There was a time, around about the time the printing press was invented, when encyclopedias were believed to contain the entire sum of human knowledge.
If it wasn’t in one of the major encyclopedias, it just as well may not have happened.
That concept was washed away with modern technology, particularly the dawn of the internet and search engines.
Now the challenge is too much information, much of it nonsense, and the difficulty of sifting fact from fiction. The watch world is not immune.
Stepping in with a plan to bring sanity to the information overload is a new title called Horopedia and billed as the Wikipedia of watchmaking.
The site, at horopedia.org, will be unveiled next Tuesday, the second day of Geneva Watch Days.
Its stated aim is to: “Share horological knowledge and highlight the know-how with its technical and artistic skills accumulated by the industry over the centuries” using text, videos and images.
Run as a non-profit organization, Horopedia is defined by its creators as “a true watchmaking ecosystem” that is created and updated by the watchmaking community and free to access for anybody with an interest.
Like Wikipedia, it will rely on contributions and donations from individuals and companies to survive while fighting to maintain its independence and trustworthiness.
