The curious case of hybrids in watchmaking | Hacker News Reader

The curious case of hybrids in watchmaking

monochrome-watches.com

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The Spring drive is majestic, and generally wonderful. Get one if you can, they make smashing dress watches. The tool watch side is a bit lacking for my taste (either too thick, or have massive pushers for the chronograph.)

However If you like "funky" movements, then I urge you all to check out this website here: https://electric-watches.co.uk/movement-types/ (look at the drop down under movement types)

There are watches you can buy for less than $300 that are controlled by a tuning fork. A no fooling humming tuning fork. Not only that, they are pretty accurate and easy to look after even by modern standards. They have wheels that have teeth that are 0.037mm apart. Your hair is 0.060mm wide.

Then there are battery powered watches with moving balances. Then there are both styles with quartz regulators as well.

Now if you want something a bit more modern, and less electric, there are silicon balances https://frederiqueconstant.com/monolithic/ which are pretty wild.

and finally plugging my own stuff: https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/projects/electromechanical-c... Which is a tuning fork controlled table clock using only discreet 7400 logic(more or less )

One of the more fascinating aspects of these is how smooth the second hand movement is.

Second hands on Quartz jump once / second. This is to lengthen the battery life.

On mechanical watches, they are smoother than Quartz since the escapement releases power multiple times / sec. But still ever so slightly jumpy since power is still released in discrete increments.

Spring Drive is outta this world smooth…it can do this since battery life is not an issue since it’s mechanically generated power that can be rewound…for practical purposes, it is releasing power continuously, see for yourself here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jcHA5rBQxQc

While most quartz watches use cheaper stepping motors, there are also quartz watches which use synchronous motors, so the hands have a perfectly uniform and noiseless rotation movement.

I had some big wall clocks of this kind, and my father had such wrist watches.

The energy consumption of synchronous motors is lower, because they only have to overcome the friction forces, without having to also accelerate the mass of the hands.

I have a clock that is smooth. Bigger batteries help with that, compared to a small wristwatch battery.

A quartz wristwatch with a smooth seconds hand? How long does the battery last?

I am not sure, because that was some years ago, when my father, who used the watch, was still alive, but in any case the battery lasted at least a year.

Yeah, not that I perceive it to be an assumption that is entirely illogical, but why is smooth movement supposed to consume more power? I can understand that jumping less often conserves power but the power hierarchy should be more ticks > less ticks > no ticks, if we ignore potential increased frictions at lower angular velocity as well as challenges of resisting disturbances.

Ticking is achieved with stepper motors. Whatever motor is required to smoothly rotate uses more power.

Synchronous motors are bit like stepless stepper motors.

At large sizes, synchronous motors are much more efficient than stepper motors, so they use much less power.

At small sizes, the synchronous motors must use permanent magnets, which increase their cost and they have windings that are more difficult to make and the difficulty increases with the smallness of the motor.

The electronic drive of a synchronous motor is more expensive, because it must generate sinusoidal currents, not rectangular currents.

At small sizes, a synchronous motor may have a lower torque than a stepper motor , so it might need extra gears, which would increase the cost.

As long as it is still cost-effective to manufacture a synchronous motor, it will always have a better efficiency and a lower power consumption than a stepper motor. The reason why stepper motors are preferred is that at very small sizes they can be much cheaper, especially when including the cost of all associated electronic and mechanical components.

It's so funny how the smoothness of the second hand has changed in desirability over time.

It started with mechanical watches that moved relatively smoothly at 3-6 beats per second. Then Quartz came along, and it became fashionable for seconds to move on the second (the "quartz crisis"). Then mechanical watches became fashionable again as quartz watches became commodities during the "Mechanical Renaissance", and it's now a sign of luxury for a "smooth sweeping" second hand again.

And then you have these modern outliers, like the F.P. Journe Tourbillon Souverain, which feature a "remontoire" that stores up energy before releasing it on the second for increased accuracy. So you can pay $250K for a watch that moves like a $10 quartz :)

I hear ya, it does all makes sense tho

Quartz jumping seconds was a novelty back in the day. No one now views it that way, being interested in it was a fad.

Spring Drive now is not a fad, but IMO a sustained niche for enthusiasts. It’s been around a while and has stood the test of time (pun intended!)

The F. P. Journe is high end mechanical art/creativity. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

If you’re on a budget and want a deadbeat seconds hand, Jaeger LeCoultre has a deadbeat seconds watch, the Geophysic True Second, which is ‘only’ around $15k :) I believe it has been discontinued and is only available on the secondary market.

https://www.ablogtowatch.com/one-watch-quarantine-pandemic-j...

Actually, at the very high end of luxury watchmaking they prefer lower beat movements as it increases the service interval, exotic escapements like the remontoir are primarily for exhibition purposes/bragging rights.

I never understood the smooth second appeal, my local Ikea store sells clock with a buttery smooth second hand for a few bucks

I had an electromechanical Timex with a dead beat seconds complication. Which means it was a battery powered watch with a balance that was supposed to be ticking 4 times / second and an extra complication added (the dead beat seconds) to make it tick once per second.

If you'd put your ear to it you could hear it tick 3 times in the background and then a loud tock.

> Second hands on Quartz jump once / second.

Some quartz movements tick more. Grand Seiko 9F has a multi-step tick that is so fast it’s mostly imperceptible. Bulova Accutron too.

I used to be fascinated with that, until I saw a wall clock that had a smooth second hand movement. It was a cheap $10 clock, because it's not an issue to put a larger battery into a wall clock.

Maybe I already got my kick out of seeing a smooth second hand movement and no longer feel the need to look at it on my wrist. Or perhaps my fascination was based on some gatekeeping, and seeing a cheap item with a similar feature made it disappear. Likely both.

I guess people who genuinely admire the engineering effort would be left unaffected.

I wear a mechanical because the loud tick of a full size 1Hz second handdrives me bonkers. Although I can handle the small seconds in a quartz chronograph.

Bulova Precisionist, a quartz watch with 16 ticks a second, looks very much like spring drive.

Seiko has a 4Hz series of inexpensive quartz movements (VH31) that are at least as smooth as the entry level Seiko NH35. Bulova has a significantly smoother 15Hz quartz movement but you’re going to spend $600 getting it in a watch.

> On mechanical watches, they are smoother than Quartz since the escapement releases power multiple times / sec. But still ever so slightly jumpy since power is still released in discrete increments.

Yup, and the higher the beat rate, the "smoother" it looks. Grand Seiko Hi-Beats and Zenith El Primeros come to mind. There's a good Hodinkee article describing the tradeoffs of different beat rates [1].

[1] - https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/watchs-frequency-hz-vph-me...

Yep. Hi Beats are real solid.

GS movements really are massively better than others in the 5-10k price range

Second hand on Grand Seiko quartz watches moves once per second, but makes two jumps. You can see it in slow motion video, but not with a naked eye.

Very cool, didn’t know that

> Autonomy isn’t the only thing that matters when comparing mechanical to quartz.

says the caption beneath a photograph of a „A. Lange & Söhne with a 31-day power reserve“

So there’s the notion that —-in case your air plaine crashes and you land on a desert island—- a quartz watch‘s battery will drain in 5 years and you’re left without a watch, but the thing is: A mechanical watch needs to be serviced every five years (taken apart, lubricated).

But I agree: A mechanical watch is infinitely more appealing than a quartz. Considering how minuscule the parts are, what a Meisterleistung it is to produce something that works for decades. I also find the idea very appealing to have objects that can outlive their owners: Furniture, writing instruments, mechanical watches.

There exist specialized quartz watches with battery lifes in the 15 years range - I am sure if there was any real demand it would be possible to build a digital watch that can survive a century without any service. While I appreciate the craft, let us not pretend the demand for mechanical watches in the modern day is nothing but a luxury vanity driven buy wealthy people with way too much money to spare.

For this “desert island” use case, a solar powered quartz watch seems like it would work the longest, of COTS options today (although a mechanical watch might be fine without servicing).

Of course, my favorite watch in this case would be something like the Breitling Emergency (https://www.breitling.com/us-en/emergency/) which could call for rescue. Looking forward to a satellite connectivity version in the future — iPhones are able to do this now, so something like the Apple Watch Ultra 2 may be able to.

I’ve got a 20 year old G-shock with solar that’s never been serviced that’s been worn for thousands of miles of offshore sailing. It gets the time every day at 3am from some 60kHZ radio signal in Colorado and as long as I wear it a few times a year all day in the sun, it never dies. Its time has been within ~500ms of GPS time continuously since 2004. I leave it on a small metal rack near a south facing window with the antenna touching the rack for increased reception of the nightly time calibration, and a bit of solar in the morning. One day it will die, or some of the rubber on it will rip and I will replace it with the same model from Casio. It’s still only ~$100 and looks identical just with a new battery and more modern antenna/electronics.

Hoping for an EPIRB on my wrist or maybe even just a 162 MHz emergency AIS transmitter that fits on the wrist sometime in the next 5 years.

> So there’s the notion that —-in case your air plaine crashes and you land on a desert island—- a quartz watch‘s battery will drain in 5 years and you’re left without a watch, but the thing is: A mechanical watch needs to be serviced every five years (taken apart, lubricated).

Except if you get a watch with Citizen's Eco-Drive, which is where the power comes from ambient light and not a battery:

* https://www.citizenwatch.com/ca/en/technology-eco-drive.html

I own a Casio solar (brand name "Tough Solar") watch, which is generally the same technology IIUC. I believe they indeed have long life, but there is actually still something of a "battery" inside (specifically, I think a kind of a capacitor, though not 100% sure), which still has some life expectancy and a number of cycles it can survive. Not to mention that even this kind of a watch has a number of potential other failure modes as well... just recently I stumbled and dropped it, and the back-plate sprung away. Surprisingly, even a watchmaker took a while to put it back in, and was similarly mildly amused that what looked like a trivial job proved to not be exactly so. That said, it was more of a suit watch, totally not a G-Shock.

Some data: I had a "Tough Solar" G shock for field work- it was very long lasting. I got it in 2002 (if memory serves) and it lasted about a dozen years. By that point the capacitor could not hold a charge very long at all, and it became unusable. I set it aside and a few year later the rubber bits fell apart including stuff around the case. I'd say by 15y it was totally toast. Not bad considering I never did a single bit of service on it, but definitely a reminder that time always wins in the end. Even when it comes to your timepiece!

G-Shock basically solved the what-time-is-it problem when they got ruggedness, solar power, and remote time signal update into a cheap package. Expensive watches that don't have those features are jewelry.

Can confirm. I received an Eco-Drive as a gift from my father about 12 years ago, and the watch has never died (although I've had to replace a snapped band several times)

I have an Eco-Drive I've been wearing daily for over 17 years now. Earlier this year I had to have the capacitor replaced for the first time since it started to stop overnight, but now it's working without a hitch again.

If you were stranded on the desert island, what would you need to watch for?

Watches can be used to find fresh water sources. (Joking, of course you are completely correct)

Well, you can navigate with the help of the sun. And keep sane having some sort of structure (when to wake up, when to go to bed, when to eat), monitor tidal changes. There is lots of value in knowing the time, even on a desert island.

> And keep sane having some sort of structure (when to wake up, when to go to bed, when to eat)

Without other people to coordinate with, the signals from the environment and your body are a more sound structure for these. The time of day is at best a good proxy.

> And keep sane having some sort of structure (when to wake up, when to go to bed, when to eat), monitor tidal changes.

Though you could just stick a piece of wood into the sand, mark shadows thrown at sunrise sunset and divide the circle's span however you want for your time system..

My desert island will be a metric time paradise.

timing cooking hardboiled seagull eggs

as an approximate compass, if it has an hour hand (bisect the angle between the hour hand and noon, that's north or south, depending on your latitude, unless you're in the tropics where this doesn't work)

as a heliograph to flash signals to passing ships

if there's a date magnifier, you can use it to light fires

the engraving on the back may help identify your sun-bleached bones ("So, this poor devil was named WATER RESISTANT")

> as an approximate compass, if it has an hour hand (bisect the angle between the hour hand and noon, that's north or south, depending on your latitude, unless you're in the tropics where this doesn't work)

I've read and sort of understood and forgotten the technique before - but that's certainly not it: you could determine your north that way and spin around and it wouldn't change.

the hour hand is pointing at the sun, is the bit I missed from the sentence.

Ah right, and it works because the sun's going E to W in a full revolution, roughly in the relative N at noon.

I have a Seiko watch with capacitor charged by movement that worked for 18 years and it was't finished completely but it depleted in one or two days. It's a pity they stopped with this technique.

My father has a mechanical watch that he bought in the 70s and he has never serviced it.

A Jaeger LeCoultre Memovox, a thing of beauty.

> but the thing is: A mechanical watch needs to be serviced every five years (taken apart, lubricated).

A mechanical watch should be serviced about every five years. That doesn’t mean they magically stop working if you don’t. I have an inherited Omega from the 60s that hasn’t been serviced in decades and it still runs and keeps good time.

Yep. I recently serviced a Tissot from the late 1930s – it was running fine, it was just a reasonable thing to do after all these years to prolong its lifespan. You wouldn't be able to tell that it needs a service without looking at timegrapher readings.

Yes, but as a counterpoint, I have a vintage Seiko of my father which missed one too many servicings and now has a broken date wheel (but otherwise works perfectly).

If I could find someone to fix it, I'd wear it special occasions (my day-to-day is a Solar Seiko) often enough to keep it wound and _would_ get it serviced every 5 years.

If I land on a desert island the very last thing I need is a watch. A watch is there to be able to synchronize with outside events, and those are in short supply on a desert island. If there are no other people that you need to meet, trains whose time tables matter or ships that need conning you don't need a watch. I'd trade you my watch for a book of matches or some canned food.

> If I land on a desert island the very last thing I need is a watch. A watch is there to be able to synchronize with outside events, and those are in short supply on a desert island. If there are no other people that you need to meet, trains whose time tables matter or ships that need conning you don't need a watch.

A watch lets you calculate longitude, which could be very valuable indeed.

There's a reason why accurate time keeping was one of the holy grails during the age of sail.

Why would it be useful to you to be able to calculate longitude on a desert island?

I suppose you could use it to work out where you need to go as you attempt to sail across the Pacific in your improvised raft?

Good luck :) I just hope I brought enough books or a musical instrument with me. I'll be fine. And if not, oh well, there are much worse places to be than a desert island, with or without a watch. The thing you don't want to find out is that what you thought was a desert island is in fact inhabited by some tribe that thinks you might be tasty.

To put that information into a bottle so as to be rescued --- this is the crux of Jules Verne's _In Search of the Castaways_.

To look up closest Starlink passes and send SOS by messing with it using a mirror, of course.

If you want accuracy, a mechanical watch is not the right answer. Update: Best I've seen is +/-0.3 sec/day (3 ppm). Quartz can exceed this by 10x-100x. An atomic clock can beat that by many orders of magnitude.

But I'm definitely not lugging around a sextant and a cesium clock just in case.

Ok, but why do you need to calculate longitude of the island five years later? Seems like a one-and-done thing.

> A watch is there to be able to synchronize with outside events

And to better predict rising tides (the ideal time for fishing), to plan your day and your trips better, and to boil eggs exactly the way you like them.

It's a luxury item compared to a knife, but it has its uses.

If we’re being really realistic, I don’t think there are any desert islands in existence today that are both habitable and wouldn’t be visiting is a five years time span.

Did you find Cast Away implausible?

objects that can outlive their owners

parrots, tortoises

I honestly find mechanical watches quite ugly, irrespective of cost, brand, or notoriety.

To my eyes there's something inescapably crude about mechanical design with moving metal parts. It's still present when there are tiny components with even tinier tolerances.

For those of you with expensive watches (5000usd+):

Do you wear it every day?

Does it impact your plans ie "I shouldn't wear it today because I might be targeted for a robbery"?

What is the reason you bought an expensive watch when there are plenty not expensive watches that are good at "time"?

Would you consider yourself "well off?"

Thanks :)

Expensive is relative to where you live.

If you bought a Submariner in 2013, you could sell it today for more than you paid. From some perspectives, that Rolex is less expensive than a similar Timex or Casio.

In Switzerland I don't think there is any such thought. I see crazy expensive time pieces on people's wrists and no one give as hoot other than watch enthusiasts.

I don't currently own a watch over 5k but if I where to purchase such a piece it would be for the craftsmanship and the beauty of the mechanics. However you would never find me wearing a Rolex which is a mass produced status symbol IMO.

I currently don't own a >=5k but I have previously, my currently daily is 3.5k (GBP).

> Do you wear it every day? > Does it impact my plans?

I do wear it almost daily but it does vary, if I'm doing anything manual (gardening, working on my bike, painting/decorating) then I'll either not wear it or take it off during those activities where I'm likely bound to bash my wrist against something.

I'll often swap it out for one of my other cheaper ones sometimes.

> Why?

I've liked watches for God knows how long and I was fortunate to work at a luxury watch shop where I got some great discounts.

I've always said my collection is my funeral fund for once I go!

> Do I consider myself "well off"?

Personally, no. I just make very bad financial decisions.

Generally I do wear it every day. I bought it because, after many many years of finding all mechanical watches ugly and tacky, I found one specific model that I find to be absolutely gorgeous and I adore the way it looks; a $300 Apple Watch keeps better time and has more functionality. A $20 Casio has equivalent functionality and way, way better timekeeping. It's jewelry and I wear it daily just as I wear an EDT and deodorant and clean clothes. I actually subscribe to the jwz theory of "if you need you to know what time it is that often, your life has gone dangerously wrong", and I have a radar filed because there are no Apple Watch faces without a time display.

It also has the added benefit whilst traveling of signaling to customer service staff (I fly commercial and not always in first) that I am a revenue opportunity (ie don't ignore me), as I am quite utilitarian and my 'fits are almost always sub-$200 (not counting shoes and scarf). My daily driver tshirt is plain black and costs $25, for example, and I loathe brands and visible labels. It's not immediately obvious to retail staff that it's profitable to provide me with good service.

Expensive watches aren't about timekeeping. They are jewelry and status signifiers.

Also, my daily driver watch is under $10k; theft no more enters my mind about it than it does for carrying my laptop; a maxxed out Macbook Pro ($6k) is approximately the same value as my watch and I never think about whether or not I should bring my laptop somewhere.

I also collect sunglasses and luggage; I'm not much of a clothes horse but I do adore stylish accessories.

Edit: I have friends who are "expensive watch guys" and one such new money friend, despite growing up poor, now personally grosses low double digit millions of USD annually. He recently told a story to our group about being in a 10 person business meeting where his $40k Rolex was the cheapest watch anyone had on, as a way of communicating how impressed he was and the gravitas of how many corporate heavy hitters were involved in his deal. Perhaps this sheds some light on their purpose and utility. (My $7k stainless steel daily driver doesn't even rank among these sorts of guys.)

1. What is an EDT?

2. What does "I have a radar filed" mean?

Thanks for clarifications.

Eau de Toilette - perfume/cologne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eau_de_toilette

Radar is Apple's internal bug tracker - "a radar" is an Apple(tm) bug report.

https://openradar.appspot.com/page/1

Odd thing to acronymise. (If you insist on doing so, it should probably be EdT or simply ET in any case).

I don't insist but the acronyms EDT and EDP are already the subcultural jargon. (I'm new to this scene myself.)

Wait, which subculture?

https://old.reddit.com/r/fragrance/comments/vch3bn/as_a_frag...

I've tried googling this JWZ theory but can't find anything. I suspect I would like to read whatever he embedded this in though. Could you give a citation or hint on where to find it?

2000: https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/cell.html

> I don't wear a wrist watch for a similar reason: if you wear a watch, it means that your life is structured such that you frequently need to know what time it is. And that means that your life has taken a wrong turn somewhere.

I was in a meeting recently with two guys who both had Rolex’s on, and all it told me is that they probably take bribes.

I used to work on yachts. Expensive watches were a pretty good asshole signal.

Plenty of fabulously wealthy people out there wearing timex, Ironman, or Apple Watches.

If you’re judging someone’s business acumen based on their watch, you also seem to think that telling us how much your buddy grosses is supposed to tell us anything at all.

I think you might’ve intended to respond to my parent.

I don't know why this comment makes me wretch. Money people and their lines of thinking are so bizarre and foreign to my reality.

It's not so much "money people" as it is utility - someone who can provide you with a $1mm or $10mm business opportunity wears the same quality suit as someone who can provide you with a $100mm or $1B business opportunity. It's a practical method of signaling status within a group where everyone is wealthy.

Humans as well as many other mammals become anxious in groups where their position in the social status hierarchy is unclear. It's a tool for signaling information to strangers, same as a wedding ring.

I have to use 2 Apple Watch as they does not have enough battery to keep going for long. I just switch it for charge whenever I have time. I suspect all these hybrid watch is a compromise of energy.

Everyone could be saved a lot of trouble in the above scenario if it were socially acceptable to simply wear a yellow sticky note stating your annual income on your forehead.

You could lie and write a bigger number. It's harder to lie about having six figures strapped to your wrist for anyone to see.

It needs to be a signal that can't easily be faked to be useful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting

Fake high-end watches are fairly readily available, aren’t they?

A signal doesn't have to be perfect to be useful. Breast implants and hair implants are also a thing. The fakes are for fooling people who don't know the difference between a $20k and a $200k watch and just see "Rolex". Many of the "expensive watch guys" I know used to own pawn or jewelry stores and know specific model years intimately. Fakes would be hard to pass off in those crowds, though I am sure they exist.

The rise of fake handbags (the modern female equivalent) and their explicit popularity (as fakes) is interesting and instructing, too.

I've come to learn that most normal people just want to be oriented about where they stand in the status hierarchy. It's not that being low or high status is the goal (although for many it is), but knowing the relative status of those around you makes people less anxious as they then understand how to behave to minimize their own distress. It's the uncertainty that causes people anxiety.

I agree with your basic premise that clear displays of metrics would save a lot of time and trouble, but we have decided as a society that that is both dangerous and tacky, so we use more coded signals instead.

I really think you may be overestimating how much the average person cares about 'status'. Or wants to advertise it, quite frankly. I wear pretty much the same stuff as I did when I earned a tenth what I do now.

Not saying that no-one cares about it, but I don't really buy that it's "most normal people".

Though, it may be somewhat regional and/or generational; my impression is that my approximate generation (late X, early millennial) may be less concerned with it that either early Xes or late millennials.

This is great. Just as easy to fake as an expensive watch, but more to the point. You can also add your dick measurements to it while you’re at it.

I have a watch that would be considered expensive by most. It’s not really about telling the time - I simply appreciate the complexity and beauty of handcrafted mechanical watches.

People spend years learning how to build them. It takes a long time to assemble one. They’re precisely made with small parts made of precious metals which are themselves expensive.

With companies like A Lange & Sohne, each watchmaker can only make about 6 watches per year. At a pace like that you’re not really paying for the watch, you’re paying for their labor and expertise. You’re paying to preserve the craft. You can’t make 6 of something in a year and sell it for $100 if it’s how you make a living.

I collection (mechanical) watches I have 30-40, half are cheap as chips, usually old Soviet pieces, the other half are Swiss.

The most expensive watch I own is about €10k. Honestly I don't think of the value on the days I wear it - I just look at it and smile.

It used to be that I had about seven watches and I had one for each "activity". So I had a sauna-watch, a swimming watch, a photography watch. Later I got too many, so I switched into different styles - a pilot watch, a diver watch, a jump-hand watch, etc, etc.

I usually change watch every day, but sometimes I might wear the same one for 3-5 days. The only time I consciously think about it is when traveling for holidays - I think "Is this the watch I want to go through security with, and dive into a lake?" or "Am I gonna wear a suit, or not?"

Expensive watches are not comparable to cheap watches in my view. Just like a bottle of 50 year old whisky cannot be compared to a €10 cider - they are different things, with different audiences.

(Also: Get insurance. That takes away almost all worry :)

when I first could afford to but before I had responsibilities, I bought a breguet classique off secondary market, which is already understated, and I wear it with an even more understated leather band. I consciously chose to wear it as a daily cary, which means that on more than one occasion I wore it through ghettos on the way to raves, including through one attempted and failed robbery. By now it's well worn in, and I prefer it to be a subtle signal: those who don't care don't notice, so it's not ostentatious, those who pay attention but don't know will figure it out through closer observation, and those who know, don't need to ask any questions. I do occasionally consciously take them off so as not to be flashing, when that would be particularly crass or foolhardy.

I've lost many watches in my life, but this one has trained me in the discipline of care and attentiveness towards my possessions, which extends to all things and not just the watch.

There was no particularly good reason for me to buy it though, except for the watch maker name's frequent mention in the 19th century literature, including a famous line from Pushkin's Onegin, "he strolls down boulevards, until a sleepless Breguet, calls out time for supper". now it's likely that Onegin specifically didn't wear an actual breguet, because that was a generic name for a chiming timepiece, but the imagery stuck. I grew up on 19th century literature, byronic heroes, this line is explicit reference to flaneur culture, a self-conscious decadent movement, associated with aimless strolling down boulevards dressed in provocative clothing, breguet fits here, and that's the joke of the line: at a time when a timepiece would be associated with a serious vocation, politics or military, it is being used for the most frivolous task of letting one man know when it's time to eat. I reflect on this point occasionally, when I look at my watch.

Expensive watches are jewelry for men, that's about it.

It's really no different than people who pay more than they need to for a car or a home.

It's some combination of it being a status symbol and an "I can afford it and it's fun" kind of a deal.

There is a variety of attitudes, as with fancy cars, McMansions, or other "premium" goods. Some people wax their car every week, some people let it rust.

Watch theft isn't particularly common. I have a nice watch, I wear it daily, and I don't think about it much.

I have an expensive omega. I don't normally need to worry about it, because its not a famous watch, its not one that most people would recognise.

If I had a massive rolex/richard mile or some other painfully obvious watch, then yes, I would be much more reticent.

I got it because its a pioneer watch: https://www.omegamegaquartz.com/ it was the first watch that was stonkingly accurate. There are some citizens and seikos that are probably now more accurate (some of the seikos look damn good too.) But none of them look like this massive lump of 70s engineering.

Yes I am very fortunate to be temporarily rich.

I wear them every day, but take them off if I'm going to high crime cities. The thing is I've been collecting watches for over a decade. My parents are into it, and so is my younger brother. I think it's very rare to share a common interest that won't bore anyone at the dinner table. Now onto the horological aspects - they're like the iPhone / app store back in the day. Keeping track of leap years and all in a 36mm package (think Patek 3940s). Various complications to address various "limitations" of mechanical time telling like the remontoire, co-axial escapements or solid block case constructions for better waterproofness. It's not too different than some of us on HN who fall in love with old Apple IIs, NES or Sega Genesis :)

Hybrid watches are pretty appealing, i can imagine they unlock a market of people that just can’t get past mechanical watches are a bit crap at their primary function.

High end watches are somewhat appealing - the craftsmanship & precision engineering appeal (although today even most high end stuff is machine assembled i think?). Still there’s that huge sting in the tail… they’re just not great timepieces[1].

Your (network connected) phone is going to be more accurate. I can’t help feel like an absolute plum if i were to part with 5k+ for a watch with less accuracy than an £8 Casio.

The article talks about spring drive and that i can get behind, the constant smooth movement is mesmerising, the accuracy is entirely respectable and it charges itself just by wearing so you still get the benefits of an automatic. Then, depending on the model you choose, you get a hand-finished casing that uses a polishing technique that takes a craftsman years to qualify in. To top it all off, these GS spring drives are some of the cheapest “high horology” options out there. I’m sold…

[1] one exception, i’ll never be able to own one, but the H. Moser & Cie “Swiss Alp Watch” which i think i like mostly for the complete absurdity of everything about it

As Teddy Baldassare puts it "Mechanical Watches are expensive toys". And as an owner of a couple of mechanical watches which I use daily, I'm pretty aware of it.

However, wearing a mechanical watch makes me happy. It's a fascinating thing to keep time completely mechanically, and creates a nice counterbalance in my life filled with electronics.

Another similar item is fountain pens.

> Another similar item is fountain pens.

Can’t say anything about mechanical watches, but I’ll disagree with this: in my experience, fountain pens aren’t just toys. I was given a fountain pen a few years ago, and I immediately found it made my hand hurt less when writing, because I didn’t need to press nearly as hard. Since then I’ve found a few models of gel pens which are similar in this regard, but when it comes to handwriting, I still find fountain pens to be by far the most comfortable for me.

> in my experience, fountain pens aren’t just toys.

As an avid fountain pen user, I agree on that regard. Also mechanical watches are not toys in the same perspective.

I'm solely using fountain pens for plethora of reasons, but practicality is not one of them. They need maintenance, needs ink selection if your daily paper is not the best, they get upset when they fly, etc. However even the cheapest Lamy safari can outlast many pens without much effort.

Same for mechanical watches. They're built better, with better materials. They live way longer, and any modern piece can hold time good enough for daily life, but they need maintenance. They need care sometimes.

They are not toys as in "simple and badly made", but are toys as in "There are more practical options, but we prefer to use them because of reasons".

How do you use it and not have it need refilling every time you use it? And not make a massive mess over work surface and hands when you do so?

It was never a problem with the cheap disposable cartridge ones we used at school, but I was given a nicer refillable (twist to draw up ink) one and nice as it is to write with it's a bit of a nightmare as a whole experience, which stops me using it as much as I'd otherwise like to.

This is how I do it:

What you need: A big paper tissue, ink bottle, pen, a sheet of paper.

Step 1: Make sure that your bottle's bore/lip is clean. Dip your pen just enough to cover feed, plus a little of the section (grip). Twist to empty, twist to fill. If there's too much air, repeat a couple times.

Step 2: Raise your pen, but do not remove from the bottle. Twist your piston to drip 4-5 drops of ink back to bottle. This is the amount which saturates your feed. Twist to fill in air, to suck some air, and the excess ink in the feed.

Step 3: Wait a couple of seconds to wait for any other drip, remove your pen from the bottle, wipe the feed, sides of the nib and section. Re-wipe with a damp cloth if you wish. Scribble a little on your paper, you're done.

Be careful while wiping the feed in step 3. There'll be some ink and it may transfer from your tissue to your finger.

If your pen dries very quickly, it might not be good sealer and may need frequent use to ensure to use all the ink inside before drying out. If you can share the make/model, I might be able to point to you to right way.

For me, A Lamy cartridge (or a converter fitted Lamy) lasts around two weeks if I use it every day, even more if I don't. I generally refill my pens when the ink drops below a certain level since more air means faster dry out inside the pen, and make it more prone to "burping".

Enjoy your ink and pen.

Seiko used to have a series of watches called Kinetic, where an oscillating weight charged a capacitor or battery. Weird that it's not mentioned in the article, as it seems to be just what's under discussion.

The issue is essentially solved for quartz, even Casio's electro-mechanic models can be powered by ambient light.

Edited, Seiko, not Citizen.

The article is about hybrid electronic and mechanical timekeeping though, not energy source.

While it has an analog display and a mechanical power source, the Kinetic's timekeeping is purely quartz. The Spring Drive has mechanical timekeeping which is automatically regulated by quartz.

I've recently become enamoured with the Seiko Spring Drive. I'm currently dreaming up (probably unrealistic) plans to try and DIY a Spring Drive type mechanism. I doubt I'd be able to actually make it fit in a real watch, but the goal is to have it at least working on a desk.

More or less the plan is to rip out the balance wheel/escape wheel and pallet fork from an existing movement and try and rig up a permanent magnet on a wheel, then a small electro magnet connected to something like an Arduino and see if I can even get something like that to regulate the speed of the watch.

> The 700P was accurate to +/- 1 second per day, way beyond the reach of any mechanical calibre without electronic assistance.

That’s true, except for Zenith Defy Lab. It is purely mechanical and has a +/- 0.3s per day.

I'm still waiting for a watch with a chip-scale atomic clock. Typical accuracy on current-generation systems is ~0.1 msec/day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip-scale_atomic_clock

If being exact to the extreme is your thing, you may look into either high-frequency quartz (these are exact to within seconds a year), or any bluetooth-adjusted Casio (these will quietly sync with your phone several times a day, and your phone is synced to an atomic clock).

I have one of those Ulysses Nardin phones in a drawer somewhere as I was working on the software part of it back in the days.

The mechanical charging mechanism on the phone was basically a gimmick. You would probably have to shake it around for a few days to get the phone to even start again, if your oligarch plane crashed in the desert and your phone ran out of power.

I wonder at what point in our societal evolution it will become accepted that men wear jewelry other than watches, just like women.

And this is relevant to the article how?

I recall seeing men with rings, piercings, bracelets, etc. Also, while somewhat bland in comparison, the men's section at tiffany's does exist [1].

[1]: https://www.tiffany.com/jewelry/shop/mens-jewelry/

Yeah, but it's not as widely accepted. Wearing such things can easily cost you points in a job interview, for example.

True, this happens. On the other hand, this is often the case for positions where you aren't allowed to wear jewellery or wouldn't want to wear jewellery anyway.

I.e. wearing a nose ring for a dev interview in a corporation with a strict dress code - likely a bad idea. But in a casual agency - you might get bonus points, if anything.

agreed. until you're the boss, and probably even then, it never hurts (economically speaking) to dress the part.

Was a bit disappointed not to see my Accutron in the post. Tuning fork, driven by electromagnets, feeding timing to traditional Swiss style mechanism. Eats batteries though.

Exactly! or the quartz controlled timex oscillators: https://electric-watches.co.uk/movement-types/quartz-control...

or the quartz tuningfork: https://electric-watches.co.uk/movement-types/quartz-control...

or indeed the new generation of accutrons with the electrostatic drive

I worked on the Ulysse Nardin Chairman phone, AMA. (I'll only answer things that won't get me into legal trouble)

Great article! I think missing a bit of framing. When I got really into watches, this is how I came to think of it. Fundamentally, a watch has three parts, and you can play with all three, which results in fun combinations and unique/dead end lineages.

1. a power supply - the most common are either a mainspring (mechanical) or a battery (electronic). You can play around with how you power both - mainsprings can be manually wound, self-winding through wear (a weight moves around and winds it). Outside of the wristwatch world there are other cool winding mechanisms, such as air pressure variation. With electronic ones the basic options are replaceable, self-charging through motion, self charging through sunlight, or directly rechargeable.

2. an oscillator - the most common are a quartz crystal (electronic) or a hairspring (mechanical), but there are some other oddball ones out there. Most of the innovation here is around making the performance temperature/humidity/position agnostic, but at the high end there is a lot of play with new materials and architectures.

3. an interface - the most common is the 12 hour clock face (mechanical) or the LED digital interface (electronic). Although both can immediate the other, for example a jump-hour mechanical interface can resemble a digital clock. Here I think the fun stuff is mostly on the mechanical side - there are many, many cool "complications" which through some series of gears can allow a watch to also keep track of the day, month, moon cycle, day of week, year, leap year, tide (set locally), an alarm, or a a chime every hour. Of course you can do all of that digitally but I guess it feels less special

What's really fun, which this article is focused on, are the combo watches. My three favorite lineages:

Seiko Spring Drive watches are in the article - mechanical power supply, electronic oscillator.

Bulova Acutron - electronic power supply, mechanical oscillator. This one is pretty special as the oscillator was a magnet-driven tuning fork. It was far ahead of its time in terms of accuracy, but of course a dead end as far as practicality goes. It has a cool but annoying property of audibly humming.

Citizen Cosmotron - an electric power supply, mechanical oscillator. This is a more tradition hybrid, where the oscillator is a balance spring. This lineage has some neat engineering for setting the date+day of week - the orientation of the watch actually controls which complication you are working with, using the same button. Also this has a time-sync feature where you can snap the second hand to 12:00 with a press of the button and the watch pauses until you let go of said button.

New mechanical oscillators: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-silicon-powered-speed-... https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/zenith-defy-lab-oscillator...

the battery is there to minimize drift not act as a power supplement?

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