30 Jan, 2009
Posted by: admin In: Officine Panerai| Piaget
Polo Ralph Lauren, Panerai Ralph Lauren?s luxury watch collection was four years in the making. Panerai, meanwhile, reissued its 60mm Radiomir Egiziano, a diving watch commissioned by the Egyptian navy.
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Time Keepers | The Best in Show – The Moment Blog – NYTimes.com
Mechanical wristwatches (as opposed to battery-powered ones) offer us what sci-fi writer William Gibson called the “tamogotchi experience”: the sense that we are wearing and tending to a living thing that whirrs and ticks on our wrist. Throughout the years, these machines have kept the trains running on time and helped the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit make his two-martini lunch. Sadly, however, these gems are now frequently absent from our wrists thanks to those ubiquitous portable time-telling devices?laptops and cellphones. Watch expert John Biggs offers an in-depth look at some of the most amazing watches from this century and beyond?including a hockey-puck-size watch that is one of the most complex mechanical devices ever made.
1. 1794 | William Anthony’s “The Pearl Star”
Why it Matters: The Pearl Star is one of the first watches with expanding hands.
The Story: Attributed to William Anthony of London, this pocket watch has an oblong case with automatically extending hands. When the hands are at noon, for example, they are fully extended up to the top of the case. When they are at 9:15, they automatically shorten to fit without touching the sides of the case.
2. 1800 | Perrin Freres “Wandering Hours”
Why it Matters: One of the first “digital” watches that used a unique system of hands to display the time.
The Story: The vision of a “digital” watch?meaning one that showed the hours in minutes using rotating numerals instead of hands?has always been an important pursuit in watchmaking. Perrin Freres of Switzerland created an amazing variation on this with the Wandering Hours in 1800. Three hands circled a central pivot and on the tip of each, four small hour numerals spin into place at the end of each hour. With the case closed, the watch looks like a fuel gauge showing minutes and hours but inside you find a riot of gears and hands.
3. 1910 | The Rolex Oyster Perpetual
Why it Matters: The Rolex Oyster redefined where you could take a watch by making it waterproof.
The Story: Like most great innovations, the Rolex merges two simple technologies to create something that no one thought they needed but then became indispensible. The technology, the perpetual movement, was first conceived by Louis Perrelet in the 1750s and was perfected by Rolex. A small weight wound the watch when the wearer moved his or her arm, resulting in a watch that ran “perpetually” with no need for daily winding.
The next innovation was a crown that screwed down to protect the inside of the watch from water. They advertised the first model in 1910 by dunking the watches in aquariums in watch shops around the world. Rolex thus became synonymous with diving watches.
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24 Dec, 2008
Posted by: admin In: Chopard
SINGAPORE: Absolute accuracy has always been the holy grail of horology. One route that the quest takes is to increase the vibration speed of a watch’s balance wheel, which makes a mechanical movement less susceptible to disruption by shock and gravity.
Published: December 12, 2008
While most mechanical watches have a movement ticking at 18,000 vibrations an hour, the record is held by a watch that beats at twice that speed, designed 40 years ago. The Zenith El Primero, an integrated automatic chronograph dating from 1969, has a balance wheel oscillation of 36,000 vibrations an hour, and is accurate to a tenth of a second.
“It’s moving so fast, your wrist can’t even catch up with the speed of the movement,” said Raphael Bertschy, head of product development at Zenith. “No one else has come up with a faster vibration yet – because it’s not that easy.”
But the Zenith El Primero’s 40-year-old record could soon be broken. Chopard Technologies has been testing a new movement that would have 72,000 vibrations an hour.
“Our ambition is to have a greater accuracy,” said Maxime Labey, the managing director of Chopard Asia. “Everybody is already thinking about the chronograph complication as the best implementation.”
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The race is on to build the world’s fastest watch – International Herald Tribune
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