Here’s what our panel thinks of the Men’s watches pre-selelected for the 2014 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève: Breguet Classique Chronométrie, Urban Jürgensen & Sønner Central Second, MB&F LM 101, Tudor Heritage Black Bay, Omega Seamaster 300, and the Bulgari Octo Finissimo. This category only allows men’s watches that do not have extra complications.
The Ladies High-Mech category is for “women’s watches that are remarkable in terms of their mechanical creativity and complexity.” The key words here being “mechanical creativity and complexity.” Our panel believes there is going to be a landslide and for good reason: nothing holds a candle to a certain highly complicated timepiece created for ladies.
The watches in the Ladies category of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève can only feature two of the following functions at most: date, power reserve, classic moon phase, and a second time zone. The watches may be adorned with a maximum of 5 carats of gemstones.
Let’s get one thing straight: Urwerk’s EMC Black is not a pretty watch and it’s not meant to be, it’s a proof-of-concept instrument. And a very good instrument at that, one that is not only extremely precise, but is the world’s first watch capable of measuring its own precision without external tools or meters.
Around 1995, the founder of the modern Urban Jürgensen & Sønner brand, Peter Baumberger (1940-2010), went into partnership with the then-independent movement manufacture Lémania to develop a minute repeater tourbillon movement. This project was finished in 2000; however, very few of these movements were ever made by Lémania, but Baumberger received three, each with different indications and finishes. One was a regulator.
When Romain Gauthier presented his Logical One at Baselworld 2013, I wasn’t the only one impressed: it was awarded the prestigious prize for best Men’s Complication at the 2013 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève thanks to its quadruple patent-pending constant force and much more.
Many watches hold a special significance for their owners. The watch I am chronicling here didn’t just change someone’s life, it changed MY life: the Jean Daniel Nicolas Two-Minute Tourbillon by Daniel Roth.
How much time one could survive in space without a suit? Are there truly 24 hours in a day? Why could dinosaurs not live in the present day (shock: ‘Jurassic Park’ is complete fiction)? Where arenmost of the volcanos on earth? Is there a river beneath the Amazon? How long has it been since it has rained on the driest place on earth? And what percent of the world’s species we have discovered? Here are 50 things you should know about the planet we live on.
A photo of soldiers hoisting the Soviet flag over the Reichstag at the end of WWII, became one of the most iconic images of the century. One of the subjects in the image was wearing two watches, one of which was removed in official reproductions of the photo. The camera used to take that iconic image, a Leica III, is to be auctioned by Bonhams, and it’s expected to fetch more than £300,000 ($500,000).
In Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, the great man introduced the concept of “spacetime: henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.” Which segues nicely into the discovery of a clock by Gustave Sandoz that doesn’t tell the time: it tells distance.