Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses | Hacker News Reader

Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

smithsonianmag.com

Everyone that wants to get into tech investing should read about Mark Twains misadventures in investing. Current stories about tech investing and investing in general are greatly affected by survivor bias. If you are not a successful investor you do not become famous your story does not get told, so many more people get to make the same mistakes you did.

Mark Twain on the other hand was famous for a completely different reason, and he is a great story teller to top it off. So his stories did get told. And they are very illuminating about how difficult technology investing really is.

He was very lucky in this watch investment story. I am sure he was able to get most of his money back mostly because he was famous and he threatened to expose the watchmakers about their shady dealings. The ordinary person in his place would have suffered more losses.

Another very illuminating story is his investment in automatic type setting machines. Here one would think he had all the advantages. He had worked as a type setter as a kid and as a journalist later on. As a writer he worked with many publishers. He was very familiar with the printing and news paper industries. He knew very well that an automatic type setting machine was sorely needed and would make much money. And he was right, an automatic typesetting machine did make lots of money, but not the one he invested in. The company he invested in failed.

So yeah ... tech investing is not easy.

The fantastic coincidence being the man who created the typesetting machine he invested in, had the last name Paige. I love aptonyms.

And here's an interesting read if you want to follow up about the machine.

http://www.twainquotes.com/paige.html

The library investigator's name is actually Bookman? That's amazing. That's like an ice cream man named "Cone."

Thanks to better technology, quartz watches are now cheaper, easier to maintain, almost always more accurate, and often more robust to shocks and damage. Even the cheapest quartz watches are often more accurate than a $500 (or more) mechanical watch today, and more expensive digital watches are certainly more accurate than anything mechanical no matter the price.

For functionality, then, it seems to me like affordability of watches has been significantly progressed or even attained.

That's very true. My two quartz watches, a Seiko and a Timex are both reasonably cheap, accurate and save for the odd battery change maintenance-free. My mechanical Seiko on the other hand.... it's beautiful but it seems to have a mind of its own. In the 8 months that I had it it started gaining about 5min a week. I understand automatics do gain or lose a couple of minutes a week, but even so. After being spoiled by the accuracy of quartz, that bugs me.

Just give them a couple of decades. Chances are your quartz watches will no longer work, whereas your mechanical watch will happily tick along, and can still be repaired if it ever breaks down.

But 42 seconds a day is quite a lot. You could try to have it regulated (or do it yourself if you're feeling adventurous).

All of my sub-$30 digital quartz watches are still working and are within a few seconds of the current time around 10 years after being purchased and set. A mechanical watch would likely need much more maintenance in that period, perhaps even to keep it running.

I still have an automatic mechanical watch, for what it's worth, and in theory it should last longer when maintained but will likely cost far more every year than one of my digital quartz watches would cost to replace even every few years.

In general quartz watches seem to have a lifetime of 20-30 years.

Mechanical watches without factory defects should easily run 10 years without maintenance, but it's advisable to have them serviced every few years.

But yes, even with their longevity, it's a given that replacing a cheap quartz every few years would probably still be cheaper than a mechanical watch.

I'd say a major quality problem in cheap watches is water resistance. Before I knew much about diving, I tried snorkeling with a couple really cheap watches. They both died. There are some good cheap dive watches, like the Casio MDV106-1A. But in general I wouldn't want to get a cheap watch wet. 30m WR just won't cut it.

Hackaday story on waterproofing (700m) the casio f91w by hand... does not look difficult at all! https://hackaday.com/tag/casio-f-91w/

Not sure I'd buy that - my old quartz from my childhood (analogue and digital) still work excellently, and keep great time, and only need a battery replacing every 10 years or so.

My Chinese automatic lost time after the first year and wasn't worth repairing. My vintage seiko 5 recently had a service/repair - which cost £120 - and yes it works pretty well now, but they replaced the whole automatic innards - just the face/dial/hands and body/strap remain. And it still loses a couple of minutes a week. Unless I take it of for a few days and it stops completely.

I love it though and it makes me very happy to wear it - and it looks and feels great. But I wear a Xiaomi mi band on my other wrist for accurate timekeeping (when I need to be sure to make the train or something).

I will attempt to regulate it myself. I have an interest in horology and watch making so it will be a learning curve if nothing else.

If it’s consistently losing or gaining time you can adjust the regulator pretty easily. If it’s random then minimizing thermal cycles helps.

A couple of minutes a week is excessive. Something’s wrong with the watch.

When a solar flare finally hits us (or the Ruskies and the Yanks decide to nuke the world), however, your Seiko will still be a minute/week off. Your quartz watches will be week/week off.

Should that happen, if I am lucky/unlucky enough to survive a nuclear exchange, being on time to catch the train will probably be the least of my worries.

Having said that, I still have an Olympus Trip 35 in my collection and since it uses a selenium cell and a basic galvanometer to measure exposure, I should be okay to use it and document the aftermath as soon as the dust has settled!

Edited for clarity

That sounds like its been magnetized, which is easy to have happen and cheap to repair. You can DIY with a tool from eBay or amazon.

One of the big problems with mechanicals in this day and age is the prevalence of rare earth magnets in all sorts of places, e.g. the iPad has 11 of them, as do many bags. It’s quite easy to accidentally magnetize your watch, and amagnetic movements are still uncommon. (Omega, new ETA, some Rolex).

Thank you for your knowledgeable reply. I must admit it's not something I considered!

'Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.'

I don’t see watches as very functional compared to smartphones. Mechanical movements have a lot of charm though.

I can check my watch without having to pull my phone out my pocket, depending on what you are doing that can make a huge difference.

Practicality and functionality mean different things to do different people.

I have to say, last time I had a phone break, the first thing I dug out was my watch. You really notice a distinct lack of visible clocks these days when your phone dies and you don't have a watch and people these days seem to look at you like there's something wrong with you if you ask them the time.

Being able to start and stop a chronograph/stopwatch to time events without having to look at it whatsoever can be life-saving at best, amusing at worst. Even a watch with a simple minute-gradiated bezel is so much better than relying on my memory to remember a start time.

A Seiko 5 is a great entry level automatic watch for anyone looking to get their first watch. Cheap, reliable, good looking.

Yep. Or, perhaps cheaper, a Vostok Amphibia, but the quality control went down over the years, so it might not be as amphibious as the name suggest (I've got a very rusty Amphibia, now).

Or perhaps even the 10$ or so Chinese Tevise automatics.

Buy a Rolex if you want to impress others, buy a Seiko if you want to impress yourself...

So true !!!

Rolexes are medium-tier anyway. The people you impress with that aren't the ones you should aim for.

As a recovering watch collector (~30 down to 5 in recent months), there's a special feeling I get when I wear a nice mechanical watch, especially with an exhibition case (crystal on the wrist-facing side to view the movement). The intricate and precise manufacturing and assembly of these tiny objects is astounding and tell so much history of not just the brand but horology in general. Quartz watches are certainly cheaper and more accurate, but they still lack the character found in mechanical pieces (for a while I collected Seiko 7A28s, the first analog quartz chronograph). Analogous to a pristine vinyl record vs its CD equivalent, I guess. Not saying quartz is bad, but if you find yourself developing an emotional attachment to timepieces, explore some affordable mechanical options. A great option is the Seagull 1963, a mechanical chronograph with an exhibition case and a lot of character for like 300 bucks.

Right now I wear an Oris 65 daily and I have two Bulovas (Lunar Pilot & Accutron Spaceview) for different occasions/outfits.

When it comes to pricing the product watches and glasses are similar in many ways.

Companies can definitely reduce the price but the price is a status quo in those products.

> Companies can definitely reduce the price but the price is a status quo in those products.

This is why I always advise glasses-wearing friends and families to buy glasses whenever they come visit Japan; prices are MUCH lower than in the US without the Luxottica tax.

I've never worn glasses... But it does seem that in Europe you can get them in the range of €2-€5000. And they all basically have to work, otherwise the seller could get in trouble. Can you tell me why is the range so wide? And are you saying the top end is of equivalent quality, but cheaper in Japan?

In my experience in wearing glasses my whole life it comes down to "you get what you pay for". Not in the functional department since they all use the same lenses, but in the fashion department.

I've worn 30euro glasses. They work and bring no joy.

I've had 300 euro glasses. They work just the same and you think "Damn I'm hot" every time you take a selfie.

This effect is even more pronounced with sunglasses. I get them with prescription so similar price mechanics apply.

My biggest gripe with cheap glasses so far has been the cheap feeling plastic and weight of them. I don't know what it is since I'm no expert, but a lot of cheap glasses just feel cheap when you hold them. They're still functional and won't break randomly, but they feel flimsy and cheap and that's not something I want in a product that I use for literally 18 hours every day.

A good pair of glasses, when you think about it, ends up costing like 30 cents per day of use. Lifetime of 2 to 3 years, daily use ... yeah I'll pay good money for a product that feels good even if I'm "getting scammed"

edit: Wow people here really hate the idea that an item that goes on your face and forms a major part of your most identifying features could be about more than just the cheapest solution to a mechanical problem

Would you say theres an actual qualitative difference between frames, or is this purely psychological?

Your comment seems to be pointing at both, which may be the reason for the down votes.

I'd suggest any such benefit is largely psychological to the user. You can find nearly any style/color you want and branding is difficult to ascertain from any appreciable distance. I tend to buy memory metal half frame glasses and I can't tell the difference between the "knockoff" zenni and my $600 foolish pair I bought at a mall.

Id agree my expensive oakly's with prescription lenses do subjectively feel better in terms of vision.

I normaly pay around £400 for a pair of glasses but they do last five to ten years.

>Lifetime of 2 to 3 years, daily use ...

It seems to me like a short expected lifespan, following is anecdata.

The glasses I am wearing (the frame) are/is 36 or 37 years old.

Every several years I had new lenses fitted to them, mostly because my eyesight slightly changed, right now they sport a brand new set of lenses because I broke one lens and since I use the photochromatic kind I couldn't have only the broken one replaced (the colour and capability to darken changes a bit over the years), but I don't think I replaced the lenses more than 4 times in these almost 40 years.

Then I have another four pairs, one spare in the car glove compartment, one spare always in my suitcase, one for the motorbyke (sun lenses + short stems to fit under the helmet) and one as spare-spare.

And I believe that (besides changing some lenses as well) none of these latter frames are more recent than 15 or possibly 20 years.

> Can you tell me why is the range so wide? And are you saying the top end is of equivalent quality, but cheaper in Japan?

I'm not a specialist, but the cheaper frames here tend to be plastic.

The more expensive frames are almost invariably metal, and then the special flexible plastic and titanium frames go for around 10,000+ JPY.

Normal lenses are cheap ("free" with frames), but if you go for fancy ones (bifocals, transitions, blue light filters, ultralights, etc.), the price goes up.

I've almost invariably bought the 4000-5000 JPY frames and they always look nice and function well.

In the US, however, Luxottica tends to control the frame production/pricing, so frame prices are really out of control. That's why other options like generic frames straight from China are much cheaper.

My current glasses say "handcrafted in Japan" on them, so I guess I qualify as a Japanese glasses owner. They cost 600 USD (bought in the US) a few years ago. I like the way they look, they are light weight, and extremely durable. They have been stepped on, sat on, bent by hand, and seen years of constant service and are still in perfect condition.

I wear my glasses pretty much all the time except when I'm in bed. I even wear my glasses in the swimming pool unless I'm swimming laps. When I last looked for glasses I looked very hard to find something I liked the asthetics of, were wearable, and durable. The price is much less of an issue given that glasses are such a constant and important part of my life. It makes sense to spend to get good glasses to me. Compromising on some aspect of the glasses may save a few hundred dollars, but it would degrade the quality of my every waking moment.

> I've never worn glasses... But it does seem that in Europe you can get them in the range of €2-€5000.

Glasses have two components: frame and lenses. Both can vary widely in prices.

For frames there's components (from cheap hard plastic to metal e.g. shape-memory titanium alloys) and branding & style.

For lenses there's material (basic polymer, impact resistant, high-index, …), complexity (e.g. bifocal) and further treatments (polarised, photochromic, anti-reflective coatings …), the actual prescription likely has a complexity impact as well.

€5000 glasses I expect would mostly be down to branding and style (e.g. dior frames or whatever). Aside from branding and style, most of the price would come down to the lens'.

I buy glasses online from Zenni optical, who make them in China. (there are other companies that do this, but Zenni is the one Iv'e used) They start at $6 for frames and prescription lenses, and they have multiple styles under $20 that match the shape and look I prefer in my glasses.

It's really nice to have glasses cheap enough that I've got spare sets at home, at work and in the car; and not "my old set with the badly scratched up lenses" spares but "slightly different style frames" spares. It's hard to explain to someone that doesn't wear glasses just how much peace of mind you get from that.

An in-between is Warby Parker - I like being able to try on the glasses in store (or shipped to door). Roughly $100-$150.

In on the fence with my warby parker glasses. They seem to scratch far easier than my previous lenses. After 18 months I can't wear them in the dark anymore as they are so scratched that off axis light causes terrible glare.

On the other hand, I can buy new glasses five times as often, and I usually will break or lose my glasses due to misfortune within 7 years, so it's still cheaper.

I tend to be ridiculously un-careful with my specs except with how I clean them, my current glasses are regular plastic with no coatings and they haven't scratched yet. I wash them under warm water with dish detergent and my fingers and them hit them with compressed air or a micro fiber cloth to dry. I wonder how you are cleaning yours as my current pair are over a year old and I can't find a single scratch.

Mine are also regular uncoated ADC plastic, and I wash them with warm water + dish detergent + microfiber cloth. I then rinse under a thin stream of running water, slow enough that it has laminar flow, and I angle the glasses so the water hits the lens close to parallel to the surface. The water sheets off the lens without splashing and leaves it visually flawless. I always rinse the microfiber cloth before use to remove any grit or abrasive dust, and I avoid touching the lenses with anything but the wet microfiber cloth.

I clean the same way, but dry with a lint free cotton cloth. My lenses have AR coating though

Seconded this. I bought mine from Zenni optical as well.

It's amazing that we don't have backups for critical personal items, such as our phone and our eyewear.

Being a glasses user I can definitely understand the peace of mind part. However, I find that I rarely seem to break or otherwise damage my glasses. Maybe it's just me.

I can attest to Zenni glasses, I have three bespectacled users in the family and have started to get them to bring home prescriptions. I've saved hundreds and they're happier with their glasses and their backups and their sunglasses. None of us are on transitions which seems like the best use case for a traditional Luxottica mall brand.

It seems to take about the same amount of time vs. a mall store.

Or in India from LensKart, you could get a solid pair in 10 or 20$.

This depends on the tier you decide to go with. IMO cheap glasses and cheap watches have similar pricing tactics...high end is a delicate dance between get what you pay for and status. Also keep in mind that you are paying for the opportunity / lucky chance of repair when the item is busted.

That is perhaps the best picture of Mark Twain I've ever seen.

Coincidental that I read this exactly 5 min after I broke glasses of my wristwatch, which was gifted to me by someone close.

Wondering how to fix my watch now.

If you're in London, Alsal Watches on the Strand are the go to place.

Depends on the movement etc... If it's a higher end or vintage watch is good to look for a specialist.

The glass face of a watch is often called a crystal for reasons unclear to me.

I assume that it's because the better ones are made of sapphire.

It’s interesting that the brand became Timex, because I came to the same conclusion as Mark Twain: Timex watches have all the features I want but aren’t priced extremely high. I want a timekeeping device, not a fashion statement, and Timex watched excel at that.

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