What is speed without time to measure it? At the December 2026 lecture of the Horological Society of New York (HSNY), Simon Jeffs, Founder of Brooklands Watch Company, will explore this fundamental question through the remarkable story of Brooklands — the world’s first purpose-built motor racing circuit, where in 1907, timekeepers measured speed within a thousandth of a second — the same precision used in Formula 1 today.
From Percy Lambert’s heroic 100 miles in one hour to John Cobb’s land speed records, from pioneering women racers like Kay Petre to the engineers who understood that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it,”; Brooklands became Britain’s crucible of speed where every victory, every record, every tragedy was defined by the tick of a chronograph.
Jeffs will reveal how this obsession with precision timing connected watchmaking to human ambition, featuring figures from Reid Railton to George Daniels (who once owned the legendary 1929 Birkin Bentley that set Brooklands’ lap record), and trace the journey from mechanical stopwatches wielded by officials dodging flying gravel to the sophisticated timing systems that made motorsport possible. The lecture will culminate with Jeffs’ own connection to this heritage through Sir Terence Conran, whose parents were Brooklands regulars and who designed Brooklands’ debut watch — the British design icon’s only timepiece.