Time Piece – Switzerland from HODINKEE on Vimeo.
It’s not hard to make watchmaking look good but this film takes the cake. It’s by Kat Mansoor and features two master watchmakers, Vianney Halter and Philippe Dufour.
I was just poking around when I noticed that WWR was born in June, 2006 and, having missed the big day, I thought I’d celebrate now.
It’s been a long couple of years, many of them dry and desiccated thanks to my many intervening gigs including EIC of Gizmodo and now TechCrunch. But I founded this site to learn more about watches and now, it seems, that I’ve gotten my money’s worth. I’ve written nearly a thousand posts on this site and also written 100,000 words on watches for other sources. I’ve also recently started working with Ariel Adams and we’re already at episode 86 of the Hourtime Show. Pretty nuts.
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Welcome to the HourTime show, the best 30 minute (+/-) hour podcast on the web
This week, John makes it through the entire show without a single rant while discussing Omega and the start of this years ‘Holliday watch guide’.
So who did they name? Seiko, Citizen, Luminox, Hamilton, Prometheus, just to name a few.
Note: For some reason, Tumblr is no longer embedding podcasts. You can pop over here to see the post on the site. Not sure what the heck is up.
We first talked about the Wimm One in August, noting that no wearable device has ever made sense to me, at least in watch format. I believe I may need to eat my words. The Wimm is a clever little module – the watch band is removable – that runs simple applets. It runs a stripped down version of Android and includes a fairly complete SDK for programming little widgets. In this incarnation, it includes a stopwatch, worldtime clock, and a few other treats. The watch drops into transflexive LCD mode when it needs to conserve power.
Welcome to the HourTime show, the best 30 minute (+/-) hour podcast on the web
This week John makes it extra ranttastic (for your pleasure) when they discuss the Dream Watch 4 iPhone case, that Hublot is the “Official Watch Maker & Timekeeper Of Ferrari”, Ariel’s visit to the Blancpain Haute Horology Watch Manufacture and the difficulties of buying a good used watch in China.
I bet you thought a modern watch was made by a gnomic little man with a tiny hat on a wooden bench. Nope. These are high-tech factories and could probably double as iPad manufacturing plants with a bit of retraining.
Phosphor has just announced a new world time/dual timezone model, the World Time Sport. The company is well-known for their e-ink watches (we reviewed a few here) and this one uses a touch interface to scroll through multiple timezones as well as various screens including a dual-time screen for travelers.
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I got to sit down with Steve Hallock, the North American president of MB&F and driving force behind the Swiss watch brand’s western expansion. The watch he brought for us is the LM1 aka the Legacy Machine #1, a new piece we wrote about earlier last month and that is just now shipping to oligarchs and captains of industry around the world.
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In the pantheon of mechanical wristwatches, the Speedmaster holds a high place. Originally built in 1957 as a reaction to the first wrist-worn chronographs coming out of competing houses, the iconic design – white on black with bold, eminently readable chapter rings and pips – the Speedmaster cemented its place in history when Buzz Aldrin wore his on the moon in 1969. Omega has been flogging that relationship ever since, much to the brand’s benefit and Speedmaster fans rabidly hunt for new and old models like madmen intent on owning stars.
Decades later the Speedmaster has maintained this original styling and functionality and, barring a few odd turns taken in the 1970s and 80s, hasn’t strayed far from the white on black design. This new model, the Moonwatch Co-Axial, pays homage first to the watch’s importance in the space race and, second, to the contributions of one of the greatest modern watchmakers, George Daniels.
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If you’ve got $57,000 lying around, I’ve got a watch for you. The HL is Hautlence’s first “round” movement and this new model includes a few clever additions to the standard HL line including jumping hours, retrograde minutes, and a full calendar. It’s also got a quick date corrector so your manservant doesn’t have to scroll through all the possible days and dates while setting your collection.
It’s 44mm and it’s actually quite handsome in a Jules Verne sort of way. If they could get the price down and build it in steel I’d totally rock it out while doing yard work.
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If you have more money than sense, I have an iPhone case for you. Watchmaker De Bethune has created the DW4 aka the Dream Watch 4, an iPhone case made of bead-blasted titanium with an embedded mechanical watch in the back. Why? Because the poor can suck it is why.
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ZIIIRO Celeste ( gunmetal / mono ) from ZIIIRO on Vimeo.
If there’s one thing missing from modern watches it’s color. The 70s and 80s brought us things like Doxa’s orange and Breitling’s baby blue but no one, lately, has strayed from the old leathers and grey chromes of modern fashion watcher. Thankfully, the ZIIRO Celeste adds a bit of the old mix-a-lot to some staid steel quartzes.
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As a watch fan, setting your pieces back and forth a few times a year is trivial. But what if you’re dealing with a collection of 8,000 watches? This video shows how the folks at Tourneau Time Machine, New York’s largest watch shop, deal with all of the winding, setting, and checking of their entire stock.
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Welcome to the HourTime show, the best 30 minute (+/-) hour podcast on the web
This week on HTS we speak about Ariel’s visit to Arizona Fine Time and Grand Seiko and how shopping for watches that cost more then your home with a skimask is actually a bad idea. We also do a fly by of the MB&F Legacy Machine No. 1 Watch and look forward to Romain Jerome’s take on incorporating DNA of the iconic DeLorean in to a watch.
Will going 88MPH with this bad boy on make you travel through time? Probably not … but trying may let you travel to traffic court.
“Why, hello officer … “
Special note: Please consider donating to the Double Rain Beau Fund for Beau, our intrepid audio guy. He, like we, are doing this as a labor of love and he’s facing some rough road ahead.
Need to check if you’re late to your Bilderberg meeting? What better way than to wear the Bye Bye Euro watch, a timepiece that celebrates the death of Europe’s last great financial hope.
Our old, crazy buddies at ArtyA made the watch in their “crushed” case – a case that’s zapped with wild amounts of electricity – and then stuffed shredded euro behind the dial. Sure it’s a little pretentious, but for 5900 CHF you, too, can celebrate the sorrow of the 99% in style!
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