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> 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.

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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.

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.

> 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.

> 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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

objects that can outlive their owners

parrots, tortoises

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