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Watches in the 21st Century

My mechanical Ulysse Nardin Marine Chronometer is that accurate.
I'd be willing to do some sobjective testing on your unit.
Why don't you send it to me for a few months?:)

My daily wearer is an original-issue BR03-92 and it is like a marriage between my wrist and the watch.
The only time that it comes off my wrist is for such activities as showering, (salt-water) swimming, etc.
When it is off my wrist, I usually roll it up inside a towel to maintain its temperature stability... I am not certain if that is a placebo-effect but I am okay with it.
 
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 like that Seagull watch! Even in the 1990s, I didn't see a lot of red stars on display in the PRC
 
For slide rules, Picket was the cheapie brand, and Keuffel & Esser the premiere brand at least in my circles. I have my old K&E slide rule (somewhere!), and also my father's, which was made in the 40's. I transitioned to electronic calculators between high school and college.

Slide rule precision was physical--were those wall-mounted slide rules marked to provide greater precision, or were they simple used for classroom instruction? I suspect the Picketts are the latter. Those are abundantly cool.

Rick "absorbed into the TI borg until finally switching to an RPN HP in grad school" Denney
 
For slide rules, Picket was the cheapie brand, and Keuffel & Esser the premiere brand at least in my circles. I have my old K&E slide rule (somewhere!), and also my father's, which was made in the 40's. I transitioned to electronic calculators between high school and college.

Slide rule precision was physical--were those wall-mounted slide rules marked to provide greater precision, or were they simple used for classroom instruction? I suspect the Picketts are the latter. Those are abundantly cool.

Rick "absorbed into the TI borg until finally switching to an RPN HP in grad school" Denney
Yes, I think my first one was a Faber Castell 6 inch model. I later got a K&E which was the brand in my crowd too. I just picked up the Pickett because of the connection to Apollo and it was 25 cents.

I think the big ones were just for demonstration and teaching.
 
I'd be willing to do some sobjective testing on your unit.
Why don't you send it to me for a few months?:)

My daily wearer is an original-issue BR03-92 and it is like a marriage between my wrist and the watch.
The only time that it comes off my wrist is for such activities as showering, (salt-water) swimming, etc.
When it is off my wrist, I usually roll it up inside a towel to maintain its temperature stability... I am not certain if that is a placebo-effect but I am okay with it.
I actually do have objective measurements that back it up, from an 8-day test conducted a couple of years ago, showing 18 seconds/month:

WT-UN.JPEG


I surely would have been happy to let you have it for a few months to test it had I not already done so.:rolleyes:

I should note that accuracy and regulation are not the same thing. Accuracy is the ability of a watch to maintain consistently correct timing in different positions and temperatures. A well-regulated watch keeps good time over time, which may mean compensated for poor accuracy based on a particular owner's usage pattern. The UN is both. I do not have to reset the watch even after long periods of wear. (I reset a watch when it is a minute off.)

I do have a timing test fixture for multiple positions, but I've never had the UN on it.

The UN's technology is excellent--the hairspring and the balance wheel, rather than being a bent piece of temperature-insensitive alloy, is laser cut from solid silicon.

And, just because I can't help it...

Here's the movement in that Ulysse Nardin--note the detailed finishing:
Un118.JPG


Rick "recalling watches from the 60's--Zodiac comes to mind--advertising 'guaranteed accurate to a minute a month'" Denney
 
Unnecessary and a bit harsh?

Can that one have real ivory in its construction?
Possibly--I'll have to check.

Rick "who also inventoried his actual ivory collection, legally obtained as scrimshaw from Alaskan native people during the Korean Conflict" Denney
 
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?
That's actually fair. If I owned a Patek, it would be the same as a piece of custom furniture or a beautifully made but rarely played musical instrument--a work of high craft worth enjoying in and of itself. I would wear a Calatrava in dress circumstances, and there are some of those in my life. But not in a work environment--too recognizable by those not so liberally minded. A Rolex is acceptable in that crowd. My Ulysse Nardin is really a notch above Rolex, but it's so obscure in that crowd that they don't resent it. Note that I do not agree with those responses, but then I have no control over them, even though I do depend on the relationships I have with those folks.

Rick "sensitive to station when needed" Denney
 
In my experience with mechanical watches there is no strong correlation between price & timing accuracy/precision. A good Japanese mass-produced workhorse movement like the Miyota 9015 costs around $100 and can be tuned to have 0.0 - 0.1 ms of beat error and +/- 4 secs / day. It doesn't come from the factory like that but with the tools & timegrapher you can get it there yourself. This equals or beats any of the Swiss ETA movements I've messed with in multi-kilobuck watches. Then there are in-house movements which are all over the map. Some no better than mass produced, others that take accuracy to a whole 'nuther level. But anyone who pays that kind of $$$ isn't really buying accuracy or precision (you could get that a lot cheaper), they're buying history, heritage, uniqueness, hand-crafting, style, etc.
 
In my experience with mechanical watches there is no strong correlation between price & timing accuracy/precision. A good Japanese mass-produced workhorse movement like the Miyota 9015 costs around $100 and can be tuned to have 0.0 - 0.1 ms of beat error and +/- 4 secs / day. It doesn't come from the factory like that but with the tools & timegrapher you can get it there yourself. This equals or beats any of the Swiss ETA movements I've messed with in multi-kilobuck watches. Then there are in-house movements which are all over the map. Some no better than mass produced, others that take accuracy to a whole 'nuther level. But anyone who pays that kind of $$$ isn't really buying accuracy or precision (you could get that a lot cheaper), they're buying history, heritage, uniqueness, hand-crafting, style, etc.
Now, don't go too far. The typical 9015 specifies positional variation across a range of 40 seconds/day, with an accuracy of -10 to +30 seconds per day. You can regulate it to keep good time with your wear pattern, but that does not make it accurate in the sense that it is maintains that timing in each position separately.

Contrast that to a chronometer, which will be adjusted to fall within +6/-4 seconds per day in each of five positions (crown up, crown right, crown left, dial up, dial down) at a range of temperatures. The testing protocol takes 24 hours for each condition, so it's not just putting on a timegrapher and reading the result--it's setting the movement, putting it in the correct position, winding, and coming back tomorrow to see where it landed. And these are tested by a central agency (COSC), not just by the manufacturers.

The beat rate is a different measure--it determines that the balance wheel swings as far after the "tick" (when the pallet fork is swinging one way) as it does after the "tock" (when the pallet fork is swinging the other way). Any movement can be adjusted for zero beat error with enough effort.

All the major movement manufacturers that sell movements to OEMs offer movements in various grades of adjustment. ETA, for example (the biggest of the Swiss makers) has four grades for standard movements and three grades for premiere movements. The bottom grades are minimally finished and unadjusted, and the top grade is highly finished and certified by the chronometer agency. Citizen (who makes Miyota movements) owns some high-end Swiss movement factories, including, for example, La Joux Perret, so they well know the difference in these grades. Even the 9015 is offered in various grades, though it is a price-point movement usually not adjusted to chronometer accuracy. Again, as long as a watch gets used in a similar pattern, it can be regulated to keep good time over a scale of days even if it varies in its timekeeping quite a lot with changes in position.

That said, there are chronometer-certified watches with price-point movements, and high-end hand-finished movements that are not. But Patek-Philippe, for example, expects their movements to be adjusted within +/- 2 seconds/day in all positions and temperatures. Rolex also sets a higher standard internally than the official chronometer standard, even though they consume about 80% of the COSC's workload. Omega also has its own standard that is in the same 2-second/day range. I own several Miyota-powered watches, and they certainly don't come out of the box with positional accuracy or even regulation that good. Swatch claimed that the cheap, plastic-cased Sistem 51 was accurate to within four seconds a day, and in my experience that accuracy lasted about a month before falling off noticeably. It cannot be adjusted, either.

My Seiko Black Monster diver runs within a few seconds a day measured over a typical week. But positional variation on a timegrapher is all over the map, as is expected with a budget movement like the 4R36. Still, it's a great watch for what it is. I paid a couple of hundred bucks for it--a good deal for an ISO 6425-certified professional dive watch (not that any pro diver would use a mechanical watch except as a backup).

As with most things mechanical, getting good performance is a matter of design, excellent performance is a matter of tuning, and superb performance requires blueprinting perfection. For watch movements, the positional accuracy windows for those three levels is something like +/- 30, +/- 15, and +/- 5 seconds per day. That extra adjustment comes either as a result of expert hand adjustment by a master watchmaker, or by laser trimming and robotic alignments. The machines that do that to a high level were the real innovations in mechanical watchmaking in the last couple of decades. But if a robotically adjusted watch gets whacked, a watchmaker is going to have a hard time getting it back to chronometer performance, because the movement is not designed for hand adjustment.

It's a bit like getting good sound from LP records, though. The challenge and the fun of it is attaining the very best that technology can muster up. And for most folks, it's more than good enough, especially if they are rotating through several watches anyway.

Rick "wearing an Ebel at present that is double-COSC certified, and it won't need resetting for a month or two" Denney
 
At Rick "who must not own/like Panerai" Denney;
You dissertation pretty much puts an end to the 'deniers' assaults.10q
I find that if I put my watch on backwards; I can almost stop time.:p
 
Ha!

Rick "who would actually love to own a Luminor GMT, and it would not at all be the showiest watch in the pile" Denney
 
Now, don't go too far. The typical 9015 specifies positional variation across a range of 40 seconds/day, with an accuracy of -10 to +30 seconds per day. You can regulate it to keep good time with your wear pattern, but that does not make it accurate in the sense that it is maintains that timing in each position separately.
...
As with most things mechanical, getting good performance is a matter of design, excellent performance is a matter of tuning, and superb performance requires blueprinting perfection. For watch movements, the positional accuracy windows for those three levels is something like +/- 30, +/- 15, and +/- 5 seconds per day. That extra adjustment comes either as a result of expert hand adjustment by a master watchmaker, or by laser trimming and robotic alignments
With some movements (like the 9015), the spec is very broad and you can do much better if you take the time to fine tune it. Since it's a relatively cheap mass produced movement the factory can't justify that effort for the price. But for a hobbyist, why not? It's fun. The 9015 is kind of a sweet spot; the even cheaper Seiko 7S26 (as in the Seiko 5 models) is not as consistent.

... The challenge and the fun of it is attaining the very best that technology can muster up. And for most folks, it's more than good enough, especially if they are rotating through several watches anyway. ...
Part of the fun for this mechanical watch enthusiast is opening them up to see how they "tick", appreciate the engineering that goes into them, and hands-on exploring how much better than specification (or not!) I can get them to run.
 
That maybe a tracker watch in an unintended way. At least in the USA.

I don't think the Red Army (allegedly) are particularly interested in where I walk the dog. I have a friend who worked for Huawei in the UK and met Ren Zhengfei (ex-Red Army general) when he visited. I'm told he didn't have much interest in meeting the staff and just wanted to have his lunch and watch Wimbledon on the TV (he'd been to see our Prime Minister earlier in the day).
 
... The beat rate is a different measure--it determines that the balance wheel swings as far after the "tick" (when the pallet fork is swinging one way) as it does after the "tock" (when the pallet fork is swinging the other way). Any movement can be adjusted for zero beat error with enough effort. ...
Of course. But cheap movements (like the Seiko 7S26) cannot achieve perfect beat across all positions. You can only perfect it in 1 position then it changes in others. The movement just isn't made to a high enough degree of precision. Higher quality movements can achieve 0 beat across all positions. But they don't have to be expensive or fancy, for example the 9015.
 
I don't think the Red Army (allegedly) are particularly interested in where I walk the dog. I have a friend who worked for Huawei in the UK and met Ren Zhengfei (ex-Red Army general) when he visited. I'm told he didn't have much interest in meeting the staff and just wanted to have his lunch and watch Wimbledon on the TV (he'd been to see our Prime Minister earlier in the day).
Sure that is what they want you to think..............
 
My impression from talking to friends is that the fitness watch wearers fall into to 2-1/2 categories. The first are those who for one reason or another received orders from their doctors to monitor stuff, or are on weight-watchers or something and are required to track their activities. I given folks in this category a by. I know watch enthusiasts in this category, and they often wear the fitness tracker on their other arm.

The second large category are those who are fitness signaling. (This includes those wearing an Apple Watch and showing off the fitness tracking to their similarly lethargic friends.)

The half category is for those who are actually into fitness, though for most serious fitness geeks of my acquaintance (and as a former triathlete that is not a small group) track their workouts using a watch, but the novelty of tracking things like heartrate wore off long ago. Serious fitness geeks never track "steps". Perhaps I am projecting, and self-selected with like-minded acquaintances. Perhaps not. None of my old triathlon buddies, including those still quite seriously into endurance sports, wear fitness trackers while in street clothes.

Rick "who wore a Timex Ironman when training for one and a Swatch Sistem 51 plastic watch for running and cycling now" Denney

I wouldn't necessarily say iWatch users are fitness signaling. I suspect most of them just wanted to visibly buy more Apple products and you can't really show off a dongle.

Step counting is motivation for couch potatoes, and in that role it's useful data. Heart rate in and of itself has too many input variables, and that turns people against 'measured exercise' but can be useful when correlated with other data. There's a whole niche of people using data to train, e-race etc with decent science behind it, and that appeals to number crunchers like me. I've got a networked scale, a power metered smartbike in the living room, power meters on my road bicycle, the watch tracking wattage when I run... roll it all together and I can present some very impressive charts and graphs showing how ineffectively I'm losing weight.
 
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