From time to time one comes into contact with the highly technical world of watches. The Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie in Geneva, Switzerland, makes available what seems to be an authoritative and detailed glossary of watchmaking terms.

The glossary contains entries in French, English, Chinese and Japanese, as well as beautiful photographs illustrating each term.

Hovering over underlined words will show explanations of words in the term definition, although there is a technical glitch (at least with my browsers) which doesn’t allow longer explanatory texts to be displayed.

The website of the Fondation also contains a fascinating and somewhat idiosyncratic history of watchmaking here.

There is also a selection of videos (under the “Media” tab) which look very interesting (and technically informative) but unfortunately I have an issue playing those too. 😦