This is an image from today’s Versace press release presenting two new watches that will be presented at the upcoming watch and jewellery show Baselworld. Do you notice anything strange? Here is a larger version of the chronograph image: And here is another view of the chronograph, from a pdf attached to the press release: In…
This was in my opinion the biggest surprise of SIHH 2015. In their Royal Oak Concept RD#1, Audemars Piguet haven’t invented a new category of watch, and they themselves have been making minute repeaters for over a century. But for the first time, they have succeeded in making a minute repeater that you can hear.…
At SIHH in Geneva this year, there were some brands that surprised for how few new watches they presented, and others who surprised for the richness of their product launches. Vacheron Constantin definitely came in the second category, with five new calibres making 2015 a milestone year for the brand. 2015 is Vacheron Constantin’s 260th…
A few watch brands are releasing news of the watches that they will be presenting at SIHH in January, and Piaget has set another record for thinness, this time with a hand-wound ultra-flat chronograph. The dial has the classic Piaget Altiplano minimalist look, with continuous seconds on a subdial at 6 o’clock, a 30-minute subdial…
Not so much something we want to see at the upcoming watch show SIHH in January, but something we want to hear. This Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Acoustic Research watch – whose name has now been confirmed as the Royal Oak Concept RD#1 – took eight years of development and three patents pending, and just…
I was excited when I saw news about the Longines Conquest 1/100th Horse Racing, a chronograph with a hand that indicates elapsed time to the nearest one-hundredth of a second. Then I saw that it’s a watch with a quartz movement and I was less excited, but even so, it’s a piece with an attractive function, designed…
1. Omega was chosen by NASA after a gruelling series of tests. The Omega Speedmaster is the only watch approved by NASA for manned space flights. In the early 1960s, the Omega had already been in space, worn by Wally Schirra on his Mercury flight in October 1962, and NASA were considering a watch for…
Watch brands are already looking forward to 2015, and Ralph Lauren has presented the Automotive Chronograph, inspired by the dashboard of Ralph Lauren’s Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic Coupe, shown below, image courtesy of http://www.conceptcarz.com/ It is a large piece at 45 mm diameter, 12.2 mm thickness, but the actual dial with the indications is on…
The BR-X1 chronograph by Bell & Ross looks exciting, with its dark interior workings providing the backdrop for glimmering steel hands and subdials, in the brand’s classic square-shaped case inspired by cockpit instruments. While the BR-01 launched about ten years ago, and the more recent BR-03, were very close to the classic pilot’s watch design,…
The Chopard L.U.C. 1963 Chronograph (reference 161964-5001) is one of the entries in the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, and this limited-edition piece was presented at Baselworld 2014. It’s an attractive watch, with a 42-mm-diameter case, 11.5 mm in thickness, in pink gold with silver dial, and chunky Roman numerals. A sporty touch is added…
What happens in a thousandth of a second? Usain Bolt runs 1.2 centimetres, a cheetah runs 3 centimetres, an Airbus 380 flies 33 centimetres, the earth moves about 30 metres on its course around the sun. Light travels 300 kilometres in a thousandth of a second, and that is the very top end of the…
The F.P. Journe Centigraphe Souverain is a 100th of a second chronograph, with one hand that makes a revolution every second. The chronograph display has three dials, one for one second, one for 20 seconds, and one for ten minutes. For each, a tachymeter scale is marked inside the time scale, so on the one-second dial,…
During the 19th century, Hamilton, founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was “The Watch of Railroad Accuracy”, and two new watches in the RailRoad collection are based on pocket watch designs from that era. The brand now combines powerful links to its American origins with Swiss movements. Its watches are made in Bienne, Switzerland, and it is…
Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton presented their own special-edition watches by IWC Schaffhausen, with each edition limited to 250. IWC have a partnership with the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team, in an agreement that has been renewed until 2018. Not surprisingly, both watches are chronographs in the Ingenieur range, presented at…
One of the favourite types of mechanical watch is the chronograph, the complication that enables it to be used as a stopwatch as well as for telling the time. It’s probably the most practical complication of all (after the calendar complications), and not just for racing: it can be used for a variety of everyday…
At the 71st Venice Film Festival, Al Pacino was photographed wearing a steel Bulgari Octo Velocissimo. The name of the watch “Velocissimo” is not just cool marketing. Bulgari’s chronograph has an automatic movement, Calibre BVL 328, running at a higher frequency than usual, 36,000 vibrations per hour, ensuring precision for the classic chronograph functions. The…
Hamilton is a very happy brand. Like many other watch manufacturers, they have the pleasant problem of not being able to make enough of their watches. They are very comfortable as part of Swatch Group, which has the resources and the movements they need for their products. They have a long heritage that provides a…
El Primero is a name that Zenith gave to its automatic chronograph presented in 1969, and it has become one of the watch-making legends. The name, which means “the first” in Spanish, was chosen to stake the Zenith claim for the first automatic chronograph; at that time, several brands were working on the concept, and…
Panerai was founded in Florence in 1860, and became a supplier of timepieces to the Royal Italian Navy, watches that had certain characteristics resulting from practical necessities. For example, large size, made more comfortable by a rounded cushion-shaped case; good water resistance; straps long and tough enough to enable them to be worn over a…
Glashütte is not just a watch, it’s the name of a town. And it’s a long story of resilience and survival, starting in 1845 when the local silver mines started to run out. Ferdinand Adolph Lange had visited Switzerland, where he had seen what the watch companies were doing there, and he responded to an…