always striving for a better solution.

Outside the workshop, George possessed a tremendous, often dry wit and a towering passion for life’s faster – and simpler – pleasures. Not everything revolved around watches, and one of the great joys of working with him was his legendary love for cars, particularly his Bentley’s and the 1932 Alfa Romeo 8C which one summer we used to make regular trips to his favourite local pub, The Grosvenor in Andreas, where he would relax over a pint of Okells and his usual order of fish and chips, or, as George always called it, “whale and chips.” It was in those moments, pint in hand, that you saw the true warmth and character of the man behind the master.

There are many things that can be said about George Daniels, and many honours that were rightly bestowed upon him. His watches, his inventions and his craftsmanship alone would have secured his place in horological history. Yet after more than four decades studying his life’s work and reflecting upon the many conversations we shared, I have come to believe that perhaps his greatest achievement was something less tangible.

George made other people care about what he was doing.

He devoted an extraordinary amount of time to explaining his work, articulating why it mattered, and ensuring that, through his books, lectures, and drawings, others understood the path he had chosen. His ability to communicate, to educate, to inspire curiosity and to encourage others to think more deeply about mechanical watchmaking was every bit as important as the watches themselves.

George Daniels did not simply leave behind twenty-six remarkable watches. He left behind generations of watchmakers, collectors and enthusiasts who continue to be inspired by his ideas. In the end, that may prove to be his greatest legacy. –RWS OBE

In Conversation with Roger W. Smith OBE

We sat down with Roger W. Smith OBE via Zoom in advance of the anniversary to discuss who Dr. George Daniels CBE was, not just as a watchmaker but as a person and mentor to Smith. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Mark Kauzlarich: If anybody has read George’s books and anybody studies his watches, I think you can understand the products and approach on your own. But you were probably the only person who knew him as a person to the extent that you did. What was it like cracking open that door and getting into his world in that way?

Roger W. Smith OBE: The first meeting was when I was, I think, 17 or 18 years old at college in Manchester. The day before he arrived at the college, I didn’t know who George Daniels was. Somebody told me he was a watchmaker, that he made one watch a year. I didn’t really believe it because, at the time, as I was training to be a watch repairer or a clock repairer, the idea that somebody could make a watch by hand seemed completely unfathomable. 

I was very skeptical, put it that way. But the next day, when George arrived at college, as soon as he walked into the watch room where we were drawing escapements, I knew this guy was serious. And he had an incredible aura about him. And particularly when he pulled out the Space Traveller pocket watch.

And then that evening he delivered a lecture about his work, his work on how he arrived at the coaxial escapement and what eventually turned out to be a 25-year quest of his to try and convince the Swiss watch industry to take on his coaxial escapement. And that whole evening, the lecture, however long it was, it just left a lasting impression on me. For the first time in college, this new world opened up to me: the idea that my career didn’t necessarily have to follow the route of repair or restoration. There was another side to it.

MK: You ended up having a long relationship with him, though it didn’t get off to the best start, with him rejecting your first pocket watch. Did he seem like the kind of person you could easily approach to explore this sort of broadening world that you were seeing, or was it intimidating?

RWS: There was definitely intimidation. No, I was terrified—well, not terrified by him—but yes, he was intimidating. I honestly couldn’t have begun to enter into a serious conversation with George. I mean, for one thing, there’s a 40-odd-year gap in age, and he was just in a different world. I think this is one of the things I’ve come to appreciate more about George: that he created his own world. I mean, before George, nobody had made a watch by hand. Even going back in history, people were surrounded by craftsmen and tradespeople who supplied component parts so that they could make their watches and clocks. George decided to make his own watch from start to finish. He created this world for himself, then made sure everyone paid attention to what he was doing. He made it important.

MK: So how did you go from this person who was nearly terrified of him to the person who felt like you could at least begin to have a conversation with him or approach him?

RWS: I was at work one day. I was working for TAG Heuer, in the service sector in the northwest of England, just outside Manchester. And I was doing the umpteenth battery change and bracelet shortening or bracelet repair, whatever I was doing. And I just thought, I don’t think this is for me. This is not where I want to be in the future. And I had this idea then to write to him, to ask if he’d consider taking on an apprentice. The letter went off, and that was a start of this sort of watchmaking journey, really. He invited me over to the Isle of Man to talk to me about my, as he described in the letter that he returned, my aspirations to be a watchmaker.

He was very welcoming, very warm, but very direct in that meeting. But at the end of it, he said, “Look, if you want to be a watchmaker, you’ve got to train yourself. It’s such a fully encompassing career choice that, he said, I can’t teach you. You have to be passionate. You have to be driven to do that.” And that’s how it started.

I think with George, you had to meet him halfway, really. You had to demonstrate that you were willing to learn. That you were, I suppose, enthusiastic. You could listen to what he was teaching you. And I saw these sorts of interactions not just in watchmaking. It was when he was talking to people about cars. I remember one visitor came to the workshop and talked about his collection of Ferraris and things like that, and I could just see George’s face. He just completely switched off from the guy because George had no interest in Ferraris. That happened with cars, but also with watches. And if you were entering into a conversation with George, he wanted that level of understanding. He wanted to know that you understood what he was talking about. And yeah, I mean, I’ve always said he didn’t suffer fools gladly. And that was him, really, through and through.

MK: If you read his writing, you get the sense that George Daniels was one of the most confident men in watchmaking history. What did he teach you about not just growing as a watchmaker, but also being confident in who you are, your vision, and where you’re trying to go? 

RWS: Back in the day, I certainly wasn’t confident. I mean, I think as I’ve become older, maybe my confidence has grown, and that’s simply just because of being more confident in my ability. And again, one of the things that George always drilled into me was that we are not making watches for the sake of it. There’s got to be a purpose to making a watch, and that purpose is to improve the life of the mechanical timekeeper. I suppose as I’ve matured, really, as I’ve grown with the watches I’m making and become more confident. But it’s through the watchmaking, really. 

MK: As somebody who valued and treasured your time with him, and reflecting back on his hundredth birthday now, how often do you think about him when you are working, creating, or designing? Is it now just a part of you in a way that just flows?

RWS: We have absorbed George’s workshop into ours, so we’re still surrounded by him. I’m still talking about him regularly. It has become part of my life, really, no doubt about it. And I still very much have this sort of vision of watchmaking. I mean, we’re making more than George made. George made 26 watches in his lifetime, 24 pocket watches and two wristwatches. And then obviously we have the Millennium, the Anniversary series on top of that. But by his own hand, just 26 pieces. Today we are making 20 pieces a year. And I’m still very much wedded to this idea that raw material enters one end of the building and a completed watch leaves 18 months, two years later at the other end. And I’m still… this whole concept, this whole idea that we call a Daniels method where raw material enters one end of the building and make everything, I can’t get rid of that idea.

MK: What do you think he would say today about what you’ve been doing?

RWS: I think certainly the work on the coaxial escapements—I took that on in 2006, and we’re now 20 years later, and we’ve just recently come out with another iteration of the coaxial. So it’s been a 20-year development phase. Of course he would appreciate that. George only fitted the coaxial into eight watches, and each of those eight pieces was different in terms of scale and technicality. So he could never really- although he knew it was a hugely efficient escapement- he didn’t really have that proof of concept, which I suppose, through my work, we’ve been able to do. This year we are going to complete the 200th watch. And over those 200 watches, we’ve been able to put a set of principles to the escapement and really, I suppose, really prove how efficient it is, how incredibly efficient it is.

RWS: Stylistically-wise, I always remember George coming around to the workshop when we were working on the Anniversary project just to see how we were getting on. While he was there, I proudly handed him a Series Two wristwatch we’djust made. And he took one look at it, and he said, “Well, it’s not a Daniels, is it?” And what I took from that was that. George had his own vision for watchmaking, and I have my own vision for watchmaking. I’m making the watches that I don’t see anywhere else. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. And George, likewise, was making the watches that he didn’t see anywhere else, and that’s what drove him. But I like to think, yes, certainly, the technical work we’ve done on the coaxial—I think we’ve proved its value.

For more on Roger W. Smith OBE, visit his website.