Dr Alun C. Davies, was educated at the universities of Aberystwyth and Princeton and retired in 1999 after thirty-three years at The Queen's University of Belfast as Reader (and sometime Head of Department) in the Department of Economic and Social History.

Part 1: Rise 1. Origins: From Craft to Industry 2. Supply: Clerkenwell and Prescot: A Geographical Division of Labour 3; Supply: Two Other Hubs: Liverpool and Coventry 4. Towards English Horology's Golden Age: Technology, Organisation, Rewards 5. Demand: Domestic, Government, and Foreign Part 2: Challenge 6. Clouds on the Horizon: Switzerland's Challenge 7. War and Peace, 1793-1817: Crisis, Recovery, and Crisis Again 8. The 1817 Inquiry: Tariffs and Smuggling, 1818-1842 9. The Ingold Episode and After, 1842-1860 10. Meeting the Challenge: Chronometers in War and Peace, 1793-1860 Part 3: Decline 11. Revolution in America: Evolution in Switzerland 12. Consequences for Britain 13. The British Horological Institute: Ignoring the Elephant 14. Twilight in Clerkenwell: Ignoring the Market 15. Attempting the "American System": Birmingham, Coventry and Liverpool 16. English Chronometers Defy Decline 17. The Great War and After. Postscript: The Third Horological Era