Interesting. I have a Seiko kinetic titanium which is about 25 years old. The capacitor fails every ten years and I have sent it back for servicing every time. You can get battery powered watches which last ten years now so maybe the self charging system isn’t helping me.
I am currently coveting a Garmin instinct solar watch. I need to research the APIs before I consider a move away from fitbit.
I am willing to bet that the humble NE555 timer plays a role in bomb construction as well, but people aren’t being arrested on for street for possessing them.
That’s kinda the drawback to almost all quartz timepieces, no matter how well made- the circuitry typically lasts only 10 to 15 years, and then its usually the case the entire circuit board needs replaced, or at least the oscillator canister, which good luck getting that as a spare part.
Older quartz pieces, ironically, were built in the beginning with modular high quality components to a degree, and older watchmakers who were rated CEW (a now defunct certification, that few living still hold- Certified Electric Watchmaker) could skillfully replace single components like coils.
Nowadays- the entire circuit board is replaced, and a common problem is the inability to find those for older quartz pieces. Those first few years in the 1970s had the best part designs that allowed for true repair.
Accutrons like the 214 though, a hybrid electrical mechanical, can still be fixed, as there are people out there dedicated to rewinding coils for them. Kinda crazy, but its done.
Disclaimer- AWCI member, trained watchmaker, though outta practice. I don’t work in the field directly.
well, my reply quoted your entire comment, but I understand the nuance was upthread. I know companies like this that cater to wealthy people employ more than craftspeople, but I see a particular value to employing highly skilled workers to produce boutique items like this…otherwise, machines can produce more practical goods. I never have and never will be among their customers but I am happy they exist. Would it be better if rich people spent their discretionary income on charities? No question,
but perhaps better to structure society so that wealth can be more equitably shared without needing to rely on hopefully good intentions of the wealthy
Most “watch people” don’t do that. They understand that they are not devices that compete with digital watches on functionality-based merits, in my experience.
People seem to forget that money doesn’t actually just disappear when it’s spent. I would much rather have rich people spending $200K on a watch and keeping that money flowing through the economy, vs. them just keeping it in a bank account, or making more money off of it for themselves via pure financial instruments. And with you all the way – let’s not rely on the grace of the extremely wealthy. That’s a losing battle…
Came here to pretty much say the same. There’s a way in which the customers of these kinds of crazy luxury objects are acting as more-or-less patrons-of-the-technical-arts. There are skillsets and knowledge bases that would otherwise be totally forgotten if not for small production run, high performance focused cottage industries employing craftspeople who can pursue the arcane limits of their disciplines that mainstream industry has moved past or will never find sufficiently profitable to be worth exploring. Mechanical watchmakers, wooden ship builders, tube amp techs, artisanal light-bulb makers, are all sort of seedbanks of endangered technique.
This. There’s guys like Dalbor Farney of Czechoslovakia who basically single handedly revived tech lost to history- guy is only person in the world actually producing commercial nixie tubes.
Some of these skills that people find ridiculous in the modern age actually have more use than they realize, watchmakers are often employed in scientific settings for optics laboratories, and micromechanical assembly in things like missle guidance system gyroscopes.
It might not make sense sometimes to see things like $200,000 watches but the skills needed to make and maintain some of these objects would be lost completely if there wasn’t some kind of industry for keeping maintenance or manufacture alive. There are entire technical skill sets that are still used that are often in danger of disappearing because the industry that supported them mainly is gone but the skills are still needed for specific needs that are often critical to keeping things running in laboratory settings and beyond. This tends to create niche luxury industries of craft, to a degree, resulting in things like this watch.
Scientific glassblowers, for example, with guys like Dalbor- there is a very small industry of people who do scientific glass blowing to make all of the custom flasks for laboratory organic chemistry labs and others and there is a great deal of technical knowledge needed to do stuff like that that combines machining (scientific glassblowers use a special glassblower’s lathe with vaccuum apparatus built in) and other disciplines to make things otherwise difficult or impossible to automate (ie: good luck getting a robot to fabricate a triple nested Klein bottle in glass!)
I feel like too many people always see the ostentatious rich patron and cry for the heads of the artists as if their skills are extraneous and no longer needed when it is often quite the opposite.
To be fair, a smartphone is an annoyance compared to a watch if you want to tell the time quickly (ie. the whole having to fish it out of a pocket and press a button thing, vs just lifting your arm and looking)
That said, i’m more than happy enough with my ~£40 Casio*, it boggles the mind that people can spend so much on this…
*sets the time via radio, so is always correct. That was tech worth paying for IMHO
Ha. I have that Breguet book on your top shelf. I was lucky enough to get it after being flown to the factory in Switzerland to produce a tv segment about them on a product design show we did. Interviewed Nicolas Hayek there, and have been trying to progressively move up the mechanical watch ladder ever since. Indescribable level of ingenuity and craft in executing those complications. Will certainly seek out the book you mention.
Tangent some here may or may not know - Dan Spitz - former lead guitarist of Anthrax left the band to study watchmaking in Switzerland and attained master status I believe.
When I was attending UBC in the '70s, the Physics dept had a glassblower named John Lees whose artistic work decorated some of the hallways…a little surprised the internet doesn’t yield a better picture than this ( a tree in autumn, some of the leaves scattered around the ‘ground’ ) https://open.library.ubc.ca/img/thumbnails/cdm/arphotos/324/1.0146437
Yes, everyone loves the Speedy. It has everything going for it: accuracy, craftsmanship, functionality, durability, distinctive but understated design, history. It’s one of the few Veblen goods where the value manages to match the price.
100% true. But to carry it one step further, the world is a better place when it contains examples of the most extravagant testament to the skills of artists and craftspeople. Because objects have value, it is a given that the best of these objects accrue a value that is only within reach for the very rich. I’ll never own any of them. But I do get to see them and marvel at them. Once we get past the utilitarian value of an object, the time and knowledge and skill of the person who creates them continues to add value. It doesn’t matter whether it is a piece of Gehry architecture or a piece of 19th century Japanese cloisonne’ or a Faberge’ egg or a Rodin or a Ulysse Nardin wristwatch, I’m glad that someone can get them made and is rewarded for it.
That’s interesting - I looked it up and it seems to have a ‘self-charging battery powered by the wearer’s movement’.
Mine is entirely mechanical - I believe it has a weighted rotor inside that can tension the spring.
I found this about the Seiko 5 (mine) and the Seiko Spring Drive, also mechanical.
The escapement and hairspring that traditional automatic watches use to regulate the watch are absent from the Seiko Spring Drive which uses a proprietary architecture to provide quartz accuracy.
The majority of Seiko automatics, like the Seiko 5, line utilize traditional regulation that requires a hairspring and balance wheel for timing. The manufacturer’s specs are +45/-30 seconds a day. In practice, most watches are between +30/-20 seconds a day, but that’s not particularly accurate. Seiko 5 watches are inexpensive, which is the trade-off for the more accurate and expensive Spring Drive option.
I can’t say I see self-charging battery (using nasty chemicals to manufacture battery, apart from anything else) has an advantage over the purely mechanical, unless one is really bothered about 20-30 seconds a day. It is rare for me to wear mine more than one day at a time as my daily wear is the Casio. When I used to wear it daily I reckon I probably checked and reset the time maybe once a week, if that.
Exactly this. I keep seeing people comment that they’ve stopped wearing a watch, because they’ve got a phone in their pocket, but the wristwatch was developed in wartime to avoid having to keep taking a pocket-watch or fobwatch out of a pocket, then flip the case open in order to read the time, and it seems that people have reverted to having a phone act as a fobwatch, which is ridiculous!
A good mechanical wristwatch will work for decades without needing a battery or to be plugged in every night.
I’ve worked in places where any electronic device was forbidden for security reasons, but I still had to be aware of the time, so a decent wristwatch was essential.
I’ve got a small collection, including a 1985 TAG Heuer Series 1000 ‘Nightdiver’, which is a quartz movement, but my others are all automatic or hand wind, my oldest is a 1970 Yema Rallygraf Super, cost me £50 and I bought it new, it was the first watch I owned bought with my own money. After it’s mainspring broke I had it fixed and serviced, it currently loses about 5 seconds a day, well within Rolex standards.
One sold at auction in London last year for £3800, so I’m pleased with that, and I can see it still working well for at least another fifty years.
Which is more than can be said for any smartphone!
But then again, if you can navigate and perform your entire modern life with only one hand, then having the phone superglued to the other and tethering yourself to a power outlet for a few hours a day might seem reasonable compared to the huge practical disadvantage and social stigma of having a time-telling bracelet on your wrist. (/s?)
That’s a rare one, and one of my favorites. Single best technical book ever written on historical Breguet pieces, if you have it, it’s immediately obvious why.
There’s a lot of rather rare texts on just those shelves.
I think Geared To The Stars by King might be my absolute favorite.
Ok- I think I may have actually seen the segment you mentioned- that’s pretty amazing! Hayek basically took care of restarting the swiss mechanical watch industry almost single handedly, while men like Daniels had the other end, and he almost singlehandedly revived the craft among independents.
Of course Hayek is now responsible for slowly killing perhaps the industry because of his conglomerate of Swatch Group taking over Nivarox Far, the hairspring manufacturer, and ETA- restricting the hell out of legit spare parts to bench horologists, making only service centers capable of getting many of the needed parts.
Simonin books and Watchprint books will be helpful to you, but now that you see some of the titles on my shelves- you can search for what they are, ebay is useful too.
Some things on the shelf though are literally one of a kind, good luck finding a copy of The Watchmaker’s Apprentice hand signed by Roger Smith in person at Tribeca
I’m an enormous metalhead, yeah, known this for years- he makes really nice watchmaker’s benches too. I’d love to meet him someday, seen Anthrax live many times
