Vacheron Constantin breaks the world record for most complicated wristwatch
hodinkee.com
hodinkee.com
""" Mechanical watches are so brilliantly unnecessary.
Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time, and high-end contemporary Swiss watches are priced like small cars. But mechanical watches partake of what my friend John Clute calls the Tamagotchi Gesture. They're pointless in a peculiarly needful way; they're comforting precisely because they require tending.
And vintage mechanical watches are among the very finest fossils of the pre-digital age. Each one is a miniature world unto itself, a tiny functioning mechanism, a congeries of minute and mysterious moving parts. Moving parts! And consequently these watches are, in a sense, alive. They have heartbeats. They seem to respond, Tamagotchi-like, to "love," in the form, usually, of the expensive ministrations of specialist technicians. Like ancient steam-tractors or Vincent motorcycles, they can be painstakingly restored from virtually any stage of ruin. """
https://web.archive.org/web/20240930092315/https://www.wired...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/confessions-of...
Clocks have discrete ticks. They are digital devices. Even a base-60 second hand is digital because the number of states is finite.
Mechanical and digital are not mutually exclusive concepts. For example, "The analytical engine was a proposed digital mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine
Going further, I could argue that the digital age is very old. Humans who wrote numbers for accounting purposes were engaging in a digital activity; only the numbers matter, not the medium they were written on or the exact handwriting style of the scribe who wrote those numbers. DNA is a form of digital data conveyed through a sequence of 4 possible symbols, and DNA predates humans by billions of years.
The pedantic phrase substitution for "pre-digital age" would be something like "age before widespread digital electronic computers on solid-state microchips" (thus differentiating from analog electronic computers and vacuum tubes).
You are arguing from the second definition while the quote is of the third definition.
Computers do not have to be electronic. Counterexamples: Mechanical calculators, LEGO logic gates, hydraulic logic valves, electrical (not electronic) relays. Heck, even human meatbags were called "computers" back in the day.
It was pretty clear to me that the 3rd sense of "digital" pertains to modern-ish electronic digital computers. I would not call mechanical calculator, human or hydraulic logic "digital computer". (Relay computer is on the fence)
Watches are nice because it’s much less common to have such tiny precise physical machines anymore, since so many of these use cases have been replaced by “computers”.
Not always, look at Seiko's spring drive
you'll be very lucky if your Casio can last as long. Your mass commoditised Apple watch will likely be worthless.
Personaly, I like the IWC on my wrist as much as I like my Casio G-Shock, both are wonderful in their own way.
The Apple watch on my wife's wrist is a fine computer i guess, but at some point, it will have the same "quaint charm" as the IBM Thinkpad she owned 23 years ago.
I’m interested to hear more. Typically things that are “most complicated” and lost lasting don’t go hand-in-hand.
Since mechanical watches are, by design, open source, there will always be a technician interested in keeping them going.
Even if you have a watch in front of you, it does not mean you can create a copy of it without a lot of work - you need to measure every gear, guess the materials used (how stiff should this spring be?), and re-draw mainplate and dial.
Compare to things like old electronics, which came with full schematics, service manual and sometimes even debugging guide.
Apple is unlikely to exist then
You... well you already know.
I wouldn't bet on the Swiss watch market being necessarily around given that many young people aren't being taught how to tell the time and have little appreciation for watches.
1. Kongo Gumi (578 AD, Japan) 3. Specializing in temple construction for over 1,400 years, it was acquired in 2006 but still operates under Takamatsu Construction Group. 2. Drohobych Saltworks (1250, Ukraine) State-owned and Europe’s oldest salt producer, now also a cultural heritage site. 3. Shirley Plantation (1613, USA) Virginia’s oldest family-owned business, operating as a historic farm and museum. 4. Avedis Zildjian Company (1623, USA) The world’s premier cymbal manufacturer, founded in Istanbul and relocated to Massachusetts in 1929. 5. Hudson’s Bay Company (1670, Canada/USA) Originally a fur-trade monopoly, it now operates department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue. 6. White Horse Tavern (1673, USA) America’s oldest continuously running restaurant, serving patrons in Newport, Rhode Island. 7. Baker’s Chocolate (1765, USA) Launched by James Baker in Massachusetts, it remains a baking staple under Kraft Heinz ownership. 8. Laird & Company (1780, USA) The oldest licensed distillery in the U.S., producing applejack since the American Revolution. 9. King Arthur Baking Company (1790, USA) Founded in Boston, it’s now a Vermont-based leader in flour and baking products. 10. Brooks Brothers (1818, USA) America’s oldest clothing retailer, surviving bankruptcy in 2020 and continuing under new ownership.
While there are a lot of tricky questions around the exact definition, I feel this Wikipedia list seems more believable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies
Usual playbook of the luxury watch market since marketing somehow made it relevant in the mid to end of the 20th century. Thank Haye for not being able to stand near a Swiss mechanical watch without someone uttering the world "timeless". This is the second best achievement of marketing after making people believing that diamonds are valuable.
These watches use small mechanical pieces (which are still very far away from the state of the art - a watch is an engineering achievement by the standard of 200 years ago). They require very regular maintenance to keep working and this maintenance is very expensive. They are not in anyway "timeless".
This is an expensive piece of jewellery, subject to everything related to expensive pieces of jewellery including fashion. It’s basically a Veblen good signalling wealth.
They are poor timekeeping pieces bottom feeding from the expensive brand marketing. A quartz movement in the same body is an all around improvement except for the smugness.
Even though I am not the kind of person who would spend an insane amount of money on a watch, I still think the elegance of the manufacturing of a piece like the one under discussion is really impressive and interesting.
In the other comment, someone mention Vacheron Constantin watches can be off by as much as a minute per week! This is bad enough that I'd call a watch like that "unusable".
I don't think mine loses a minute per week, but it isn't perfect. Noticing the watch is a minute or two behind once a month and quickly popping out the dial to roll it forward is not a meaningful hassle for me.
Relative to a battery watch, it's nice that the watch is a self-contained functional unit. It will "always" be functional, even if I've left it in a drawer for a few years (always in quotes because of course anything can break).
Part of it is also just that I like to think about the mechanical complexity and elegance of it. It gives me a little bit more joy than my battery watches (but I still have plenty of battery watches that I like!), and that's something I appreciate.
I got into it after reading the book Longitude. As someone who grew up sailing, who'd learned celestial navigation as a kid, I thought it'd be nifty to have that tech on my wrist. Plus I like that it's possible to understand exactly how it works. Now I have a small collection.
One of my watches, a Hamilton, cost me $700 and as long as I wear it, keeps time within a couple seconds a day, which was good enough to win the Longitude Prize in the 1700s with essentially the same tech. Lots of really expensive watches don't do any better. Hamilton is a brand that goes back to the 1800s, just like the expensive guys.
My only watch that cost over $1000 is from a guy in Denmark, a watch reviewer who decided to make his perfect watch. He hired a designer, spent a couple years blogging about the whole process, made it the best quality he could, produced 300 watches, and sold them at at a modest profit for $2700 each. I wore it in my wedding. To anyone else it's just another anonymous watch.
Lots of mechanical watch enthusiasts like quartz watches too. I have one I quite like that's solar powered. Just like a mechanical, I won't have to replace the battery in a few years.
I usually don't need to know the time to the exact second, and I generally have my phone with me anyway. But when I wear the Hamilton, for fun I usually check against time.gov every day or two to see how it's doing, and adjust to the exact time if it's off by more than a few seconds. I've seen it be exactly accurate after a week.
It’s completely fine if it makes people happy but it’s also in a lot of way manipulative and disingenuous. That’s why I hate industries which are purely marketing based.
Not everything is some ugly marketing conspiracy. People have appreciated beautiful, clever things for as long as they've been making them.
It is a nice looking watch!
My friend does not work in the watch industry so maybe that's why she came to the opposite conclusion from yours. She has several high-end watches Omega, Ebel, Cartier ... and when she got the Apple Watch almost 10 years ago, it instantly demoted all her expensive jewelry watches to the drawer.
The cheaper "disposable" Apple Watch instantly cured her from wanting any new expensive jewelry watches. She let the batteries die off in the old watches and has never replaced them. Instead, she just loves having the weather, timers, task notifications, etc on her Apple Watch. Sure, the classic watches have "diamond encrusted bezel, gold wristband, Swiss mechanical movement yada yada yada..." but all that is negated by the useful features of the smart watch.
It's a rare situation where a cheap product completely replaces an expensive product.
I had a a similar evolution in thinking when technology made me re-evaluate products I once coveted. When I was young before the internet existed, I drooled over this Geochron illuminated framed wall map $4000 : https://www.geochron.com/clocks/boardroom/
A lot of expensive offices had that and I thought I had to have it too. But then I bought cheap atomic clocks you never had to set and the web had dynamic maps I could explore. Even the new Geochron units don't automatically set to the radio signal from atomic clocks. New technology completely cured me of wanting to buy a Geochron. People used to want tall grandfather clocks in the house foyer as an elegant piece of accent furniture. Now you can't even give away those clocks for free on craigslist. Everybody has clocks on their smartphones so buying a grandfather clock for the house isn't a priority anymore. Even if we romanticize grandfather clocks with descriptions about "heirloom furniture craftsmanship, intricate wood carvings, etc", it still won't entice most people today to want one.
Moved to Garmin (for sports and outdoor activities) and Mido as an everyday watch from Apple Watch (had 3 and 7 versions). Can't really imagine going back.
I guess I was sold the idea that I neeed notifications, weather and all this bullshit on my wrist all the time.
At some point I realized I've disabled notifications completely and basically the only thing I was using my Apple watch was paranoidal heart rate monitoring.
>Swiss mechanical movement yada yada yada...
Most swiss mechanical movements cost 50-100$ though.
I understand your viewpoint but people are different. My friend is almost 80 years old and wasn't drawn to smart watches because of FOMO fear-of-missing-out on some Instagram notification or hustle culture to constantly check emails. Instead, she's always worried about "forgetting something" and the Apple Watch has reminders for medicine, upcoming appointments, etc. It was a total quality-of-life improvement. It caused a total rethink about the old mechanical watches that didn't assist her in that way.
If a mechanical watch that will be "admired 200 years from now instead of being in a landfill" -- doesn't help her take pills -- then she's not going to be attached to the romanticism of it like a watch collector enthusiast.
>Most swiss mechanical movements cost 50-100$ though.
Your clarification means you misinterpreted my comment. I was not insulting mechanical watches such as your Mido or gp's expensive IWC. My point was that it's rare and counterintuitive when a cheap disposable product causes a total rethink of previously valuable items regardless of the older item's "timeless qualities" (e.g. "200 year heirloom").
I guess you haven’t actually tried to buy a grandfather clock. Quality ones are in the thousands at least, if not tens of thousands. Even cheap ones are hundreds of dollars.
To my mind an apple watch is a fundamentally different product from a watch. They just both happen to be worn on the wrist.
It shouldn't be sad to avoid adding another artifact of consumerism to one's life. I'm at a stage in my life where I've gotten rid of most of my "conversation pieces". E.g. I once had an expensive antique warship in my office as decoration. (https://www.google.com/search?q=hms+bounty+model&tbm=isch). I thought it looked really nice. But one day as I was cleaning the dust off of every crevice with an art brush to keep it from looking like a junked up antique, I realized it was an example of a possession making me its slave. I got rid of it and don't regret it. I dodged a bullet by not getting the Geochron and saving $4000 but my journey of enlightenment wasn't complete so I still got suckered into the wooden warship.
>I guess you haven’t actually tried to buy a grandfather clock. Quality ones are in the thousands at least, if not tens of thousands.
Yes, I agree that grandfather clocks are expensive and that's why I used it as a parallel example to the expensive wristwatches.
Probably if you want a good one it's expensive and nobody wants bad ones.
I tried to give away an 30+ year old Ethan Allen grandfather clock (cost about $2500 new) on Craigslist. Nobody was interested in picking it up. To most young people, grandfather clocks are "dated" and it's only something they see at their grandparents house. It used to be a rite of passage to buy a grandfather clock to the house but that trend is gone now. Like expensive china cabinets, it's just not something a lot of people desire these days.
I suppose if I had left the grandfather clock on Craigslist for a year instead of a month, and if I offered to deliver it instead of requiring pick it up, eventually somebody would have wanted it.
The only way I finally got rid of it was bundling it with an old curio cabinets I was selling. Taking the grandfather clock as a complete package was a condition of the sale. Maybe like vinyl records, grandfather clocks are making a comeback and I got rid of it too early.
When you’re one rent hike away from packing up and moving, this type of thing is not very appealing
The old clocks are getting the same status: it's specialist equipment for very rare circumstances.
Certainly someone has hacked/recreated this with a Raspberry Pi. I must now go waste a weekend...
Even DIY solution might not be more economic: sure, if you are familiar with RPi and have one on hand, and someone already wrote the software, you can do it in under 2 hours. But a single problem, like a defective SD card, and the pre-paid solution is now cheaper. Same goes for subscription: $80/year, or 20 FTE minutes. Yes, you can find those layers for free. Will this take you >20 minutes per year to setup and maintain? Probably not.
I was at my first job when I discovered "corporate money" and this was a real eye-opener... That $2000 tool that can only do one super-specific operation? Pays for itself if you can have two fewer defective assemblies.
Your answer seems to speak to the idea of "we need this in order for our offices to be able to function, what's the most cost effective way acquire it. I can't imagine _any_ office that would need such a thing. It seems to be purely decorative in nature. And the (quality of the) monitor (which isn't part of that cost) is the majority of the decorative part.
I was asking more from the individual perspective; why someone would spend $500 + subscription on something like this, when it should be relatively trivial to just run software that does something like it yourself. Given that it doesn't come with the display, picking a nice display and hooking it up seems like the majority of the work involved.
And that's why most offices won't think twice about buying that $500 box. A random manager, or even a senior programmer wants it? Sure, get it, no need to even get any approval since it is under $1000. There are exceptions, but that's the thought in many US-based software organizations.
From individual perspective, you are right it makes no sense. If this was my house, I'd do it all myself. But this is not marketed to individuals, it is marketed to people working in companies.
I inherited my watch from my father, and I almost certainly wouldn't spend thousands to buy one myself; but I wear it every time I go out to dinner for anything fancier than that.
Of course there's nothing wrong with wearing a smart watch. For practical purposes they are better in every way. They just have a different lifetime. It's a similar situation with cars. Some like the constant maintenance that a 60 year old car requires, others want a Toyota that will reliably get them to work, and others want a sports car with engine that can go three times as fast as they'll ever drive.
Also, I think the cheap product winning is pretty typical. CDs replaced vinyl records and were then replaced by music streaming. Few people buy cameras now that smartphones exist. And these mechanical watches were already replaced for the most part decades ago by quartz watches.
Despite the existence of more practical alternatives, there are people who still like to buy grandfather clocks, vinyl records and mechanical watches. They are certainly in the minority and you won't find a grandfather clock or record player in every home, but there is a market there.
(I kind of hate to be that guy, but if there were batteries inside, those weren't Swiss mechanical movements)
Yes. The Cartier Tank watch is mechanical. I just lumped in the other nice jewelry watches with batteries to talk about them as a group because they've all been eliminated from her mindset.
>Also, I think the cheap product winning is pretty typical.
When I wrote "replace", I didn't mean in terms of sales. It was more about the cheaper product replacing the previous thinking in the mind about the old product.
For example, she used to color-coordinate the different jewelry watches with different outfits... If it's a blue outfit, wear the stainless steel watch ... if it's this other dress, wear the gold watch with black face. If the shirt has starfish, wear the seashell theme watch. That whole ritual is eliminated. (I guess one could also change watch bands on Apple Watches for different occasions but she doesn't bother with it. Maybe because arthritis makes it hard to squeeze the band's release mechanism.)
The new Apple Watch alters the psychological relationship with the previous jewelry watches so thoroughly that it makes her impervious to gp's praise such as, "Vacheron-Constantin [...], it will still be a testimony of the refinement and engineering of a fine craft that few can achieve, [...] you'll be very lucky if your Casio can last as long. Your mass commoditised Apple watch will likely be worthless."
Her comeback to the gp's "timeless" qualities is that she likes lifting the Apple Watch to her face and asking, "Hey Siri, how many inches is 5 centimeters? (when sewing clothes) ... Or how many cups in a liter? (when cooking from a recipe with metric quantities)." She thinks it's a miracle that a little watch can understand her voice and give her answers. Yes, everybody at HN is jaded and we all know Apple's Siri is the worst voice assistant technology out there but yet she loves it. If that means it's wearing a mass-produced watch that nobody cares about in 200 years after she's buried in the ground, that doesn't matter at all. Her "dressy watches" phase is over.
That's the type of rare product replacement situation I'm talking about. Usually, the opposite happens: we all get on some hedonistic treadmill with various consumer products and the next better thing we desire is more expensive. In the 1980s, CDs were actually 2x more expensive than vinyl records and cassette tapes. Vinyl was about $6.99. CDs were $15.99+. It took over 10 years for CDs to gradually lower in price such that Walmart was selling them for less than $10. The new CD players themselves were about $1000 in 1980s. Record players were $100.
Mostly agree, except you have to take the Apple Watch every single day for maintenance (charging). You can buy a Casio F-91W for $20 and go 7-10 years before you have to take off your wrist for a battery change. If you simply want to tell time, digital watches, quartz watches, and arguably mechanical watches beat smart watches.
Smartwatches, Phones, (most) Cars, TVs, ... all of these are mass produced, and as such completely obsolete in a few years, even if they are sold as "premium" products for a month's salary.
Unique, manufactured Design pieces are... timeless. It's a piece of art. And I say this without any inclination to ever join that market.
Just like a Casio F-91W, or the $50 mechanical Swatch.
> It's a piece of art
Yes, that's the only argument really, it's a good looking wearable piece of art. It won't last longer than a waterproof gshock, it isn't more precise than a $5 quartz watch, &c.
That's just another way of saying that there is no real innovation in end user benefits in mechanical watches. The marketing is all about how difficult they were to make.
Look at the functionality that the watch described in the article has to offer:
* It can show the time — to an accuracy of 8.5 seconds a day, apparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/VacheronConstantin/comments/1aiyjeb... Technological marvel, innit?
* It can show the date (with squiggly hands, for some unfathomable reason). It probably can even account for different lengths of months, and leap years (I was flabbergasted when I learned that there are watches being sold today for hundreds or thousands who require a manual adjustment at the end of every month that doesn't have 31 days).
* It can show the phase of the moon. Awesome if you're a werewolf running a hedge fund, I guess. It has a ton of other astrological indicators (Zodiac signs, etc.)
* It can chime every hour (presumably to remind the people around you that you exist and wear an overpriced watch).
* It works as a chronograph.
That's it, as far as I can tell. Nothing a $10 watch on Aliexpress could not do. It does not even seem to have an alarm, apparently. You get three actually useful functions (time — inaccurately, date, chrono) in a package that is 15mm thick.
No payment functionality, step counter, agenda, calculator.
But yes, you have a $100K or whatever watch that you can leave to your great-grandchildren so they can be assured that prior generations overpaid for gimmicky crap as well.
Watchmakers deserve more appreciation for how hard it is to track months/years mechanically in a package small enough to fit on your wrist! It's a lot of expectation for watch in the hundreds of dollars.
To each his own I guess.
I'll take my chances with my Casio.
Watch aficionados appreciate G-Shocks just as much as an A. Lange & Söhne. If you visit their Youtube channels and web sites you'll often see things like Seiko SKXes were recommended for years (pre-discontinuation) as good value and great for day-to-day wear (beach going, gardening, etc).
I still love the shit out of my g shock. The only reason it doesn't get worn much is it was replaced by my garmin.
And why should I care? I won't be alive 50 years from now.
Besides, right now, what I care about is functionality. And, right now, my old Pebble offers far more of it than this jewelry for millionaires.
This thing is just a stupid Veblen Good[1], like a diamond ring, a Hugo Boss suit or a Porche Carrerra.
Remember, 150 years ago, millionaires used beaver fur top hats to show off. Have you seen any billionaire wearing them?
Well, you did. It is implicit in your comment.
Don't get me wrong, you have every right of fooling the fools, even to the point of believing in the foolishness and fetishism.
But don't expect me to be one of the fools.
Your overcomplicated watch is just another version of "Jackie Kennedy's fake pearls necklace", as in this video[1]. Your "timelessness" of it is just fake sophistication, like Michael Jordan's "signature" in Air Jordan Nike. You are selling illusions, but it is coherent that you believe in them.
The Casio would last even longer - and would be closer to the right time even without touching it in between.
Hell, I can make one from scratch in my workshop trivially, from basic materials.
Finding high-end mechanical watch technicians? Not so easy. And hardly so cheap.
It is just the reality that we live in you are not gonna exactly hear from A list celebrity talking about what a wizard Ken Thompson is but you are gonna spot the celebrity secure a brand deal wearing some monstrosity like RM.
As much as like and appreciate mechanical watches let's not kid ourselves you are talking about CNC machines and cad models rest of it is marketing from the 70's quartz crisis.
Given that just Apple watch outsold the whole swiss watch industry I am not sure if VC we will be here in 200 years but some piece of software will be probably still running.
And 200 years from now, I'm sure there will be a few Apple Watches in museums as well. And some Casios too.
But also, it's not like a mechanical watch is going to work for 200 years without maintenance and repair either. Lubrication, springs, bearings... these all degrade over time.
But one thing sold me on it. Apple Pay. It’s so convenient to be able to wrist tap things without whipping out my phone. I can pay for things in 1 second. With express transit I can tap to ride subways and buses.
I gave up the status of a mechanical watch wearer for this convenience. And the status is often more limited than we think — I realized no one except other mechanical watches enthusiasts really notice what watch I was wearing. You can wear a Vacheron Constantin and realistically 99% of people you meet will not know what it is and likely will not notice it.
I still wish they got better battery life with each new version. You can chew up that whole battery in about 2:30 by running the workout app, music, and Bluetooth headphones. Half the reason I bought a HRM was to improve the battery life.
And sure enough the time I actually did tweak my knee, I had to stop listening to music and the workout app to conserve the battery long enough to ask for a ride and get somewhere that I could be picked up. By the time they arrived my watch was dead.
I wonder if for your use case a Watch Ultra might work better? It has a bigger battery.
That said, I agree with you that the battery could be better. Other smart watches have battery lives measured in days. (That said, they also do less)
Most batteries produce more juice when discharged at their preferred rate and produce more heat if driven at full tilt.
If you took an Apple Watch and this Vacheron 2000 years in the past, which one would the people of the time find more impressive (until the juice runs out, that is)? In other words - which one looks more like magic?
We're just used to microprocessors we can't see tick and maybe don't always appreciate the complexity.
I got so used to all the value my Garmin provides, I don't think I could handle replacing it with a watch that does nothing. It would be like going from a smartphone to an old nokia. I'd go crazy not being able to flip my wrist just to check the outdoor temperature.
https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
Previously on HN in 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31261533
Mechanical Watch (2022) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38591084 - Dec 2023 (163 comments)
Mechanical Watch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31749299 - June 2022 (1 comment)
Mechanical Watch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31261533 - May 2022 (413 comments)
https://watchesbysjx.com/2017/05/portrait-masahiro-kikuno-ja... ("Masahiro Kikuno, Japanese Independent Watchmaker")
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14610110 (108 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19011880 (98 comments)
Haha yeah I like to have this on it the background when I’m doing other things.
(The website contains so much more than this)
I loved the Emerald Chronometer⁽¹⁾app for iOS / iPadOS and all its various “calibres” that you could flip over and show in day or night mode. Sadly the dev has removed the apps from the App Store, but it still runs (for now.) It’s a fun use for an older iPad on a stand.
Wanted to mention it in case it gives you some inspiration. :)
(00:59, because of UTC+1)
Worth checking out reptime to scratch that itch without selling a kidney.
Everything about the high end "movement" scene rubs me the wrong way (I had a friend into it), but most of all, the pompous terminology.
This might be more like wrist recursion.
EDIT: I wonder if a nixie wristwatch would be a middle ground?
Software with the most integrations and features is usually ends up being the most preferred solution
If you ask someone what a "movement" is, they might well refer to the poop they had that morning, or Eurythmy (which I had as a subject at school!), or almost anything.
That's not a statement about how basic language has become, but rather intentionally lofty vagueness (like "bespoke" instead of custom) people invent for things perfectly well described by expressions anyone can use like "high precision timekeeping", but not-so-subtly signaling a higher price.
They were the normal words for the items described. They only sound fancy now that they have fallen into disuse.
Actually, ditto for bespoke, now that you mention it.
There's an easy parallel to make with the audiophile industry, which uses all kinds of colourful but ultimately vacuous language.
You’re reverting to your priors despite evidence to the contrary.
Eh, I don't think what he's saying now is unreasonable.
Certainly no one feels a pressure to use a modern term that might have less perceived value-- to say "functions" or "features" instead of "complications."
A big part of the product of a fancy watch, or a bespoke suit, is the traditions. When tradition or sounding fancy is opposed to accessibility, the former will win.
Methods in OOP. Every term in functional programming. Rolex does a little bit of the Apple game, renaming jargon. But the watch industry mostly uses the term the first person to use it deployed. (“Complications” makes more sense than “features” when working multilingual across French, German and Italian.)
I’d also argue that “features” is a bit misleading. Complications aren’t about utility. They’re about art. It’s intentionally overcomplicating something.
This is not the original usage; "complication" does not imply "grande complication."
> ..."features"...
None of your criticism applies to "functions" which is the first term used.
> Methods in OOP. Every term in functional programming.
Yes... I'm saying in a niche, luxury industry based upon exclusivity and tradition, the marketing pushes towards old, foreign, and exotic language. All these things in commodity digital watches are "modules" and "functions" instead of "calibre" and "complications." (With Apple, on the high end, choosing "complication" for some reason ;).
>people invent for things perfectly well described by expressions anyone can use like "high precision timekeeping"
What is "high precision"? Why are you using engineering jargon when you could say something simple like "accurate"? Why are you using such lofty elitist language?
It's one thing if your software vendor writes the software in Haskell, but if their pitch to you is that the software has 40 patent protected monads and is entirely dotless and lambda lifted, you're probably being taken for a ride.
Amateur radio software would win:
I agree, you could have an Apple-like interface that lets you tune a single frequency with a particular modulation, but nothing there seems like it's a constellation viewer that has almost no practical use.
https://www.xnec2c.org/#Nec2Treeview
But after a while I realized that's because it's essentially a graphical wrapper around a punched card program.
For me, this feels like one of the less harmful things rich people do. Ultimately you're paying a bunch of skilled labor in a developed state to maintain an artistic craft that uses very little energy and material, for a device that has worse functionality than one under $100. The only issue is where you got your money I suppose, and whether that money would have been better spent elsewhere.
They serve the same function as a designer handbag - although you can at least put things inside a handbag and carry them around.
Keeping EU trade imbalances from getting too far out of whack?
I mean, I think you're right in that watch nerds usually have more domain knowledge, but I don't think it's inherently dissimilar.
This is an item of jewellery, not a high-end custom PC.
For virtually any other watch, not so much as to the normal person they are just a watch
It's a fully programmable ARM microcontroller. You can write "watch faces" for it. There's a 2nd factor codes face that lets you log in like you're James Bond on the Nintendo 64. One of the coolest projects I've ever worked on. I made it possible to calibrate the pulsometer, a feature I use frequently at work.
They even developed a custom LCD that's even more awesome than the original.
If it fits within a size and power budget, then you essentially described sizecoding. In its extreme form, it is not practical, but it is an art form.
See you at Revision next week? :)
Why? I’m not a watch guy. But I think the engineering is beautiful. It’s also super niche, so there isn’t a financing model outside this to fund it.
The market in which it needs to exist is exclusive, arrogant and elitist. So there is a bittersweet response to it. Makes me think of Royal arts of the past, made to adorn the palaces and display wealth. beautiful, but they're better now at museums. I believe this watch shall too.
Strongly disagree. Pilfered artefacts are usually safer in a Western museum. But they’re more beautiful when left in their natural environment. In any case, if there is one thing sillier than someone with no respect for fine watches treating them as a status symbol, it’s getting upset about it as a bystander.
Hell, even _inside_ the software development "scene" you can easily find similar cases. Like when web developer who builds (relatevily) simple web apps on top of Rails earns notably more then someone who works with a complex hardware.
Inspiration:
Wooden Turing Machine: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vo8izCKHiF0
Curta Calculator: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZDn_DDsBWws
Zuse Z1 Computer: https://youtu.be/R5XnuT6ZLKg?t=283
Maybe also analog ones!: https://youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4
* pomodoro focus timers * multiple TZ support - like GMT watches but more than one additional TZ shown at once * timers * alarms
World timers show every timezone
Alarms and timers are available.
Pomodoro can be done with something as simple as a rotating divers bezel.
I agree it would be cool to have them more available in cheaper watches, most complications increase the cost and the more niche you get
What I love about it all is that whatever arguments are made for or against these sorts of things, I think people are just into it because it’s fun.
When inefficiency and craftsmanship are considered features rather than flaws, you have an industry that won’t easily be replaced by AI or robots.
That's called luxury goods and that's not limited to watches.
1. Day and night indication for reference city
2. Second time zone hours and minutes (on 24-hour display)
3. World time indication for 24 cities
4. Second time zone day and night indication
5. 3Hz tourbillon with silicon balance wheel (with high Q factor)
6. Civil time display module coupled to the base movement
7. Perpetual calendar
8. Days of the week
9. Date
10. Months
11. Year indication
12. Leap-year indication
13. Indication for the number of the week within the year (ISO 8601 calendar)
14. Number of the day of the week (ISO 8601 calendar).
15. Astronomical Moon phase and age of the Moon
16. Tide level indicator
17. Spring and neap tides indication.
18. Indications of seasons, equinoxes, solstices & astronomical zodiac signs
19. Position of the Sun
20. Sunrise time (according to the city of reference)
21. Sunset time (according to the city of reference)
22. Duration of the day (according to the city of reference)
23. Equation of time on tropical gear
24. Culmination time of the Sun (according to the city of reference)
25. Height of the Sun above the horizon (according to the city of reference)
26. Declination of the Sun, 3-dimensional Earth showing the latitude of the Sun in the North/South hemisphere
27. Sidereal hours
28. Sidereal minutes
29. Astronomical zodiac signs
30. Sky chart (according to the city of reference)
31. Temporal tracking of celestial objects.
32. Minute repeater
33. Westminster carillon chime (4 hammers & 4 gongs)
34. Choice of hour-only or full chime
35. Crown locking system during the chiming
36. Double-stop hammer system to limit rebound and optimize transmission of the hammers' kinetic energy
37. Chronograph (1 column wheel)
38. 60-minute counter
39. Split-seconds chronograph (1 column wheel)
40. Isolator system for the split-seconds chronograph
41. Power-reserve indication (outer disc at 190°)How do these economics work? I’m guessing they’re a maker of very expensive low volume products. But are there that many buyers?
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/video-vacheron-constantin-...
Same with Richard Mille. Never heard of them but they’re rich enough to sponsor the Ferrari F1 team.
- A real Rolex dive watch costs $5k-15k.
- A similar Swiss-made dive watch from a less famous brand costs $2k-4k.
- A similar Japanese-made dive watch from a famous brand costs $500-1000.
- A Chinese-made replica/fake Rolex, mechanically identical to a real one, and only distinguishable by an expert under high magnification, costs about $400-800.
- There are some low-volume watches that are sold for 4-6 figure sums to repeat buyers. Richard Mille in particular has done one-offs for celebrities in the range of 7-8 figures.
As you can imagine you don't need a high volume with margins that large.
Likewise, long ago, Rolex was a toolwatch brand and their products were relatively affordable. They are still great, but prices are insane. Vacheron Constantin is on a different class, though, as they sell lots of watches in the high horology category. Insanely complex and difficult to produce. Some similar brands have had financial issues or gone bankrupt.
The actual raw material has to be a fraction of the worth.
It’s actually a good case study. It no longer makes sense to buy a fine watch from an American retailer. The tariffs incentivise a trip abroad. (I’m seeing something similar happen with skis.)
Not really. I’m bringing back a few thousand dollars of mounted, probably lightly-used, skis. Nobody expects to declare random purchases made abroad. Much less an article of jewellery on their wrist.
Hypothetically, one could simply wear the watch on their wrist on the flight home. Personal jewelry is not subject to duties.
And let's not even get into how much money they spend on marketing and sponsorships ..
They make the parts.
> A real Rolex dive watch
Some example dive computers, for those interested:
- Suunto Zoop [1] - Shearwater Perdix [2] - Garmin Descent [3]
[1] https://www.suunto.com/en-gb/Products/dive-computers-and-ins...
You’re paying for time. Seiko make great watches with cnc machines under the orient brand. They cost about £150-300.
In terms of watch, it’s the same type of parts and accuracy as a base Rolex.
Rolex you are paying for the name. Yes, they are better quality than an orient, but not much. There is better QC, and more people looking at the watch before it’s sent out, but in terms of precision of manufacturing, or amount of cnc machine used, it’s mostly the same.
There is a thriving scene in small watch producers, spinnaker, holthinrich, de ryke and co, vortic, Weiss, lorier to name a few. Some are sub £300, others not.
But after that tier the quality increase to price ratio pretty much drops to zero.
In certain circles, all of these brands are as common as Nike or Mercedes are to the general public.
There's more interesting brands like Moritz Grossman and Bovet that make even rarer pieces but fewer people have heard of them.
I'm assuming the two latter categories are sponsored to get the first category to buy?
I just know these brands from F1 where the drivers are sponsored, which is very obvious from the way they wear them.
As I'm saying this, I realize selling a thousand of them probably isn't a crazy volume.
* Margin. A relatively low prestige Swiss brand (Tag) has stated they charge 3x bill of materials for their watches. The more exclusive the brand, the higher this number goes.
* Volume might be higher than you think. Popular Swiss models sell in the tens of thousands of units a year. Not bad if you’re charging four or five figures per unit.
* Consolidation. There’s a handful of actual parent companies for watch making that are responsible for most sells. Swatch, Citizen, Rolex. They share resources between each other.
* Common suppliers. Some movements are used in multiple brands, even across multiple parent companies. Sometimes a company will buy a movement, modify the movement, and completely rebrand it. This allows better economics of volume for the most complicated aspects of watches.
* Marketing works. There’s no practical reason to buy a $10k (or $40k) Rolex compared to a $25 Casio. There’s a reason James Bond wears expensive watches and that reason is product placement. Some watch conglomerates are publicly traded, so you can look at how much they spend on marketing.
* The fact that you haven’t heard of the brand is part of the point. If you’re wearing >$100k on your wrist you probably don’t want everyone to know. Even at this price point, it’s a highly liquid asset in some cities.
Only since Goldeneye when Omega started paying for product placement. Bond had worn Rolex since the original novels, which were written before their big pivot to luxury, so him wearing expensive Rolexes in later films was more of a historical accident. Rolex never actually paid a cent to appear on screen.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richemont
It works like any other luxury company, charge an arm and a leg, control the supply so you don’t overproduce, spend a ton on marketing.
Almost all Swiss watch brands (by volume) are owned by either Richemont, Swatch Group, or LVMH. Rolex, Patek, Audemars Piguet, Breitling, and Chopard are the last of the big Swiss independents, but there are smaller ones like Czapek and Cie, H Moser & Cie, Gruebel Forsey, Richard Mille.
Something to be proud of, for sure.
I realize watch complications are stacked disc segments and not folds, but intuitively if you are dealing with a material in a fixed space you either run up against limits in the stiffness of parts down to sheets of atoms, or some theoretical folding limit relative to the thickness of the case. a watch that expressed the proof might be worth the indulgence.
edit a look at their Wikipedia article, tens of millions seems more likely, if they even sell one.
I'd guess this model is somewhere in the $250k to $500k range.
That one was a pocket watch, but I doubt their wristwatch would be that much cheaper. Maybe I'm wrong.
edit the 250th anniversary watch was a wristwatch and went for a million at the time.
In order for gears to work they must have sliding contact and that means wear. Mechanisms based on flexures don't have this problem, but this requires building the clock very differently. It might be possible to implement many of these complications using flexure based logic[0].
If you want more recent examples, see Richard Mille.
Henry Graves Supercomplication was made by Patel Philippe in 1933, which was 92 years ago; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patek_Philippe_Henry_Graves_...
An even older example is the Marie Antoinette watch by Abraham Breguet, which was started in 1783, 243 years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette_(watch)
I watched a documentary[0] back in the day that goes over his process of designing and making a watch and it's nothing short of amazing. There's something about swiss watches being so commoditized (even the most expensive ones) that makes their clientele seem outright stupid in my opinion.
0. In Tune with Time: Watchmaker Masahiro Kikuno
The mechanical marine chronometer challenge is a tough one.
> A bit LARPy, I would think.
That's all relative - I worked global exploration geophysics for a decade, worked with folk that developed sapphire oscillators for use in gravitational wave detection, dabble with SKA data, etc.
What's role play to some is just a job to others.
I'm having some difficulty understanding how g shocks, temperature variations, and barometric changes will have less of an effect on a fragile mechanical system than a tuned electronic one.
That said, I have used a quartz watch (mid level Citizen) for actual celestial navigation at sea. It is, for all intents and purposes always going to be more accurate than mechanical (mine typically is good for ~1 second per month, and always in the same direction) Certified mechanical watches typically vary more than that in a day, I believe the standard is 2 seconds per day. I don’t know what a proper marine chronometer is certified to, but it is worth pointing out that a marine chronometer is typically not exposed to the conditions you describe at sea. The official ships chronometer is always kept down below, protected in what is effectively a gimballed humidor. For the purposes of navigational measurements, you use your wrist watch at the time of sighting on deck and add or subtract the difference between your watch and the chronometer. To add on to all that, if a ship is rolling and pitching like you describe your chances of an accurate sight are very low. Even in perfect conditions, it is hard to call the exact moment of alignment to within a second.
If I placed my quartz watch in the box with the official chronometer, I am perfectly willing to argue that if there is a discrepancy in the times shown, the quartz watch should be trusted.
You as a human wouldn't shoot a line in those conditions, no.
The point is that mechanical clock mechanisms endure those conditions .. the rise and fall of tempreture, the rise and fall of air pressure, the shock of acceleration (even when sharply reduced by a gimbal mount).
The error bar over months at sea is the tension betwen the drift effect of all those conditions and normalising complications - gimbal mounts, the use of bimetallic strips to counter tempreture change expansions, etc.
In dead calm conditions a mechanical clock at sea carries the accumulated drift baggage of past storms and heatwaves.
Circling back to quartz oscillators, my question above goes to prompting others to ask themselves if an electronic oscillator regulated by a quartz crystal shows any performance differences over a year when harsh real world physical usage conditions are compared to ideal controlled test conditions.
Does temperature affect the oscillator, does humidty, air pressure, accumulated shock forces, etc.
Addendum:
I cant imagine why an instrument that is ~40x less precise would offer more precise timekeeping
I'm having some difficulty understanding how [..] will have less of an effect on a fragile mechanical system than a tuned electronic one.
I've reread both my comments above and I'm having some difficulty seeing they can be read to take away a claim that a mechanical marine clock is more accurate than a quartz timekeeping mechanism. Both comments address accuracy in harsh variable conditions versus stable STP lab conditions.
See also: Precision vs. Accuracy - https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/physical/wor...
A mechanical timepiece that calls itself a marine chronometer has to be accurate to +-0.5 seconds per day.
The most accurate quartz wristwatch is certified accurate to +-5 seconds per year.
My experience, in the exact harsh real world conditions that you are talking about, is that is a realistic expectation for quartz watch to accomplish. I cant imagine why an instrument that is ~40x less precise would offer more precise timekeeping
Most are +-5 or 10 seconds a year.
The problem for me is the citizen isn’t that pretty to my eyes.
It's basically the same technology that John Harrison used to win the Longitude Prize in the 1700s, revolutionizing navigation on the high seas.
When you get into some of these luxury brands they pride themselves on not using CNC machines. See for example "Machining a 0.6 mm Screw":
The purpose of expensive versions of both of those is divorced from their original meaning.
But in the end everyone ends up wearing an Apple watch. Nobody knows how to use an Apple watch. Amazing hardware with the worst software ever developed. But it says that you dont care and at least the watch will tell you the temperature outside.
Chronographs, while cool, isn't exactly a useful why of measuring speed these days, and how often do you really need to do that anyway.
On a mechanical watch having the date might be useful, I know I keep forgetting the exact date, but do I really need a watch to remind me that it's Saturday?
I really love mechanical wristwatches, the mechanics of it is amazing and they are beautiful pieces or engineering and works great as an accessory/jewellery, but I don't understand the need for many of the complications.
Seems a bit soul crushing to be working on a complication that no one would ever use.
More than half of the watch world does not appreciate the engineering. They appreciate the exclusivity.
I'll keep my Casio thank you.
Also that "mystique and vibes" is essentially "a reputation of quality", which has to be earned, and I'd say they did that. Whether it still holds is another question.
Joke! It’s a joke! Aw, downvote away ye bastards.
Although one might argue that an additional 31% on a watch that retails for six figures is not going to make a difference to the kind of buyer that spends six figures on a watch. Even if a US watchmaker existed, this kind of buyer seems unlikely to substitute a Vacherin or a Patek for something made in Cleveland.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/workplace-switzerland/adding-up...
A beatboxer can’t really do two “voices” at once. When they do, it’s impressive because it’s hard.
That’s the point, making stuff purely mechanical is hard.
A basic mechanical watch movement is something I can’t make. (I have made a case and dial out of aluminium/brass though.)
But, the point I was trying to make is that adding a complication to a smart watch is trivial, something that can be done in a few hours and shipped to everywhere. Adding a complication to a mechanical movement is a lot harder, especially as the iteration time is long.