Watches in the 21st Century

[MRC01]

I like wristwatches, have different kinds. Horses for courses.

I like mechanical things which includes mechanical watches. Mechanical wristwatches are fascinating. They have no batteries that need to be replaced or recharged, they work essentially forever, waterproof. I like to open them up and tune them to see how consistent & accurate I can make them. I've got a Nodus & a Zelos with Miyota 9015 movements tracking within 4 seconds per day, which is about as good as any mechanical watch can get. Analog is quicker to read the time than digital.

Next best I like the Seiko kinetic and Citizen eco-drives because they go 15+ years between battery/capacitor changes. I've got a couple of those but I don't wear them often.

While quartz is more consistent than mechanical, a mechanical can be more accurate over long periods of time. I adjust my mechanicals so they run slightly fast face-up and slightly slow edge-up. At the end of each day if it's behind I rest it face up, if it's ahead I rest it edge-up. The last time I set the one I'm wearing right now was 6 months ago, and it's 10 seconds behind GMT. No quartz can match that!

For exercise I have a Suunto Ambit 3 which is several years old and does everything I need. No fancy display which means great battery life.

Those who like wristwatches due to the mechanical engineering might also like to read about the Curta mechanical calculator. Oh yeah I would love to have one of those!

 

[rdenney]

I wear a Hamilton Khaki model (whose styling I like a lot) as my day to day. I sometimes wear a 1962 Seagull, a Chinese watch made by the company that made the original '62 Seagull, given to Chinese pilots.

I'm looking at a Hamilton Air Zermatt model (with a blue on black styling that is pretty striking). That one is a $600 watch, which is about my upper bound. The Hamilton I own is nice, but cheap enough that if I lost it at the beach I wouldn't cry myself to sleep.

Pardon the poorly staged photo below (but no hairy wrists):

View attachment 181693

I also have one of those Seagull PLAAF reissues. (I say "reissue" because it was made in the same factory--at least "owned" by the same company--using the current version of the same movement as originally, and similar enough in design). I offer it as evidence that mechanical watch enthusiasm need not be about spending large sums of money. Lots of watch enthusiasts have Seiko 5's and watches like the Seagull. Seagull (aka, Tianjin Watch Factory No. 1) bought the tooling for the movement from the Venus Manufacture in Switzerland in 1962, and hired Venus to train their workers in its use. Thus, the Seagull ST-19 movement in these is a dead ringer for the Venus caliber 175 hand-wind chronograph of old. Here's mine:

The movement is sparkly and fun to study under a loupe but nobody will mistake it for an expensive watch with a lot of hand-finishing.

Rick "a bargain" Denney

 

[Blumlein 88]

@Blumlein 88 fitness/smart watches are the latest thing although I don't know much about them. Mostly, I see women wearing them. It's interesting that mechanical watches continue to sell, and manufacturers create new models in the face of such a profound change in technology.

From what I've noticed mostly men under 40 don't wear watches. Seems nurses adopted fitness/smart watches right away. Or maybe some smart companies gave them to nurses. Among some under 40 men is where the big complex smart watches seem most common.

Simplest smart watch benefits to me are mine buzzes lightly to alert me to texts and then scrolls the text across the screen. Similar for emails. So without pulling out my phone if something comes in I can glance at my wrist to decide if it is something worth dealing with or something to ignore. I also get weather alerts over it which is handy near tornadoes. I keep mine usually showing time and heart rate. Mine also will do O2 readings though it is slow about doing them. And of course if you bike, hike, walk, swim or whatever it can interface with various fitness apps and use the phone's GPS to keep up with all the various parameters for such activity. And mine doesn't do much compared to some.

The mechanical watches are all a niche market and upscale from what I can tell. I don't recall seeing anyone wearing one in several years. Sort of like some people collecting fancy custom made shotguns. Many of them never get out anywhere and are just displayed. Sort of man jewelry as I call it.

But I was never a watch collector. I wore a digital Seiko for more than 30 years. Battery powered. Batteries surprisingly on that watch last precisely 11 years each. I wore that watch no matter what I was doing or where I went. It reliably was 3 seconds per month fast. I'd set it 9 seconds slow when we'd change from daylight savings time or back, and so it was always within mere seconds from exact time. I previously had a good Casio quartz which was broken during a beach vollyball game. I still have one of the old TI glowing watches with a tritium dial that works. I quit wearing it because after a few years it would just blank out and start over about once per month. I remember reading tritium had a half life of 12 years in the manual and it would grow dimmer over time. It was rather bright when new. I thought 12 years was long enough not to matter, but now it has been thru a few half life periods.

I do have the Citizen Eco Drive given at retirement. I was dissappointed that it was 15 seconds per month fast. I wear it sometimes. I keep a small "light charger" on it to keep it charged up as it is solar powered.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Those who like wristwatches due to the mechanical engineering might also like to read about the Curta mechanical calculator. Oh yeah I would love to have one of those!

Never heard of those calculators. Pretty neat device. I used slide rules prior to electronic calculators and even a round slide rule for calcs while piloting. I can see how that would be better in some ways with less chance of error vs a slide rule in a plane.

 

[pseudoid]

Never heard of those calculators.

Neat find @MRC01.
I am not going to the start of humanity but Curta's great-grandfather must have been the abacus, who had the offspring we call slide rule, which wikipedia refers to as "Mechanical analog computer".
I started in college w/HP-35 that had cost this poor college student near $500 USD. It came with a leather holster. Two weeks after purchase, I saw the HP-45 in the college store and was able trade-in the HP-35 for it, for an additional $50. At the time, the ReversePolishNotation (RPN) had sounded like an ethnic joke and took me a whole weekend to learn how to use it. But had great ROI along with many dividends. Mine had made mince meat of our finals that included heavy polar-to-rectangular (Cartesian) coordinate conversion. At that time, there was no rules about NOT using a calculator during the finals. It so happened that when I handed my final back to the professor within 30 minutes, he had not realized how powerful an HP-45 (scientific calculator) could be. It turned out that some of his answers were wrong because he had used a slide rule for them.
To this day, I still can't use a standard calculator, bcuz I only speak reverse-Polish (Fist#, Enter, Second#, function, third#, function) and the equal sign (=) does not exist in an RPN calculator.

I must have 'calculator OCD" as I had not realized how many calculators I have amassed since college… Until I assembled them for this family portrait shoot.

 

[Ron Texas]

@Blumlein 88 I know several people who used their custom-made doubles regularly for skeet and trap. They had vintage Winchester Model 12's for the field. I've killed a few birds with them with my consumer grade Remmington 870.

15 seconds per month is the outer limit for quartz accuracy specs. The watch coud probably be adjusted. I have an Eco-Drive diver and it does much better than that.

 

[agiletiger]

I have about half a dozen watches that were basically glorified jewelry. Planned on collecting more. I travel a lot for work so I used to bring two watches, one set for CST and the other for EST. Smart watches made that obsolete. When I got an Apple watch ahead of my daughter's birth, it was a gamechanger. Now, I have spent more on smart watches than I have on all previous watches combined. Haven't had to go to any formal events where I feel compelled to wear a nice watch in over two years. For one important client meeting, I switched out my band for a leather band. I liked the look so much that I haven't switched back. I don't foresee changing back to a traditional watch. I do still would like to get a Breitling to wear for very special occassions.

Also, I don't know a single watch collector who actually thinks mechanical watches are more accurate than a quartz watch.

 

[Ron Texas]

@rdenney Ariel Adams blog is very entertaining. https://www.ablogtowatch.com/author/ablogtor/

I find it hard to classify watch reviewers as being either objectivist or subjectivist, but let's not get lost there.

Thank you for your photos of the unusual timepieces.

 

[MRC01]

Never heard of those calculators. Pretty neat device. I used slide rules prior to electronic calculators and even a round slide rule for calcs while piloting. I can see how that would be better in some ways with less chance of error vs a slide rule in a plane.

I used a slide rule in high school. Calculators were available, but the teacher said using a slide rule required greater understanding and that few real-world problems need more than 2 sig figs. Calculators were allowed but you got +10% on any test where you used a slide rule. He handed out circular slide rules which are easier to use than linear because they never go off-scale. Concise in Japan still makes inexpensive circular slide rules. I'm enough of a geek to own and use a 10" Picket aluminum complete with the leather belt case that looks like you're carrying a long dagger. But not enough of a geek to actually wear it! It's right here at my desk. I'd love to get a Gilson Atlas someday. They show up on eBay occasionally but usually more than I'm willing to pay. One unique thing about the Curta math grenade is that it does addition!

Later when I started flying airplanes the E6B felt natural. I still use one in the cockpit today. Compared to a calculator, there are no batteries that die when you need it, it doesn't melt if you leave it on top of the panel in the sun, it doesn't freeze, no screen to crack if you drop it, and it's completely 1-handed, and any basic calculation you need to do (density altitude, fuel burn, etc.) takes 10 seconds or less.

 

[pseudoid]

Omega Speedmaster Chronoscope ('chrono'=time; 'scope'=to see) << fairly new.

A manual-winding (5day reserve) Master Co-Axial (#9908 @43mm)) movement.
Inspired by OMEGA’s chronograph wristwatches from the 1940s. The three timing scales on the dial do indeed reveal a precise insight into our world.

• Tachymeter - Measures speed based on distance…
• Telemeter - Measures distance based on Speed-of-Sound…
• Pulsometer - Measures a human's heartbeat…

Chronomoters are a bit too busy for my needs!
No piggy-bank can hold >$8k but if you were wise enough to have invested in a crypto-wallet, you may be able to afford one.
OMEGA's new Switzerland Factory (circa 2017)
From <

>

 

[MRC01]

... Also, I don't know a single watch collector who actually thinks mechanical watches are more accurate than a quartz watch.

No question that quartz is more consistent: +0.5 seconds ahead every day. No mechanical is that consistent in the short term, they vary a few seconds day to day.
Yet consider the long term: after 6 months that quartz is 90 seconds ahead. After 6 months the mechanical I'm wearing right now is 10 seconds behind, almost 10 times better.
Of course it's not an entirely fair comparison because I adjust this mechanical indirectly by resting it in different positions when it drifts ahead or behind. But you can't do that with a quartz. The point is, once I set a mechanical I never have to set it again. But with a quartz, I have to reset it every month or two.

 

[mansr]

after 6 months that quartz is 90 seconds ahead

That's poor for a quartz. Mine runs slow by about 1 second per month.

 

[MRC01]

Every quartz I've owned (at last 20 different ones over the years) has been exactly +0.5 sec / day. Seiko, Timex, Omega, Casio, doesn't matter.
For some people they run faster or slower. I believe temperature is a contributing factor. I should put one in a freezer and see what happens.

 

[rdenney]

@Blumlein 88 I know several people who used their custom-made doubles regularly for skeet and trap. They had vintage Winchester Model 12's for the field. I've killed a few birds with them with my consumer grade Remmington 870.

15 seconds per month is the outer limit for quartz accuracy specs. The watch coud probably be adjusted. I have an Eco-Drive diver and it does much better than that.

15 seconds/month is "standard" quartz accuracy--quality movements using quartz crystals that are not thermo-compensated.

My mechanical Ulysse Nardin Marine Chronometer is that accurate. It's my most accurate mechanical watch.

Two strategies for increasing quartz accuracy include: 1.) synchronize with an infrastructure-based time source, or 2.) compensate for temperature variation in the quartz crystal. For the second, there are a couple of approaches, but the usual one is to provide a table in the watch software that provides a correction based on measured temperature. In the second category--standalone high-accuracy quartz watches--the Swiss and the Japanese both have offerings, ranging in price from moderate to expensive. My most accurate watch is a Certina DS-2 chronograph, which was not terribly expensive, and it runs better than 10 seconds per year.

Adjustments for quartz watches involve how many cycles they pause at the end of each minute--most are designed to leave some slack there, running very slightly fast, so that the added delay can be used to regulate them.

From the perspective of this forum, the Seiko Spring Drive is the most interesting, it seems to me. The Spring Drive is a mechanical watch, but instead of an oscillating balance wheel, the regulating wheel includes rim magnets that pass through a coil, and the coil both generates power to power the regulating circuit, and applies braking force on the regulating wheel to keep it in time. Those are thermo-compensated and quite accurate. They are not cheap.

Rick "who does not own a Spring Drive, but look fondly at a Seiko Ananta chronograph once" Denney

 

[pseudoid]

"…To meet this challenge, the Seiko engineers came up with an ingenious solution. Two quartz oscillators were set alongside each other [Master/Slave operation?]; one was used to detect the temperature so that variations due to temperature change in the other oscillator could be compensated for. Completed in 1978, this movement, named "Twin quartz," raised the bar once again. The Grand Twin Quartz delivered a precision rate of ±10 seconds a year, and the Seiko Superior Twin Quartz had an even higher degree of accuracy at ±5 seconds a year..."
From <https://www.grand-seiko.com/in-en/special/10stories/vol4/1/>

The one (#9943) that I had gifted for Christmas of 1979 was found (objectively) to be accurate to +2seconds/yr continuously for 18 months of on-wrist usage.

 

[rdenney]

Every quartz I've owned (at last 20 different ones over the years) has been exactly +0.5 sec / day. Seiko, Timex, Omega, Casio, doesn't matter.
For some people they run faster or slower. I believe temperature is a contributing factor. I should put one in a freezer and see what happens.

You've been fortunate. These exceed the manufacturer's specifications in most cases.

Rick "who has a mechanical Seiko 5 that is very well regulated and keeps good time, despite not being particularly accurate" Denney

 

[Blumlein 88]

I still have a metal EB6 "Flight Computer" slide rule. They sold plastic ones, and actually the plastic ones are more accurate. The EB6 can be slightly different at different temps and the plastic doesn't have that problem.

My high school math teacher had one of the yellow ones in the picture hanging on the wall. 7ft long or so I think. It was a Pickett brand. I have a hand held Pickett I picked up at yard sale. Pickett claimed they were used for Apollo missions, but it is not clear if they were on every mission. They did have a special circular orbital mechanics slide rule. I don't know how many of those there are or what one would cost now.

 

[JeffS7444]

Got enough people in the world who seem to have more money than taste or common sense, and I don't need to be emulating them (not referring to anyone here). It would only make sense for me to own say, a Patek Philippe Calatrava if I really, really enjoyed it. But would it be inappropriate as a daily user?

 

[MRC01]

... Pickett claimed they were used for Apollo missions, but it is not clear if they were. They did have a special circular orbital mechanics slide rule. ...

One of the classic photos of the Apollo 11 crew shows Michael Collins in the center and you can see the slide rule in the chest pocket of his space suit. I have read it's a Pickett, but not sure on that.

 

[Ron Texas]

@rdenney the spring drive is beautiful, but sometimes I think it's a solution in search of a problem. It provides quartz accuracy with a second hand which moves smoothly (even more so than a typical mechanical watch) rather than the giveaway 1 second jump. Seiko is a great company with a 140-year history.