Canada's only watchmaking school still ticking after 80 years

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• Hacker News
• Enjoy till ai with robot arm take your job..
  by pizzaballs
• Yes, but has it taken a licking?
  by ButlerianJihad
• kid me thought AI would replace people doing insanely precise hand work. turns out it replaced me writing emails, and this school's still going strong after 80 years. lmao we got played
  by ElenaDaibunny
• Give the Chinese some time.

  They are doing incredible things with world models, and have an economy that really could do incredible things with robots wired to effective world models.

  It won't surprise me at all if in 10 years LLMs are less of a big deal than world models

  by dghlsakjg
• AI was supposed to do my laundry so that I could make art and code for fun but now the AI is coding and making art while I do laundry.
  by throwatdem12311
• Maybe I will take up watchmaking when I get sick of AI slop programming and offshore morons going wild with a Claude subscription.
  by throwatdem12311
• If you read about Harrison's Chronometers you read of Rupert T. Gould who suffered a Nervous Breakdown, and it is said fell into watch repair as therapy, bringing them back to life.
  by ggm
• As a Canadian cool! Never heard of this school before but on the west coast so probably why.

  I've watched many watch repair videos online and the knowledge base required is huge. Also there are many tools needed which are not cheap. There is just so much to know that takes years to learn. Very cool that the knowledge is being shared and the skill passed on. In my small town there was only one guy who worked on clocks and watches. He passed a while back and his kids continue with his jewelry store but they now send out watches and clocks to another business as none of his kids learned how to do it.

  by 14
• I live in Quebec and this is the first time I hear about it.
  by xutopia
• I discovered this school right after discovering the Richard Mille clock in Quebec City [1] because the school is responsible for maintaining the clock.

  1. https://www.ville.quebec.qc.ca/en/apropos/portrait/attraits/...

  by whynotmaybe
• I believe this is exactly the kind of high-paying job that is difficult for AI to replace.
  by LzeYing
• Unless they’re replaced by humans controlled by AI(look at the various research for BCIs or for gene therapy that allows for the possibility for you to be controlled by radio frequencies), then they’re very easily replaced.
  by numbersfollow67
• Basically anything that is a luxury good is probably safe from AI. If people are buying it for status or high performance reasons, they aren’t going to pick the low end AI slop version.
  by keiferski
• I am literally wearing a watch right now that was produced without any of these artisans’ specialized labor and which boasts among its features access to AI.

  In a very real sense I have replaced use of the skills of watchmakers with AI.

  Sorry about that. To be fair most watchmakers were already put out of work by quartz oscillators and integrated circuits in the 1980s.

  by jameshart
• I don't know how high paying it is, although I can see how it can be, especially given there is a shortage of watchmakers in the developed world, even in Switzerland.
  by ricardobayes
• Correct, AI will not replathe 3 high-paying watch maker jobs that exist. You are the best kind of correct, technically. But you are distracting from the fact that most people aren't doing anything even remotely physical related in the space that some people posit will be decimated by AI: white-collar jobs where you are a keyboard jockey all day.
  by gleenn
• Sure but it’s also a microscopically small component of the country’s overall economy.
  by stouset
• I have a friend who got an English and Creative Writing degree from a liberal arts college, and then immediately went back to trade school for band instrument repair. It's not particularly lucrative, as trades go, but it does seem a lot more future proof than most careers.
  by annzabelle
• Yes, and it's a great example of an industry that was completely decimated by automation - you can get a functional watch for a fiver, whereas back when every watch was handmade and a de-facto inheritance piece.

  But bespoke, handmade, high value, low volume stuff is still around.

  by Cthulhu_
• Why?

  Many modern watch parts are CNC machined, often the finishing is done by hand such as zaratsu polishing - but even that is a repetitive motion that can be mechanised.

  I would not be surprised if given enough time even what we have today - a decent VLA model + some other specialised models, 6-axis CNC machine, an SMD pick and place etc would be capable of designing, manufacturing and assembling a mechanical watch.

  by fennecfoxy
• Mechanical timepieces are a luxury item, and these students are essentially artists in training. Wrist time was solved in the late 1970's with the commoditization of quartz movements. These 'jobs' will get replaced by AI at approximately the same pace as your local sculptor.
  by seemaze
• My grandfather was a master watchmaker and jeweler who learned his trade in the Soviet Union and then in Europe. After emigrating to Toronto after the war, he opened his own jewelry store, where he repaired watches and clocks, as well as crafted and repaired fine jewelry.

  He was a true master of his craft and built a successful business based on his exceptional skill. He Was well known for his craftsmanship and his remarkable ability to repair virtually any watch or clock, no matter how complex.

  Jewelers from across the city would bring him pieces that no one else could repair. For antique and vintage timepieces, he would often fabricate tiny replacement parts by hand when originals were no longer available. When he retired, very large companies would still come to his home to repair incredibly expensive pieces. He liked to tinker and would quietly work in his little home shop, pipe burning, radio playing, and visitors coming throughout the day to have him fix things.

  When he passed, he had 10's of 1000's of watch parts in all these little bags that were all tagged and in boxes. We ended up giving them away to one of his customers who own several Jewelry stores. Had I known I would have offered them to this school along with 100's of watches he kept for parts.

  by sleepyguy
• Is this still a viable career?
  by culopatin
• The image of him in the home shop with the radio playing and people still bringing him supposedly unfixable things is wonderful
  by MarceliusK
• My father was a watchmaker. Fond memories of going with him in his van to the various jewellers he did work for picking up and dropping off. I remember being given a big metal lamp from his workshop when he passed away and realising the body of the lamp was not isolated from the incoming power, although luckily not at mains voltage (not what killed him).
  by p1necone
• There is something pleasantly backwards about a school teaching people to repair objects that were designed to last, while so much of the rest of the economy is optimized around replacement
  by MarceliusK
• One could argue that it’s everyone else who is backwards.
  by al_borland
• There's something interesting in maintaining items built to last when the objects themselves are maintained and kept for entertainment reasons. (Entertainment in the broad sense for enjoyment first and foremost over utility or practicality). I guess it strikes me like a master of maintaining toy trains or something along those lines, both evoking a sense of respect and sense of humanity for the craft and art of the thing, while paradoxically feeling that this is not "actually important" (whatever that means). Like someone being a great soccer player or michelin star chef -- the seriousness of this kind of endeavor is both inspiring and comical at the same time?

  Maybe it should be viewed like the sign of a healthy ecosystem; if it can support "exotic birds" like these, it's stable and healthy.

  by yulker
• It's promising and I'm glad to hear such a depth-oriented study of making things, taking time is still a thing in a fast world. People are paying to study this, nice
  by legends2k
• Yes, but notice the scale - 20 students, in a nation of 40+ million people.

  We might call that a moral or poetic victory - but practically speaking, it's like an endangered human language which "still has over 100 native speakers". The future ain't looking good.

  by bell-cot