Welcome to the official site of Disrupting Time. This site provides additional information about the book, the sites, characters, and sources used to create this never-told true story of strategy, competition, espionage, decisions, and consequences that shaped the global markets at the turn of the twentieth century.

Disrupting Time has been widely reviewed in publications and podcasts that cover business to finance to history. Please check out what others are saying about the book.


Check out my latest research interest: “Traitor: Arnold, Andre, and the 13 days that saved the revolution”

Currently it’s just research and a few lectures, but stay tuned…


I’ll be speaking at the 2024 National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors’ Symposium, along with Dava Sobel, author of Longitude.

Would love to see you there!

Praise for

Disrupting Time

Aaron Stark pulls back the curtain on perhaps the single most important case of industrial spying in the history of watchmaking – and one whose full details, incredibly, weren’t fully known until just last year.
— Jack Forster, Watchbox.com and former Editor-in-Chief, HODINKEE
Disrupting Time is a fantastic story of real-life “watches of espionage.” It is a thrilling read, full of details that will change everything you thought you knew about the origin of Swiss watches - definitely not the narrative the watch industry has told you. If you are into watches, intelligence, history, or business, this book is a must read!
— Anonymous former CIA Case Officer and the man behind "Watches of Espionage"

“…I began to research the history of David’s report and its connection to the Centennial Exhibition. The previous and conventional narrative was that American companies, notably Waltham, freely and naively shared information about their novel systems with the Swiss, which David then documented in a report. But this conception was at odds with the evidence I found, which clearly showed that David was an industrial spy. I looked for further confirmation of my suspicions and came across a 1987 Swiss academic article that, in a brief mention, also called David a spy, where the author titled David an “En veritable espion industriel” (“real industrial spy”). It was apparent that there was more to the story than had made it into the conventional narrative and the common histories of the watch industry.  

During my subsequent research, I discovered a fascinating tale of cutthroat competition, industrial espionage, societal development, and a great world’s fair. The competition in this era was so intense it was even referred to as “combat of industry” by one contemporary observer. The Swiss watchmakers and Waltham viewed their situation through such a lens, using similar bellicose imagery. David would refer to the American watch companies as “a courageous and well armed adversary.” Meanwhile, Waltham’s chief executive also viewed the situation as a protracted war: “if we can't live in peace we must live on a war-footing…I propose to make the fighting as effective as possible.”  

Prologue, Disrupting Time