Keeping Time With History

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The Swiss aren't the only ones with a penchant for horology. Dent & Co., Britain's finest clockmaker, has been quietly earning its place in history for almost 200 years, and this fall the company will offer a collection of wristwatches for the first time in four decades. The watches will range in price from $10,000 to $70,000.

Trusted by the Royal Navy, Dent provided chronometers for some of the 19th century's most famous expeditions, including Charles Darwin's 1831 journey aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. In its heyday, the company held Royal Warrants from British kings and queens, Russian tsars and Japanese emperors. It was given the honor of making the Standard Astronomical Clock, a clock to which all others are measured, at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. And perhaps most notably, in 1859 Dent created what may be the world's most famous clock, the Great Clock (a.k.a. Big Ben) at London's Houses of Parliament. Since the 1970s, the company has discreetly continued to make clocks for private collectors in extremely limited quantities. Recently acquired by new owners, Dent has a contract to make the largest public clock in all of Europe, at London's St. Pancras station, and will begin, says CEO Frank Spurrell, "to take the business back to its former glory."