The wristwear of presidents has always fascinated us – and when I say "us" I mean basically all watch-loving brethren around the world – because we know why we wear a watch, but the concept of the most powerful man in the world taking the time out of his day to choose a particular wristwatch seems so fantastic. My old friend Eric Wind has been keeping a running list of all presidential timepieces here, but this morning we have a new watch to add to the list, and it belongs to our most recent ex-president. Mr. Barack Obama, less than a year out of office, is now a Rolex man.

But we're not talking Submariner or Daytona here, or even pulling the ultimate presidential move in wearing a "President" (Day-Date). Nay, former President Obama is a Cellini man! He was spotted wearing the white gold time-only Rolex alongside Prince Harry at Toronto's Invictus games over the weekend, and my friend Jeff Stein has done some image grabbing to make sure we wouldn't miss it. 

The watch itself is a Rolex Cellini reference 50509, a 39mm white gold wristwatch with white dial. It retails for $15,200, making it by far the most expensive watch Obama has been spotted wearing. In fact, as Jeff Stein has written, you could buy his entire five-watch collection of watches that he wore while President for about $800. We all knew that eventually Mr. Obama would be seen in something a bit more refined than his usual Jorg Gray – Jeff himself has long posited that he could tell Obama was definitely a watch guy – and his democratic predecessor Bill Clinton famously wore a Timex in office only to become well-known as a serious collector of Panerais, Zeniths, JLCs, and even Langes! 

We will be sure this watch gets added to our running list of Presidential watches and if you'd like to read more about the Cellini 50509, click here.

(Hat-tip to Jeff Stein)

Among collectible vintage dive watches, there are a few that stand out as truly rare, such as the Tornek-Rayville TR-900, and the Submariners that Rolex and Tudor made for the British and French Navies, respectively. Add to that list an even more obscure watch: the Doxa SUB 300 “Black Lung.” By now, Doxa is well known to even casual dive watch fans for the brand’s SUB series that debuted in 1967 – purpose-built divers with a quirky shape, engraved bezel and that famous orange dial. The earliest examples – the SUB 300 “no T,” with a thin case and domed acrylic crystal – are rare enough, but Doxa made a mere handful of them with a black circular “U.S. Divers Co.” Aqua-Lung logo on the dial. Some collectors claim less than 10 were made. Among vintage Doxa collectors, finding one can be a true Grail quest. And among modern Doxa devotees, it is the one version that most have wanted to see reproduced. Well, their wish has come true. I got my hands on the new Doxa SUB 300 Aqua Lung Edition and fittingly, took it diving to see how it stacks up 50 years after the original, alongside scuba gear 75 years newer than the original Aqua-Lung.

The sport we now know of as scuba diving really started in the south of France during the thick of World War II. Hardhat divers, with their trademark bronze helmets, gushing air hose and lead boots had been around for a long time, and combat divers were using crude rebreather units during the war. But the ability for a diver to swim freely with his air supply on his back only became reality in 1942 when a French naval officer, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, met an engineer, Émile Gagnan, and the two set out to create the first truly practical self-contained underwater breathing apparatus – the origin of the acronym “SCUBA."

Cousteau was the visionary entrepreneur, and Gagnan was the engineer. The latter found a way to adapt the regulators made for commercial gas delivery systems by Cousteau’s father-in-law’s company, Air Liquide, to work with tanks of compressed air. The regulator reduced the extremely high pressure in the tank and then delivered into the diver’s mouth only when he inhaled. Without this “demand” system, air would simply free-flow past the diver’s mouth, making breathing from it akin to drinking from a firehose, depleting a tank very quickly. Cousteau tested the prototypes on his diving forays in the Mediterranean, seeing how the system reacted to swimming deep, fast, slow, upside down and so on. The two men registered a patent for this new device, which they called the “aqua-lung,” in early 1943 and the rest, as we say, is history. Cousteau went on to become a legend, recreational scuba diving exploded in popularity, and we got a lot of really cool watches out of it.

Cousteau went on to found the U.S. Divers Company, based in Los Angeles, to import and sell diving equipment to the burgeoning crowd of sport divers in the United States. Of course, the primary product to which U.S. Divers laid claim was the aqua-lung, and so important was it to U.S. Divers that it became part of the company’s logo – a stylized tank with the twin corrugated hoses. This yellow-and-black logo appeared on wetsuits, knives, fins, tanks – and on the dive watches U.S. Divers sold. One of Cousteau’s dive team, Claude Wesly, had been involved in the development of Doxa’s SUB 300 dive watch in the mid-60s, and Cousteau himself was so impressed with the watch that he wanted U.S. Divers to be the sole distributor for it in America. So Doxa printed the U.S. Divers “aqua-lung” logo on the orange dial of the watches, but only a few early versions had the black circle that has since acquired the charming but also ominous nickname, the “Black Lung.”

As legend has it, Doxa only made a handful of “Black Lungs,” since the black circle, prominent on the dial, interfered with reading the big black-framed minute hand. From then on, the U.S. Divers logo was only rendered in outline, appearing on the orange-dialed “Professional” and later other versions of Doxa SUB 300T watches, such as the black Sharkhunter and silver Searambler references.

Late last year, Doxa released a limited edition series of watches to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the SUB 300. Among all the vintage-styled “re-issue” watches out there, the 50th Anniversary SUB 300 is possibly the most faithful to its inspiration (with the possible exception of Omega’s “Trilogy” Seamaster 300). Every dimension of the case was identical; the quaint font and tiny dial of the 1967 SUB were exactly reproduced, and the sapphire crystal is tinted and domed so that you’d swear it’s acrylic. Those watches, in silver, black and orange dials, sold quickly but with 2017 still being the 50th anniversary year, as well as the 75th anniversary of Cousteau’s and Gagnan’s first prototype aqua-lung, Doxa decided (with cooperation from the modern day Aqua Lung company) to produce a "Black Lung" edition of 300 pieces.

The specs of this watch are the same as the 50th Anniversary edition – a 42.5-millimeter tonneau-shaped steel case, a rotating steel bezel engraved with the U.S. Navy’s no-decompression limits scale, and a modern version of Doxa’s “beads of rice” bracelet. Inside is a chronometer-grade and COSC-certified self-winding ETA 2824-2 with date function. Then there’s the dial, the calling card of this watch. It’s essentially the same 25.5-millimeter dial, for this version only available in orange “Professional” livery. But of course, the distinguishing element is the “Black Lung” logo in the lower left quadrant – a perfect reproduction of the old yellow and black U.S. Divers Co. logo. Though the watch is identical in every respect to the last year’s anniversary SUB 300, the addition of the logo makes a significant difference. Side by side, the standard version dial looks almost empty now, with the logo version somehow more complete. It hearkens back to the days when dive shops sold wristwatches, and divers wore watches as a necessary instrument.

So what’s it like on the wrist? To find out, I’ve been wearing it for several weeks, including on a dive to a sunken shipwreck in icy Lake Superior, which seemed like a fitting way to try out a Doxa. The SUB 300 was big back in its early days and still feels substantial. Yet despite its 42-millimeter diameter, the watch wears quite slim. The 12-millimeter overall height is deceiving since it's partly due to the domed “bubble” crystal and in the prominent bezel. Both of those features sit well inboard of the case edges, which taper down to a narrow case band, so it doesn’t suffer from that slab-sided appearance of so many modern divers.

Since its rebirth in the early 2000s, Doxa’s SUB line has seen a lot of variations, all of which carry forward the traits of those made in the 1960s and ‘70s, so the aesthetics of this one are familiar. But the defining feature that makes the SUB 300 re-issues so “old timey” is the small dial. Combined with the distorting effect of the bubble crystal, it is like looking into a porthole to read the time. It really does feel like a vintage watch, yet the small dial doesn’t detract from legibility.

Timing a dive is really all about the minute hand and Doxa made that a design priority from the beginning. The slim “dwarf” hour hand is almost vestigial compared to the fat black minute hand with its stripe of white lume. Contrary to the belief current when the first Doxa SUB was designed, that orange would be the most visible color during a dive, it turns out orange actually becomes a dull grey in as little as 15 or 20 feet of water, thanks to the fact that as you descend, water filters out red and yellow light first. Regardless, legibility is all about hand/dial contrast and despite the early concerns about the black circle logo obscuring the minute hand, I found it a cinch to read, even in murky conditions.

Minutes are tracked on the inner ring of hash marks on the bezel while the outer ring shows the corresponding depths at which you can remain before having to ascend without paying a decompression debt. And though dives nowadays are tracked with a digital dive computer, having your no-deco limits marked as reference is handy, and a reminder of how far scuba diving has come since 1967. The Doxa bezel remains one of the best in the business, sitting well off the case with serrated “buzzsaw” teeth for grip. I was diving with 5-millimeter thick neoprene gloves and had no problem twisting the bezel.

The bracelet on this watch is a modern version of Doxa’s well known “beads of rice” style from the 1960s. I have an original version on a vintage Doxa I own and the old one actually fits, with a bit of maneuvering, on the new watch. Anyone who’s worn a beads of rice bracelet knows how comfortable they are. The one on the “Black Lung” is not a true beads of rice, since each row of “beads” is one piece. But it still drapes comfortably on the wrist. The clasp is a fairly common foldover style with dive extension and micro-adjustment slots. I’d had loved to see Doxa recreate its innovative spring-loaded dive clasp from the ‘60s, but re-engineering that would have likely increased the price substantially. With the dive extension deployed, the bracelet fit well over my thick glove cuff. Like its historical inspiration, the new “Black Lung” is rated to 300 meters of water depth, a healthy safety margin for any diving I would do with it.

As part of this review, I wore the watch down to about 80 feet (about 24 meters) in 50-degree Fahrenheit water (10 degrees Centigrade), a suitable test for a purpose-built dive watch. I was exploring the wreck of a ship called the Madeira, a steel schooner barge that sank in a storm in November, 1905 when it was dashed against the cliffs north of the Split Rock River on Lake Superior’s North Shore. All but one of the ten man crew was saved by the heroic efforts of a crewman who jumped to the cliff with a rope to create a traverse for the others to escape.

The Madeira wreck was first explored in 1955 by an intrepid group of cold water divers who called themselves the “Frigid Frogs.” Though I can’t say for certain, it’s likely that at least some of these divers were wearing Aqua Lung scuba gear, and they were no doubt timing their dives using self-winding wristwatches. And while they likely had talc-coated rubber suits on to ward off the cold water, I had on a modern air-filled drysuit and was breathing through a modern APEKS regulator (APEKS is owned by Aqua Lung, by the way). To me, this is the great thing about diving shipwrecks like this. It ties me to the history of not only the wreck but also to those divers who explored it before me, using much the same equipment and facing the same challenges. It is, in a way, as if time is suspended, at least for the 35 minutes before fingers go numb and air runs low.

Doxa dive watches have always had polarizing aesthetics. For years I couldn’t understand the appeal. The case is fat but the bezel small and sits high, the hands are lopsided and the orange dial garish. Beads of rice bracelets are an acquired taste too, somehow seeming too gaudy on a tool watch. So if you look at this watch and think it’s not for you, there’s probably no convincing you otherwise. For me, as an avid diver and a student of the sport’s history, the design finally made sense. That high bezel was, and still is, very easy to grab, the massive minute hand unmistakable at a glance, and the bracelet extremely comfortable. 

Does it have flaws? Sure. The zero mark on the bezel is not lumed, and the elapsed-time engravings can be hard to read quickly. Orange has proven to not be ideal for underwater visibility, though color is really of little consequence. No one really got it 100% right on their first dive watch design, and Doxa’s was, by far, the most ambitious of its era. But just as divers seldom wear dive watches anymore, you don’t buy this, or any diver, for perfection of functionality anymore either. The SUB 300 Aqua Lung Edition is pure nostalgia for the days when Sea Hunt was on nighttime TV, and divers wore rubber wetsuits and twin-hose aqua lungs. 

The Doxa SUB 300 Aqua Lung Edition can be pre-ordered now, with a price of $2,190. The watch will come packaged with a specially made Aqua-Lung fixed blade dive knife with leg sheath and orange paracord-wrapped tang. After watches ship, if any remain, the price will increase to $2,590. 

More information can be found on Doxa’s dedicated SUB website. 

Last week we had the pleasure of celebrating the launch of the HODINKEE Magazine, Volume 1, in New York City. Nearly 200 friends and enthusiasts turned out to enjoy cocktails (kindly provided by The Glenfiddich and Hendricks), music, and the magazine with the HODINKEE Team, and we even had a little HODINKEE Shop pop-up too.  After months of toiling away to produce this magazine, it was exciting to finally get it into people's hands and to see reactions to this entirely new part of the HODINKEE portfolio. 

Enjoy the photos from the evening below and we hope to see you at another HODINKEE event soon!

Photos: Greyson Korhonen

Christophe Claret is an enigma trying to not be one. If you have been following the saga of complicated watches in the late 20th and early 21st centuries for any length of time, there's a good chance you've run across his name, but in recent years it's likelier in the context of watches bearing his own name, than not. However, his resumé as a watchmaker goes back quite a bit further than the establishment of his own watch brand – he began as a supplier of complicated watches to other manufacturers, starting in 1989 with the San Marco minute repeater, for Ulysse Nardin. While for much of his career, his time has been divided between his work as a complications specialist (particularly in the domain of repeaters and other chiming complications) he's increasingly been more and more visible, in the last decade, as the creator of unusual watches under his own brand name, such as the constant force Kantharos, the casino-on-the-wrist Blackjack, the magnetism-harnessing X-Trem-1, and the Margot ladies' complication, which lets the wearer play a mechanical game of He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.

Each of these watches is extremely entertaining, each in their own way; Claret's years as a complications designer has given him the ability to create watches that represent a significant departure from the more conventional ones that are the bread-and-butter of most manufacturers, who rarely depart from the normal spectrum of complications (with the simple calendar at one end and the repeater at the other). Such complexity comes at a cost but even for those of us not in the market for six figure watches, I think it's fun to know this sort of thing is going on – plus, personally, I always get a kick out of spending a few minutes seeing what he's come up with when the opportunity presents itself. The Maestro is a fairly new watch for Claret; it was launched this year, and it represents his most accessible watch yet, price-wise, as well as clearly reflecting his idiosyncratic design language and showing off his desire to take conventional complications and shake things up a little.

The Maestro, as is typical for Claret is a relatively large watch however, at 42mm x 16.06mm it's also much more in line with the upper end of conventional watch sizes than has been the case heretofore for Claret. For comparison, the Blackjack is 45mm x 15.92mm; the Ex-Trem-1, which has a rectangular case, is 40.80mm x 56.80mm x 15mm, and at those dimensions is by far the largest watch Claret makes, with around 45mm a fair average for Claret. 

Rather than striving for what's conventionally considered wearability or elegance in watch design, the Claret Maestro rolls back its architecture all the way to movement design of the first half of the 18th century, before thin watches with bridge calibers were even a gleam in Jean-Antoine Lépine's eye. The standard configuration for watch movements has been, for centuries, the use of a mainplate, with the barrel and train wheels under one or more bridges, and the balance under its own cock (a bridge, in watchmaking, has two points of attachment while a cock has only one). 

The Maestro, on the other hand, takes a very different approach. The balance is under its own stepped cock, with the mainspring barrels under their own bridge, and with separate cocks for the escape wheel and one of the intermediate wheels in the gear train for hand-winding. Conventional movement decoration is also absent; instead, the bridges and cocks are given a frosted, rose gold finish which derives much more from the English than the traditional Swiss movement decoration style. However, this style of movement design was widely seen on the Continent as well, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and in fact, Claret refers to it as "Charles X" style, the latter being the last reigning Bourbon king of France, who reigned from 1824 to 1830.

The date display is certainly one you won't see just anywhere (in fact I don't think I've every seen this particular configuration anywhere else at all). Technically, it's a digital date display but with a twist; the ones and tens digits are shown on two revolving cones (adjustment of the date is via the uppermost of the two case pushers). The current date is shown sandwiched between two ruby pointers; the idea here obviously is to make a date display that harmonizes with and emphasizes the three-dimensionality of the rest of the movement design. 

Just above the date "pyramid" as Claret calls it, there's the Memo function. This is also a revolving cone, which is intended to act as an aide-mémoire, rather like tying a loop of string around your finger (does anyone do that anymore?) There are two jewels on either side of the cone – one is a ruby, and the other, a diamond. When the Memo is activated (by the lower of the two pushers) the jewel visible at 6:00 matches the one atop the cone, to remind you of something – it could be that it's someone's birthday, or that you need to stand up and walk around once an hour if you have a sedentary job (take that, Apple Watch) or what have you.

Once active, the Memo will retain the reminder configuration until midnight, at which time it will return to the "off" configuration in a process that takes about 20 minutes.

You'll also note a few unusual features in the regulating system. The balance is quite large, with poising screws set into recesses in the rim. The balance oscillates at 21,600 vph, and there's an overcoil balance spring held in place at its outer terminal by a really beautifully finished stud. The large upper jewel may or may not be functional – it's possible that it's a sort of cap on top of a more standard anti-shock system, but in any case it makes a trio with the upper jewels on the date and Memo cones. Finally, there's the fine regulating system; this consists of a threaded metal curve on which rides a kind of adjustable nut which, when turned one way or the other, controls the position of the regulator sweep. It's a very precise system, and they were widely used in the late 19th century in American Elgin pocket watches (among other places) but in the modern era this system is very seldom seen – Moritz Grossmann uses a variation on this system but offhand I can't think of anyone else.

The view through the caseback is more conventional, and there are some traditional flourishes as well including the click spring and click, but in contrast with the retro-futuristic dial side, the back is rather more staid (to some extent, an inevitable consequence of the movement architecture). This is a watch with a tremendous amount of visual depth; about half the overall thickness of the case is the deeply domed crystal, which gives the various dial elements the feel of a Nemo-esque underwater city, or maybe an atmosphere retaining habitat on some colony world in the far future.

The Maestro is the least expensive watch Claret currently offers; the red gold model you see here is $76,000, and there is a titanium version, which uses blue sapphires rather than rubies, which is priced at $68,000. This is a watch for the (well-heeled) enthusiast who is in love with the machine-ness of watch mechanisms; the architectural quality of the layout, and the distinct identity it gives to each of the major components, both make the Maestro the apotheosis of a certain kind of true gearhead approach to watchmaking. 

The Christophe Claret Maestro: case, 42mm x 16.06mm, rose gold, water resistant to 30m. Movement, caliber DMC16, hand-wound, 7 day power reserve, with pyramidal date display and Memo function; 36.25mm x 10.50mm. 

For more, visit Christophe Claret online.

Maybe you heard that Switzerland’s official chronometer testing agency has decided to stop issuing chronometer data by brand. I can’t speak for anybody else, but as a guy with a serious watch-data habit, this is inducing tremors. 

COSC (Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres) has been releasing such data in its annual report (in French) since 1974. Suddenly, in the report for 2016, issued in mid-2017, the brand data vanished. Instead, there was a terse statement from COSC board chairman Nico de Rooij: “At the request of our clients, and to protect brands’ confidentiality, our annual report has been revamped and no longer provides statistics by brands. Each client can get brand data by asking COSC directly.” Say what? C’est tout? That’s it. (The Swiss don’t have a reputation for secrecy for nothing.)

Over the years, COSC has had hundreds of clients. Annually, there are usually 50 to 60, but they vary year to year. Swiss-watch-industry watchers, however, are pretty sure which COSC clients are responsible for the change. In COSC world, they are known at the Big Three: Rolex, Omega, and Breitling. 

One of the anomalies of the Swiss chronometer scene is that, while Switzerland has roughly 600 watch brands, about 85% of the chronometer certificates COSC issues each year go to just those three brands. In 2015, the last year for which data is available (get used to hearing that expression), they accounted for exactly 84%.

Rolex, famously, is the chronometer king. Each year it gets nearly half of all certificates issued (between 46% and 48%). Between 2000 and 2015, the last year for which… (OK, you get it), Rolex manufactured precisely 11,624,111 COSC-certified chronometers, according to my count using official COSC data. 

Omega and Breitling are COSC princes. Omega is the world’s #2 chronometer-maker. In this century, it has produced 5,152,075 COSC-certified chronometers. Breitling is #3 with 2,448,262 over the same period. After these three brands, there is a precipitous fall. No brand comes anywhere near Breitling. 

So, it’s a safe bet that COSC management got a request (or demand) to kill the data from one or more of this trio. Given that joint 84% market share, it’s no surprise that COSC complied.

The disappearance of the COSC data has not raised any alarm in Swiss watch circles, I am told. But inevitably there is speculation about what happened. The leading theory is that the data would have shown a significant drop in chronometers issued to one or more of the Big Three, and perhaps some of the others, who were concerned it would make a bad impression. (Indeed, COSC issued 5.6% fewer certificates last year compared to 2015, it said.) 

Whoever complained, the talk on the Swiss street is that the big three COSCateers signed on to the decision. As a result, here’s what we got from COSC this year: For 2016, the total number of movements submitted was 1.70 million (-6.5%). The total number of certificates issued was 1.63 million (-5.6%). The total number of mechanical certificates issued was 1.59 million; the total number of quartz certificates was 43,247. 

That’s pretty thin gruel compared to what we used to get. What data geeks will miss most is the Rolex number. Since virtually all Rolex movements receive COSC chronometer certification, it was a way to keep track of the ongoing Rolex phenomenon: the company’s ability to sell around 800,000 watches a year, year-in and year out. Love them or hate them, in the watch world, there is nothing like them. Over the years, COSC offered a little window into the workings of the market leader. Now kiss it good-bye. (Since all Breitling movements are COSC-certified, COSC offered the same insight into its annual production. Breitling’s output, though, is less than 20% of Rolex’s.)

But there was more to COSC than the Rolex info. In my view, the data was a good read, loaded with tidbits guaranteed to inform and amuse Swiss-watch lovers. Here, for example, are some things what we learned in the 2015 report, the last year for which data… (I can’t help it.)

Important things like Tudor’s surge to 23,003 chronometers produced that year, versus 2,508 in 2014 and none in 2013. 

Or things worth noting, like Zenith (6,824), Panerai (6,262), Bremont (5,860) and Ball Watch (5,031) surpassing the 5,000-certificate mark.

Surprising things like 49,922 certificates for Mido, 34,468 certificates for Enicar, 100 certificates to Burberry (for mechanical movements!), and 99 to Steinhart.

Curiosities like the four brands that account for all the quartz chronometer certificates: Tissot (30,581), Breitling (28,499), Christopher Ward (2,167), and Invicta (989).

And tidbits like the fact that Ferdinand Berthoud got 1 certificate, Christian Dior 2 (mechanicals) and Tavannes 89.

I could go on. All of that stuff, important and not-so-important, about players big and small, is gone now. That’s a pity. Whatever certification politics or PR sensitivities were behind this decision, it seems a very severe reaction. 

Chanel is no stranger to the watch game. In fact, the Parisian fashion house has been on something of a roll lately. It all started a few years ago with the Boy.Friend, and then last year they made an even bigger splash with their first ever dedicated men's watch, the Monsieur, which featured an in-house movement developed with none other than Romain Gauthier. It was a not-so-secret hit with us here at HODINKEE, as one of the more surprising and interesting watches of that year's Baselworld fair due to the jump-hour Caliber 1. Then, keeping things going, Chanel followed up with the Première Camélia Skeleton and the Caliber 2 just earlier this year.

Now, just in time for Paris Fashion Week, Chanel has released the CODE COCO watch in stainless steel, available with or without a diamond-set bezel. The new jewelry watch is inspired by the iconic (and in my humble opinion, desirable) Chanel 2.55 purse, which features a very special clasp. The watch itself is reminiscent of something you might have seen from 1970s Piaget, with the unique stainless steel bracelet a major part of the overall package. The black lacquered dial measures 38.1 x 21.5 mm and there is a high-precision quartz movement sitting underneath. The rectangular black dial is bisected by a rotating metal bar that either exposes the time when it is perpendicular to the bracelet, or conceals the time when parallel to it. This allows for an unusual and discreet way to wear your watch and tell time, with the piece itself straddling the watch and bracelet categories. 

While this is currently a very unusual design and certainly innovative, it is not the first time that we have seen concealed watches for women. Van Cleef and Arpels designed the Cadenas in the 1930s, which championed the hidden dial so that women could check time discreetly, so as not to offend the company they were with of course. Van Cleef and Arpels has continued this design tradition in modern pieces as well.  While the movement of the CODE COCO may be quartz, I myself love a good jewelry watch and think this one is pretty damn cool (you'll be hearing more from me about this soon, whether you like it or not). 

The Chanel CODE COCO starts at $5,000 for the plain stainless steel version with single .05 carat diamond and $9,100 for the versions in stainless steel with a diamond-set bezel (with 52 diamonds to be exact). There is also a limited edition of five pieces that is made in white gold entirely encrusted with diamonds. This will run you a cool $956,000. 

For more, visit Chanel online.

The Richard Lange Jumping Seconds from A. Lange & Söhne was first introduced at the 2016 edition of the SIHH, and as part of the Richard Lange family, it's intended to showcase certain aspects of precision timekeeping. The first version of the watch was released in platinum, with rhodium plated hands, and made a suitably austere impression, relieved somewhat by the unusual overlapping sub-dials for the hours, minutes, and seconds and, if you let the watch run down enough, the appearance of a red triangle at 6:00 (the window switches to red when there is ten hours of power reserve remaining). 

The dial design is based on a pocket watch originally made by the Dresden-based watchmaker, Johann Heinrich Seyffert, in the late 18th century, and it has been used by Lange for the Richard Lange Tourbillon Pour Le Mérite as well. The Richard Lange Jumping Seconds has, as the name says, a jumping seconds complication (this is traditionally called a deadbeat seconds complication but for obvious reasons, most manufacturers nowadays prefer to avoid the term) and the largest subdial is devoted to showcasing the seconds hand – in both versions, done in blued steel to contrast with the plated gold hands (rhodium for the platinum version, and rose gold for the rose gold model just introduced).

The result's a warmer version of the watch, of course, but also one with a bit stronger sense of contrast in the color scheme. The blued steel second hand's been retained, as well as what's under the hood: the Lange caliber L094.1, which has several features characteristic of a high grade, precision oriented mechanical movement.

Architecturally, this is basically a modified 3/4 plate movement. The balance is a free-sprung adjustable mass type (of course with Lange's signature engraved balance cock). The watch is also equipped with the (very rare) constant force mechanism known as a remontoire d'égalité. This mechanism is actually a very old one in horology; it is essentially a second power source for the balance, which drives one of the gear train wheels and is itself periodically rewound by the mainspring. The idea is to provide as unvarying energy as possible; the more consistent the energy going to the balance, the better rate stability should be. The remontoire in any form is rather rare; the gravity remontoire, which is intended for use in static clocks, was invented by the Swiss mathematician and horologist Jost Burgi around 1595, and John Harrison invented the spring remontoire while developing his H2 sea clock (he subsequently used a remontoire in H4, which won the Longitude Prize).

The remontoire d'égalité in the Richard Lange Jumping Seconds is rewound once every second, and the advance of the remontoire drives the seconds hand in one-second jumps. There's also quite an ingenious and complex mechanism for setting the time. The watch has a stop-seconds function, but also a reset-to-zero function for the seconds hand, to make setting the time exactly an easier undertaking. In order to re-set the seconds hand to zero, it's necessary to isolate the remontoire from the rest of the gear train and this is done with a vertical clutch system and reset-to-zero heart piece, that are essentially identical to what you would find in a chronograph.

In pink gold, the Richard Lange Jumping Seconds is priced at $78,100 and is available now. If you'd like a more in-depth look at this very original design and its mechanisms, check out our Hands On from 2016, right here.

We've been working on something really special for nearly a year, and we're almost ready to share it with you all. All the details will be available tomorrow, October 4, at 1:00 PM ET (10:00 AM PT), so be sure to keep your eyes on HODINKEE to be among the first to see our latest collaboration. You definitely don't want to miss this, we promise.

That's all we can say for the moment, but we can't wait to share this special collaboration with you tomorrow. Stay tuned.

De Bethune is famous for their award-winning, space age watches. The architecture and aesthetics of the watches themselves are mesmerizing, but there is much more to De Bethune's watchmaking than high-level finishing and interesting design. The brand has a deep focus on horological engineering, exemplified by the balances used in their watches. With each iteration, De Bethune strives for measurable improvements in performance. I spoke with De Bethune co-founder Denis Flageollet to learn more.

Nicholas Manousos

What was De Bethune's motivation for moving beyond traditional balances in 2004 with the titanium/platinum balance?

Denis Flageollet

One of the reasons for the creation of De Bethune was to bring to traditional watchmaking the result of new research. It was therefore logical to start the technical work on the improvement of the sprung balance which is the heart of mechanical watches. Since the 1970s, no one had sought radical solutions in this field. Partly due to the watch crisis of that time which had weakened mechanical watch research in favor of clock-making electronics. And for another part due to the fact that the balance is something difficult to achieve. Watch brands can be a little sleepy and prefer to buy standardized components, the same for decades. It was therefore time at the beginning of the third millennium that enthusiasts like us summed up this costly and difficult task of transcending the sprung balance into something more efficient, more mechanical, more modern and more emotional, certainly in the image of what the great watchmakers of the Enlightenment would have done.

NM

How do you optimize the weight and inertia of your balances?

DF

It is not the weight of the balance that is important, it is its mass in relation to its inertia. The aim is to have the lowest weight (mass) possible for the greatest inertia possible, the De Bethune balances are on average 20% lighter for the same inertia and the same radius of gyration as a standard balance. They are much more efficient in reducing disturbances they undergo on the wrist, but also for the energy gain necessary for their maintenance. It is known that in order to increase the inertia to the maximum in relation to a given weight, it is necessary to put the maximum of the weight outside. But be careful - it is not possible in the wristwatch to increase the diameter of the balance too much because it will be subjected to disturbances too important when the watch is on the wrist of the user. This is why the first De Bethune balances were made of titanium which is a light material inside the balance and platinum who is a heavy material outside the balance.

NM

What was behind the switch to an annular balance in 2007?
 

DF

The result of the annular balance with the integrated platinum inertia-block is a research on the aerodynamics of the balance. For a balance working on a 36,000 vibrations per hour it is important that its movement does not create air disturbances which may modify its operation. This research therefore began when De Bethune chose to increase the frequency of its balances to the maximum possible. This is for two reasons: an increase in the quality factor since this is proportional to the frequency of the oscillator, and further reducing the disturbance of the balance during the wear of the watch by its user.

NM

Why did De Bethune begin using silicon in its balances?

DF

Silicon is three times lighter than titanium, so it was logical for De Bethune to use silicon as the hub of the balance to achieve an even better inertia / mass ratio. To do this, it was necessary to develop very specific manufacturing and assembly techniques.

NM

What is De Bethune's testing methodology for the different iterations of its balances?

DF

These are long and complex methodologies that can not be described here in detail, but in summary: it is important to carry out the tests with known points of comparison. We have therefore tested a long time in different conditions of the standard balances in order to have complete comparison tables to be sure of our results. It is important to calculate the quality factor for each type of balance tested, this is evaluated according to the damping standards of its oscillation independent of the escapement. It is also important to test the balance in all positions and conditions. The laser and the high-speed camera (more than 20’000 pictures by seconds) are excellent tools for carrying out all of these tests. The sprung balance and its escapement is a complex mechanical system, so it is necessary to modify only a tiny part at a time and to make the tests always under the same conditions to be sure of the action of a modification for the improvement of the overall.

NM

How do you think balances will evolve in the future?

DF

As long as the materials and assembling techniques evolve the balances will evolve. We are currently at the forefront of existing technologies and it is difficult to imagine what tomorrow's balances will be. The improvements that we are constantly seeking to make according to the technologies available are: the reduction of friction at the pivot, the right choice of materials to further improve the effects of changes in temperature, better aerodynamics, and better inertia to mass ratio.

To learn more, visit De Bethune online.

You knew the next one was going to be good, didn't you? In our relentless effort to produce interesting and thoughtful timepieces for our audience, we've already worked with some icons of haute horology. We began this series in 2015 with an old friend who happens to make cutting-edge high-end timepieces with a dose of fun – I'm talking about our stainless steel LM101 with MB&F. We followed that up with a '50s twist on a '60s caliber with Zenith. From there, we created a chronometry-focused minimalist's dream with NOMOS. Then we built the greatest vintage Vacheron chronograph that never existed, before coming back to the avant garde with Ressence. Finally, in the summer of 2017, we revived the Heuer Skipper and the Dato-45 Carrera with a new movement and made one hell of a TAG Heuer (if we may say so ourselves). Today we're thrilled to announced our latest collaboration, and man, we couldn't be more proud.

It's no secret that our entire team is a fan of the elegance and creativity of Laurent Ferrier. We began reporting on them back in 2010, when their tourbillon won the GPHG for best men's watch. By 2011, the brand became a staple of the early days of HODINKEE, and the technical innovation (think natural escapement) coupled with superb hand-finishing and decoration, along with Mr. Ferrier's knack for stunning tension in case and dial design quickly elevated the brand to become a favorite of connoisseurs the world over.

Laurent Ferrier himself became something of an icon to many of us – his soft-natured approach to watchmaking and collectors makes him one of the most pleasant people to meet with when in Geneva, while his undeniable talent makes him one of the most exciting. His pedigree, which includes 37 years as a director at Patek Philippe and a podium finish at the 1979 running of Le Mans (behind none other than Mr. Paul Newman), makes him a legend. This watch, the Laurent Ferrier Traveller for HODINKEE is everything we love about Laurent embodied in one spectacular limited edition timepiece.

Let's get into what this watch is and how you can get it.

The Laurent Ferrier Traveller For HODINKEE

In working with Laurent Ferrier, we wanted to touch on a new type of watch for our limited series. In many ways, the category of wristwatch that is most compelling, most charming to us, is the GMT or travel watch. We think it's because the wristwatches that we love the most and the original jet age of the 1950s and '60s go hand-in-hand – they share a history, really. One does not exist without the other – early navigation watches like those from Longines and Cartier allowed pilots to find their way, and the later Navitimers and Rolex GMTs allowed them to travel often and easily. 

One can look back and imagine a well-dressed couple hopping aboard a Pan-Am flight for the first time, and the man pulling back his fine suit cuff to reveal a Patek Philippe 1415. Or maybe it would be a ref. 2597 – one of the coolest vintage Calatravas in the world, because it looks just like a 570 if it weren't for those two notched buttons you see on the case band that allow the wearer to jump the hour hand forward and back.

And in 2013, Laurent Ferrier introduced the Traveller, his own version of the coveted 2597, but updated for today. He took his already successful Galet Micro-Rotor and added an incredible dual timezone feature that included a home-time window at nine o'clock, sub-seconds at six o'clock, and date at three o'clock. 

What you see on the case band though are those lovely notched pushers – again, a push at eight o'clock will bring the main hour hand back one position, while the button at 10 o'clock will advance it. Of course, the watch retains the same incredible self-winding caliber found in the Micro-Rotor, so you have one of the most elegant and convenient watches in the world. The Traveller has enjoyed success since its launch, and it was this model that we used as the foundation of our collaboration.

A Dial Of Blue Enamel

The first thing we looked at is the dial. The existing Traveller is incredible for its elegant presentation of so much data. We wanted to reduce it even more, to bring the Traveller to its very core: ours is a watch that tells the time in two time zones, and nothing more. We first removed the seconds sub-dial at six o'clock, and then went ahead and removed the date window at three o'clock too. At nine 0'clock remains the home-time display – this display is set once and never adjusted. It shows the time in your home city on a 24 hour basis.

The outer ring of the dial is circular satin-brushed blue that slopes towards a matte white railroad minute track. At the center? That's deep blue enamel. Protecting the enamel center dial is a white gold sector inlay. The resulting dial is one of the most beautiful things to have come from Switzerland in years, if you ask us. The deep, glossy nature of the blue enamel provides amazing contrast against the silvered blue ring and white gold, assegai-shaped hands.

A Case Of Polished Titanium

In thinking about what would make the ultimate traveler's companion, we knew we had the functionality down. But we wanted to make the watch even more wearable than one in gold or even steel. So what is lighter and more durable than stainless steel? You guessed it – titanium. For the first time in Laurent Ferrier's history, we have a solid titanium case. 

But this is Laurent Ferrier, so you're not going to get your normal rough titanium case. Instead, the three-part case is completely polished to resemble steel or white gold, and the only way one would know this watch is titanium is by the incredible lightweight feel when you pick it up. The diameter of the Traveller is 41mm, though the wonderful architecture of the Galet case allows it to wear much smaller. This is where Laurent Ferrier really comes into its own. The watch features domed sapphire crystals on both the front and the back – the watch itself is 10mm thick, and with crystal it approaches 12mm. The enamel sector dial through domed crystal gives this watch an incredible vintage appearance, while the titanium case makes it feel thoroughly modern.

A Caliber In Anthracite

The beautiful thing about Laurent Ferrier is that the joy of ownership doesn't end with the case and dial. In fact, an argument could be made that Laurent Ferrier's movements are among the very finest in the world. Though, we would venture to say that most do not even know why Laurent Ferrier's movements are as coveted as they are, beyond their clearly stunning aesthetics. 

Laurent Ferrier's watches, both the Galet Micro-Rotor and the Traveller, use something called a natural escapement, which is among the holy grails of escapement technology. Conceived by Abraham-Louis Breguet himself in the early nineteenth century, only a handful of watchmakers are capable of producing a natural escapement today. It is superior to the traditional lever escapement in many ways: it provides a dual, direct impulse directly onto the balance, it is self-starting, and it does not require lubrication at its impulse surfaces. Further, Laurent Ferrier's caliber LF230.02 features a stunning off-centered micro-rotor in 18k gold with pawl-fitted, uni-directional winding, equipped with "silent block" shock absorption.

DID YOU KNOW?

Every Laurent Ferrier wristwatch is a certified chronometer, but instead of submitting just the movement to the COSC in Switzerland, the brand goes one step further to submit fully cased watches to the Astronomical Observatory at Besançon, France. The watches are tested in for 16 consecutive days, in five positions, and at three different temperatures.

Laurent Ferrier has excelled as a small, independent watchmaker because of the incredible design sensibilities it retains, but also because there are few watches made today that combine traditional elegance in dial and case design with actual horological achievement. Many times you have one without the other – but with Laurent Ferrier, you have both incredible style and true watch-nerd substance.  In fact, when a special contributor compared a Laurent Ferrier Micro-Rotor with a Philippe Dufour Simplicity and Credor Eichi II, he found that the LF offered the most balanced approach to both technical ability and aesthetics.

The detail in hand-finishing and depth to this movement is unrivaled in any modern self-winding caliber in the world. And what's most impressive is that though it offers the ease of being an automatic watch, the micro-rotor allows you to still view the entirety of the incredible caliber from the caseback. And, because this is a special watch, Laurent Ferrier has applied an entirely new finish to the travel time caliber here. For this watch only, the LF230.02 caliber features a vertical satin-brushed finish in anthracite. This is done via galvanic ruthenium treatment, which plays beautifully against the titanium case.

The Specifics

The Laurent Ferrier Traveller Limited Edition For HODINKEE is our ideal concept of what the ultimate travel watch is today. It's sleek, lightweight, durable, and easy to wear. It's self-winding, and simple. The dial is stunning, and the deep blue surrounded by the brushed satin ring – a subtle homage to the bright sky set against a deep ocean – is hand crafted in the way that the wonderful travel watches of the 1950s were constructed. The caliber is exceptional, and represents true haute horlogerie but with a very practical undertone. This is a very special watch, the type that will only be appreciated by those in the know, and that's what we've always loved about Laurent Ferrier. 

Each watch will ship anywhere in the world for free, insured. Included will be a titanium Laurent Ferrier buckle and three special HODINKEE straps designed specifically for this piece. 

Only 15 pieces will be sold, and each at a price of $60,000. They are available exclusively via The HODINKEE Shop, right here.

Gallery

The Historiques Collection from Vacheron Constantin is the home of a number of critic and fan favorites, including the Cornes de Vache chronographs and the oh-so-deliciously-thin Ultra-Fine 1955. It also includes the quirky but extremely appealing American 1921 "Driver's Watch," with its unusual angled dial. Today Vacheron's announced several major new additions to the Historiques family: two versions of two closely related, and quite wonderful, triple calendar and moonphase references from the 1940s, and a new version of the American 1921 in a new, significantly smaller case. Let's take a look at the calendar and moonphase watches first.

The Historiques 1942 And 1948 Triple Calendrier Watches

The triple calendar watches are very similar, but there are actually two different models based on two different versions of the reference 4240, which first debuted in 1942. The reference 4240 had claw lugs and was 35mm in diameter, with a stepped bezel, day and month windows, and with the date shown by a pointer. The movement for the reference 4240 was the caliber 485; this was based on the time-only Vacheron caliber 453, which was based on the Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber 449. The movement was reworked and finished to a very high level and a center seconds version, the caliber P1008/BS, was used in the mid-20th century in Vacheron's hand-wound versions of the Chronomètre Royal (one of the most lovely instances of the art of the hand-wound movement you could ask for). The original reference 4240 was produced in yellow or rose gold and, interestingly enough, in steel, but with rose or yellow gold lugs. They are quite rarely seen for sale or at auction. There was also a slightly larger version: the reference 4241, in a 35.5mm case (one version of the 4241 had very 1940s hooded bar-shaped lugs). 

The 4240 (and the 4240L) were produced at an interesting time for Vacheron Constantin; the company was struggling in the late 1930s, thanks to the effects of the Great Depression, and there was actually a merger between Jaeger-LeCoultre and Vacheron under the umbrella of a holding company called SAPIC (Société Anonyme de Produits Industriels et Commerciaux). This explains the extremely close working relationship between the two firms, and the extensive use of Jaeger-LeCoultre movements by Vacheron – not only in the 4240 series but in other watches as well. 

The new Historiques Triple Calendrier 1942 is being produced in steel only and it is not a limited edition. It's not identical in every detail to the reference 4240 but it is instantly recognizable as a follow-on to the original. The case is a more modern size, at 40mm x 10.35mm in diameter and of course case construction is more modern, with a 30 meter water resistance. The movement in the new Triple Calendrier 1942 model is a modern one, of course: Vacheron's 12 1/2 ligne (29mm) caliber 4400 QC, which is based on the hand-wound caliber 4400. Caliber 4400 is actually a fairly recent movement: it was launched in the Historiques 1921 when the watch first debuted in 2008. Caliber 4400 was preceded by the hand wound caliber 1400 in 2001, and also by the automatic caliber 2450 which was Vacheron's first automatic movement (the caliber 1400 was Vacheron's first in-house basic hand-wound movement since the merger with Jaeger-LeCoultre).

In addition to being a very engaging reworking, with modern materials, and careful style tweaks, to a rare and attractive vintage watch, the Historiques Triple Calendrier 1942 is priced very accessibly (relatively speaking) for a modern complicated watch from an haut de gamme firm: $19,500.

The Historiques 1948 is a somewhat different proposition, although just as with the Historiques 1942, there are very obvious similarities between it and the ref. 4240 vintage watches. Both watches feature a triple calendar complication with a pointer for the date, along with a sub-seconds register at 6:00 (you'll notice, by the way, that the six is absent in the 1942; this is actually a very common feature in both vintage wristwatches and pocket watches with sub-seconds dials – so much so that pocket watches with sub-seconds dials are sometimes called "six-eaters.") However, the Historiques 1948 models are being offered in rose gold, rather than steel, with slightly more elaborate dials and most importantly, with a high-accuracy moonphase complication.

The Historiques 1948 is based on the reference 4240L, which was also 35mm in diameter, and which used the caliber 495 (basically, it's the 4240 but with a moonphase disk; the L was for "lune"). In all other respects, 4240L was identical in general quality, inside and out, to the 4240, and like the 4240 it's rarely encountered at auction or at dealers. As with the Historiques 1942, the Historiques 1948 is a very careful, modern update to the design, with identical case dimensions to the 1942. The moonphase disk comes in either red or blue, with red or blue numerals for the date track. Unlike the 1942, which has transfer printed dial markers, the Historiques 1948 has applied Roman numerals at 3, 9, and 12 o'clock, and applied triangular markers for the remaining hours (except at 6 o'clock). While the 1942 has plain beveled edges for the day and month windows, the 1948 has gold surrounds and the whole effect adds up to a subtly but definitely more formal presentation that the Historiques 1942.

Technically the biggest difference between the two watches is of course the high precision moonphase, which is accurate to one day's error in 122 years. As with the more elaborate dial treatment, the moonphase adds considerably to sense of formality of the Historiques 1948, and very much gives it an air of mid-century, nostalgic romance. Unlike the Historiques 1942, the Historiques 1948 is a limited edition (200 pieces) and the price will be $35,000. Both models should be available in December 2017.

The Historiques American 1921 Small Model

The Historiques American 1921 has an interesting past. The original version of the watch was first delivered to the US in 1921 (no surprises there) and only 12 were made, over a ten year period between 1921 and 1931. According to Vacheron, the original used the Vacheron caliber RA 11 ligne "Nouveau Amérique" movement, and the first piece sold in the US went to the Rev. S. Parkes Cadman, who was a prominent Congregationalist minister and radio broadcaster known for his outspoken criticism of anti-Semitism in the years leading up to World War II. When the new version was released in 2008, Vacheron's Christian Selmoni said, "We had been eyeing this watch since 2006; it has an original typically '20s design and yet is far from being outdated. It's neither masculine nor feminine and yet very sophisticated." The rose gold case of the 2008 model is 40mm x 40mm and as we mentioned, it was the launch platform for the hand-wound Vacheron caliber 4400 – as we mentioned, the second in-house simple hand-wound caliber produced by Vacheron after the caliber 1400, in 2001.

The caliber 4400 is a 12 1/2 ligne (28.6mm) movement and in the 36.5mm version of the American 1921, it really fills up the 36.5mm x 7.25mm case beautifully. The lug to case width ratio has been adjusted to ensure that there's enough clearance between the crown and the lugs, that hand-winding the watch is comfortable; this would be an extremely enjoyable daily wear watch for anyone who loves the American 1921 but prefers something a little less evocative of a pocket watch. The Small version of the 1921 is going to come with two straps: dark brown alligator, or the gloss finished red strap you see here.

The Historiques American 1921 small model is a non-limited edition watch; price will be $29,200 and as with the Historiques 1942 and 1948 models, it should be available starting in early December of this year. To see the entire Historiques Collection, visit Vacheron Constantin online.

Here are some additional photos of the new Historiques, courtesy of Vacheron Constantin:

At an event tonight in England, Bremont Watch Company released the latest in its annual tradition of limited editions, the “1918,” a watch that pays tribute to the centenary of Britain’s Royal Air Force. Anyone who knows Bremont knows that its founders, brothers Nick and Giles English, are keen pilots and most of their watches hew close to aviation themes. Past limited editions have paid tribute to famous planes, like the P-51, the EP120 Spitfire, and last year’s DH-88, all of which incorporated actual artifacts from the planes. The 1918 Limited Edition is no exception. Let’s take a closer look at this new complicated chronograph.

At first glance, the 1918 looks like a marked departure from Bremont’s typical styling, which has favored expansive, legible dials. Besides the company logo, with its stylized propeller, the rest draws closer similiarities to the “busier” markings of the 1940s and '50s chronographs of other brands. The rehaut has a telemeter scale, a more fitting tool on a military-themed watch than the tachymeters of motorsports watches.

The dial itself is multi-level, with sunken sub-dials for running seconds and the 30-minute counter, and a lower outer ring of Arabic hour numerals, applied luminescent pips, and a “railroad” minute track. The hands are “syringe” style, not unlike the shape of those from Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Master Control series from earlier this year. 

The most striking component, and a first for Bremont, is the AM/PM indicator at the bottom of the dial. Despite its appearance, this is not a moonphase complication, but rather is meant to be used in concert with the red-tipped “GMT” hand for tracking a second time zone. Since this GMT hand travels the dial once in 12 hours, not 24, the AM/PM indicator gives a quick clue as to whether the second time zone you’re tracking is in day or night hours. 

In a clever nod to the RAF theme of the watch, the AM/PM disc shows two iconic British warplanes flying during the day (a Supermarine Spitfire) and at night (an Avro Lancaster). It’s a clever, subtle incorporation of the planes that, at a glance merely looks like a standard moonphase.

Externally, the 1918 Limited Edition retains Bremont’s signature “Trip-Tick” three-part case, 43 millimeters across and 17.2 millimeters tall. The watch is rated for a healthy 100 meters of water resistance, but you might want to swap out the alligator strap if you plan to take it that deep.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a Bremont limited edition without some physical pieces of history and the 1918 uses recovered materials from no less than four historically important Royal Air Force planes. Flip the watch over and the sapphire caseback gives view to what Bremont calls its calibre BE-16AE, a modified and decorated take on an ETA (Valjoux) 7750 variant, that Bremont adjusts to achieve chronometer certification. 

Aside from perlage on the bridges, and blued screws, the rotor is the impressive part here. Designed in the shape of an airplane propeller, the three “blades” are made with metal from a Bristol Blenheim, a Hawker Hurricane, and a Supermarine Spitfire, all of which flew during World War II. The wood inlay at the center of the rotor was derived from an RAF biplane from World War I, the S.E.5a. All of these components were salvaged during restoration of these planes and, remarkably, all four of the planes are still flying today.

There are three versions of the Bremont 1918 Limited Edition. There will be 75 pieces made in white gold with a two-tone blue and white dial ($22,995), and another 75 in rose gold with black dial ($21,495). The stainless steel version has a white dial and blue hands, and 275 pieces will be made ($11,495). Some proceeds of these watch sales will be donated to the Royal Air Forces Association, an organization that provides support to current and past RAF members and their families.

For more, visit bremont.com/1918.

Forty years ago last month, I started a new job as an associate editor on a monthly magazine with the tortured name of Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone. My reporting career began the year before on a newspaper in Cape May County, New Jersey. Things there went well. In addition to covering local news and politics, I got to cover some national stories like the Democratic Convention of 1976 and Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. The journalism gods smiled on the rookie and I won a couple of reporting awards. They were my ticket out of Cape May County in pursuit of that coveted five-figure salary. (Yep, it was four figures per year on small-town papers in those days.)

On my first day at the new job, the editor-in-chief, a wise Irishman named George Holmes, told me “You are going to cover watches.” JCK was a trade magazine whose audience consisted of jewelry industry professionals, primarily retail jewelers and their buyers. Watches was one of the magazine’s major beats, along with diamonds and colored gemstones. 

I drove home from work that day depressed. Watches? Really? What can you possibly write about watches once a month? 

Turns out it wasn’t hard at all. In 1977, the watch world was at war. The Swiss, the Japanese, the Chinese (Hong Kong and Taiwan then), and the Americans were engaged in a furious battle we know as the Quartz Watch Revolution. (In Switzerland, it’s still called the Quartz Crisis.) Within days of starting to cover the watch industry, I was hooked. This beat had everything: a 500-year-old consumer product that was an object of both art and science, a global market, national industries in the throes of technological change, high stakes and high drama, with a cast of remarkable characters fighting ferociously on the marketing and technology fronts. To paraphrase the great Wordsworth, writing about another revolution, “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive / But to be a young watch reporter was very heaven!” 

It has been my great fortune over four decades to have had a front-row seat at the making of the modern watch world. As I see it, today’s watch world was created by a series of four revolutions that, each in its turn, roiled the industry, creating not just fascinating new watches, but new categories of watches, as well as new watch consumers, brands, companies and groups.

Those revolutions are the Quartz Watch Revolution of the 1970s, the Fashion Watch Revolution of the 1980s, the Mechanical Renaissance of the 1990s, and today’s Smartwatch Revolution. 

Over the next few weeks, HODINKEE will run a five-part series of stories about these four revolutions and their impact on the watch world. Part 1 reviews the Quartz Revolution which transformed the global watch landscape, shifted the balance of power to the Far East, changed consumer notions of watch functions and styling and nearly destroyed Switzerland’s third largest export industry. 

Part 2 reviews the Fashion Watch Revolution led by Swatch, Fossil and Guess that dramatically altered the trajectory of the Quartz Revolution. It halted the Japanese advance by shifting the focus from inside to out, from new technology to a new watch aesthetic. By redefining what watches looked like and how they were marketed, it created a multi-billion-dollar watch category.

The mechanical watch counter-revolution of the 1990s (Part 3) marks one of the unlikeliest comebacks in the annals of technology. As the Hodinkee community knows well, Swiss ingenuity in classical watchmaking, micro-mechanical miniaturization, and brand marketing turned the mechanical watch’s essential obsolescence into a virtue. The tick-tock became a cult object, a collectible, and a luxury item. It restored the fortunes of the previously embattled Swiss watch industry, making it the unrivaled master of the market for watches above $1,000.

It is too soon to assess the impact of the Smartwatch Revolution now underway and led by Apple (Part 4), but it could be profound. Its roots go back to the science-fiction fantasy of the Dick Tracy watch and the multi-function reality of digital watches like the Seiko TV Watch of 1982. Since then, assorted wrist computers have appeared at regular intervals. With the Apple Watch, the trend has gained unprecedented traction. Now what?    

The last article in the series will focus on a fascinating chapter of the Quartz Watch Revolution that has, to a great extent, been overlooked: the role of American semiconductor companies. Over the decades, the battle has come to be seen as a quartz vs. mechanical, Japan vs. Switzerland clash. What’s been lost is the digital vs. analog aspect of the fight. The first great wave of quartz watches came mostly from outside the traditional watch industry. These were solid-state (i.e. having no moving parts) digital watches made by American electronics companies like Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard and dozens more. They were the most radical of the quartz revolutionaries: they were out to eliminate not just mechanical watches, but all analog watches. Their early success raised great hopes for a revival of American watchmaking. It didn’t happen. We’ll examine why.

For me, these revolutions provide a framework to help understand, evaluate and appreciate what goes on in today’s wide, wonderful, sometimes whacky watch world. Look for the first installment of this series early next week.

“I’m 75 years old, and how the hell that happened, I have no idea,” David Thompson tells me. It’s an ironic statement from a man whose job is repairing clocks, so concerned with the precise marking of time. “I don’t wear a watch. I usually don’t care what time it is, but for some reason I love clocks.” Thompson is not your garden variety horologist, however. His specialty is Chelsea ship’s clocks, particularly those that still tick in the pilothouses and engine rooms of the giant freighters that ply the waters of North America’s Great Lakes. And though Thompson came to this career only five years ago, it’s as if he’s been preparing for this second act his whole life.

Thompson grew up on the water, around boats. As a child, he lived in Kingston, Ontario, where he snapped photos of ships entering Lake Ontario from the St. Lawrence River. As a teenager, he joined the Sea Cadets, helped build a sailing brigantine, and hitched rides on military landing ships built in the local shipyard when they were delivered upriver to the port of Montreal. In the early 1970s, he moved to Door County, Wisconsin, where Bay Shipbuilding was constructing the first of the Great Lakes’ 1,000-foot “superlakers." During the winter of 1978, Thompson took a job painting one of them, standing on the ice of the frozen shipyard with a 20-foot extension pole, rolling hundreds of gallons of paint on the mountainous hull of U.S. Steel’s new iron boat Edwin H. Gott.

His lifetime of experience around ships eventually led to work as a shipkeeper at Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, a small nautical town on Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula. When the busy shipping season is choked off by winter ice, the boats “lay up,” and are idled for a few months at docks and shipyards. Their permanent crews scatter home. During this seasonal lull, shipowners perform refitting work on propulsion and deck machinery, hulls are inspected in drydock, and general maintenance is performed from stem to stern.

As a shipkeeper, and later as “port captain,” Thompson became the de facto skipper of as many as five lake boats, (including the Arthur M. Anderson, the vessel that followed the doomed Edmund Fitzgerald across Lake Superior on the fateful November night when the Fitz sank) while they were laid up for the winter, responsible for everything from plumbing emergencies to overseeing drydockings. His duties also included servicing the fleet’s ship’s clocks, when they required annual maintenance or repair. Thompson, a nautical enthusiast of the first magnitude quickly picked up on the storied history of Chelsea ship’s clocks, and developed a keen interest in this particular task on the winter work list.

“Whenever a boat would come in, I’d go to the captain and find out how many clocks he had, how many needed repair, and take them to a local jeweler in Sturgeon Bay to get them fixed,” Thompson recalls. During his first season, Thompson discovered that if the clocks were sent to the fleet office for repair, they often wouldn’t return, ending their timekeeping careers as gifts to retiring executives. It just so happened that Draeb Jewelers in Sturgeon Bay, a family business that had been around since 1910, specialized in clock repair. Draeb became Thompson’s expert resource for maintaining the dozens of clocks that came into port for the winter.

Much has changed on the inland seas during the past 30 years, and the U.S. fleet has withered to a shadow of its former glory days in the 1950s and '60s. Back then, demand for the raw ingredients of integrated steelmaking kept hundreds of ships sailing the length and breadth of the system, from the Iron Range at the head of Lake Superior, to the mills around Chicago and Detroit, while grain flowed to Europe through Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Shipbuilding was booming and the boats got bigger every generation. Larger ships, the influx of cheap foreign steel beginning in the 1960s, and steadily increasing competition from land-based shipping modes have decimated the industry. Nowadays you’re lucky to catch sight of a single laker loading cargo at the ore docks of Duluth or Marquette. Ships also don’t navigate using marine chronometers anymore; these have been long since replaced by LORAN-C (radio beacon navigation) and then GPS. The ship’s four-hour watch rotations no longer need to be chimed on and off by Chelsea clocks, yet the anachronistic timepieces remain aboard as a matter of tradition, with as many as five or six clocks per laker.

In most respects, freshwater navigation has modernized dramatically, but lake sailors hold on to a few of their traditions, which is why these mechanical clocks remain onboard when phones, digital quartz clocks and computerized navigation equipment all tell the time and automate equipment, practically speaking. Synchronized Chelsea clocks remain aboard many lakeboats at the engine room control station, in the pilothouse, the galley, the captain’s and first mate’s quarters, and often in the boat’s guest lounge and dining room. Due to the benign influence of freshwater and ice-enforced annual winter maintenance periods, many of the vessels trading on the Great Lakes were built decades ago (one venerable laker cut down in 2013 was launched in 1906) and many boats still retain their original ship’s clocks. These clocks have eight-day mechanical movements, wound once a week and are set to chime the four-hour intervals that signaled the change of watch. Today, the clocks are largely ornamental, yet perfectly functional for time-telling – legible at a glance, and rugged enough to tolerate the temperature extremes, dust, moisture and vibration of an engine room or pilothouse.

The Chelsea Clock Company was established, fittingly, near the nautical birthplace of America itself—Boston Harbor – and traces its origins to the late 1800s. By the early 20th century, the U.S. government was ordering its clocks for use in naval vessels. Admiral Byrd used Chelsea clocks on his famous 1936 South Pole expedition, and thousands were built for warships in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of World War II. There’s a Chelsea on the mantel in the White House, and various clocks have been given as gifts to dignitaries and heads of state. For all the talk of “American made,” particularly among horological circles, Chelsea is often overlooked and that’s a shame. In many respects, this homegrown company timed the “American Century.”

Chelsea’s biggest claim to fame was its invention of the “ship’s bell” mechanism. Ships at sea follow a traditional workday routine, divided up into six four-hour periods known as “watches.” Prior to 1900, a “watch officer” would ring a bell in a sequence that indicated to the crew which watch was due up without even looking at the time. Chelsea’s groundbreaking invention incorporated the ship’s bell into a clock which, provided it was regularly wound up, would perform the same function. With all the clocks on a ship synchronized, the watch would be chimed for all to hear.

Chelseas are rugged clocks, beautiful in their utilitarian nature, and though the company now builds and sells quartz versions, their mechanical designs have remained largely the same for over a century. Most of the clocks that David Thompson repairs were put to work in the 1950s and '60s. When he collects them for service, work orders can involve a broken mainspring, a shattered faceplate, or perhaps a movement that has fallen out of tolerance due to the rough conditions in which it operates. Thompson now fixes all of them from his workbench at Draeb Jewelers. After he retired from his duties as port captain at the Bay Shipbuilding Company five years ago, at age 70, Draeb offered him a job, and he trained under owner George Draeb as, what he calls, a “HITman” – Horologist In Training.

“Maybe at 70, I finally found what I wanted to do when I grow up,” Thompson told me. “I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert at repairing Chelsea clocks, though I do it all the time,” he says, with typical Midwestern modesty. And so, despite lacking formal horology training, and at an age when most people will take their gold watch and pension and shuffle off to their garden, David Thompson has found another career, one that ties his two loves – the water and timekeeping.

After years of being around, and tinkering with, Chelsea clocks, Thompson finally managed to add one to his own collection. He always found them a bit pricey to buy for himself, but one day he spied a Chelsea set off to the side, aboard an oreboat that had laid up at the yard. He inquired after it and the captain told him it didn’t work, even after previous repair attempts. If Thompson wanted it, it was his. After countless hours of troubleshooting, he managed to resuscitate it, and it now hangs proudly in his Door County home. 

“It’s kind of a nautical thing, I guess,” he says. “You really want a good clock.”

Photos: Christopher Winters

On my first official day here at HODINKEE, I walked into the office to find a surprise waiting for me. After I had a chance to settle in at my desk, Stephen handed me an unexpected treat: a watch that I had wanted to get on my wrist ever since it was announced in late 2016. He then asked me to wear it for seven consecutive days and deliver my impressions for one of my first HODINKEE articles. How could I say no? A few weeks later, here is A Week on the Wrist with the TAG Heuer Autavia 2017 – officially known as the Heuer Heritage Caliber Heuer 02.

There were qualities about the new Autavia that piqued my interest from the very beginning and kept bringing me back to it – the unusual process that went into its development (more on that later), the earnest approach to honoring a classic design and doing so thoughtfully, and the use of one of the great new affordable in-house chronograph calibers out there, to name just a few.  

As I set out wearing this Autavia, it occurred to me that I’d written about it—as well as its equally interesting genesis—three times already, for different publications and in different contexts. Generally speaking, I tend to serially editorialize just the watches that I’d consider buying myself. That in mind, I can't think of a better way to kick off my new role here than sharing my thoughts on the new Autavia after spending some serious quality time with it.

Here goes.

How This Watch Came To Be

The launch of the tribute watch we have here coincides with the 55th anniversary of the first Heuer Autavia wristwatch, released in 1962. The oh-so-popular and collectible sports watch was designed, as its name suggests, with both aviators and motorists in mind – the name is a contraction of "Auto" and "Avia." The name Autavia appeared much earlier than 1962, however – but on dashboard clocks instead of wristwatches. These made their first appearances in 1933 and they could be fitted either into a plane’s cockpit or a car's dash. 

Vintage Autavias are among the most sought-after Heuers, with prices soaring in recent years. Generally speaking, they wear like modern watches because of their chunkier size. As a point of reference, the Heuer Autavia Ref. 2446 Mark 3 was a 39 mm timepiece, just a hair smaller than a modern Rolex Daytona. And while the Monaco is the most stylishly avant garde, coming in a square case made iconic by Steve McQueen, and the Carrera is the prototypical round racing watch that is still TAG Heuer’s number one bestseller, the Autavia precedes them both and is finally getting the recognition it has deserved all along.

The Biver Effect

Following last year’s successful revival of the Monza, TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver turned his sights to another watch that was ripe for revival. But he did so with an unexpected twist that was itself aimed at drawing attention to the watch before its design had even been decided. 

He decided to pit 16 vintage Heuers against one another in head-to-head competitions in which collectors would vote them up or down online. The competition was called the Autavia Cup and it was formally announced at Baselworld 2016. After each round, there would be winners and losers, with the former advancing to the next round. Then, just a few weeks later, there would be one Autavia crowned king, and it would serve as the inspiration for the new generation Autavia, to premiere less than a year later.

Over the course of the competition, more than 50,000 votes were cast, reflecting a very enthusiastic engagement from Heuer fans around the world. And from those votes, we got our winner: the 1966 Autavia Ref. 2446 Mark 3, a watch that sold for $119.50 at its debut. 

As our friend Jeff Stein of OnTheDash told HODINKEE earlier this year, he helped TAG Heuer arrange the bracket in such a way that none of the heavyweight favorites would knock each other out in the early rounds, making for a more compelling competition the entire way through. The differences were all in the details, and the Autavia Cup itself helped ignite interest in the history of this important model.

I can’t think of another example of a major watch brand crowd-sourcing a major watch launch like this. If you can, drop me a note in the comments, please.

Understanding The Rise Of Vintage Heuer

There are now early Heuer Autavias selling for more than $200,000. That is a staggering amount for a watch that was long overshadowed and, until this year, not even in the current production lineup. It's really difficult to overstate just how meteoric the rise of the Autavia has been in the vintage market.

In December, a first-generation Heuer Autavia achieved a $125,000 hammer price at Christie’s New York, becoming the first-ever six-figure Autavia at auction. In a story on HODINKEE, Ben openly wondered if the tables might actually be turning for the Autavia, long the less pricey alternative to the Rolex Daytona, and the less beloved cousin of the Carrera.

Earlier last year, Phillips sold an example of the 2446 Mark Three Jochen Rindt for more than $76,000. Keep in mind, this is a watch that originally sold for $119.50 back in the 1960s. There's enough evidence at this point to reasonably conclude that these results are not one-off aberrations, though not all Autavias were created equal, and the surge in prices is most acutely felt in very specific references.

“The values of 1960s Autavias have exploded in recent years, while the Autavias from the 1970s and 1980s have been strong, but not nearly as exceptional,” says Jeff Stein, founder of OnTheDash, a leading resource for collectible Heuer watches. “I believe that the traditional chronographs from the 1960s, with the classic Valjoux 79/92 movements will always have an advantage over the the C-shaped cases from the 1970s and '80s, with their fatter, cam-actuated movements." 

But even here, there are a few notable exceptions to the rule, as Stein says that the Chronomatics, “Orange Boys,” “Exotics,” and GMTs all have achieved high prices in the vintage Heuer marketplace and will continue to do so.

Geoff Hess, another Heuer expert with a reputation for also collecting the best in vintage Rolex, attributes the surge in popularity of vintage Heuer to what he calls "a perfect storm of factors." Vintage watches are more popular now than at any other time. Heuer is celebrating its own history with well-made tribute pieces like the Autavia 2017; a large community of collectors has grown up around Heuer; and of course, with its associations with racing and film legends Mario Andretti, Jo Siffert, and Steve McQueen, vintage Heuer sport watches have achieved a level of coolness bested only by Rolex, which has become expensive enough to price out many collectors.

So where should you look for value, assuming you don’t have six figures to throw down on the best Autavias? Fortunately there are still plenty of opportunities to get great vintage Heuer watches at a  reasonable price, especially, as Stein says, if you’re willing to look at smaller watches from the '40s and '50s.

Now let's get back to the new guy.

The Autavia 2017

While a watch is of course more than the sum of its parts, let's break the Autavia 2017 down and get a sense of its strengths and weaknesses. I'll say right off the bat that this watch's main strengths are its dial and its movement, and that while its large case is going to be a deal breaker for some of you, I don't think that it should be. In general, I'm a "just buy the bracelet version" kind of guy, and with this watch I'm willing to double down on that sentiment.

The Case

When you birth a modern sports watch from a 1960s design, lots of things will, by necessity, change. Generally speaking, in terms of performance, you can expect a whole lot more from the watch as a result of these cumulative changes. With the Autavia 2017, the most conspicuous difference from the Ref. 2446 Mark 3 is the watch’s dimensions. The Autavia 2017 is 42mm in diameter, compared to 39mm for the original. It sits high on the wrist (nearly 16 mm thick, not svelte by any stretch), putting this new Autavia in a size range that is definitely going to irk some of the purists out there. But with this concession to girth come modern enhancements that make it a wearable everyday watch for lots of situations in which one wouldn’t dare put any vintage watch, especially a rare and collectible one.

Most obviously there is the water resistance to 100 meters – not too shabby for a chronograph that was originally designed for the race track. During my weeklong test-drive, I took this new specification to heart and used the Autavia 2017 to time a whitewater rafting adventure on the Saint Lawrence River rapids near Montreal. The watch and I were completely drenched by the end of the day, with cascading waves of rapids battering down on the Autavia strapped to my wrist. To be honest, I had second thoughts about bringing this loaner into such a punishing environment – it was only my first test drive for HODINKEE, after all – but it stood up to the battering and kept the water out just fine. 

The Autavia case has a pretty standard three-part construction with a screw-in sapphire crystal caseback, offering a view of the Heuer 02 movement inside. The case middle’s sloping lugs look like they might just hug the wrist nicely, but they never really get a chance to offer any ergonomic benefit due to the protrusion of the caseback. Nonetheless, the package itself is well designed. Those lugs are nicely beveled along their edges too. This bit of finishing on the case is something we almost take for granted in modern timepieces positioned at a certain price point, but it’s hardly a common feature in vintage watches.

The Bracelet

For the majority of my review time with this watch, it was affixed to my wrist by an Aged Hunter Green leather strap from the HODINKEE Shop. I found the textured green nubuck a more-than-fitting companion for the black dialed Autavia, but I knew toward the end of the review period that I wanted to experience this watch on its supplied bracelet. (The only reason I did not do the entire test drive on the bracelet was that I was traveling and did not have the correct tool for subtracting links.) This bracelet, it should be noted, is special: a modern TAG Heuer-supplied tribute to the fantastic Gay Frères beads-of-rice bracelet that shipped with the original 2446 Mark 3. These old Gay Frères beauties have all of the suppleness and comfort of Milanese mesh, with the strength and form factor of a more conventional stainless steel construction. 

For my last few days with the watch, I managed to switch over to the TAG Heuer-supplied beads-of-rice bracelet, which doesn’t quite hit the mark of the original from Gay Frères. But, to be honest, who would really expect it to? The new one from TAG Heuer is certainly comfortable enough when compared to modern bracelets supplied with similarly priced watches. It doesn’t tug at arm hairs or pinch your skin (these are the concerns I had when looking at it). It rounds out the look of this watch pretty well, and when you consider that the new Autavia is both larger and heavier than the 2446 Mark 3, it only makes sense that there should be more heft and sturdiness to this bracelet. For only a $150 premium over the supplied leather strap, it just makes good plain sense to go for the bracelet when buying the Autavia 2017.  

The Dial

The dial is a well composed copy of the original panda-style layout. There are a few tiny differences, of course, but on the whole this is a nicely executed homage, starting with a pretty much perfect copy of the 2446 Mark 3 font on the sub-dials. Similarly, because this watch is part of the Heuer Heritage line, the word TAG is absent from the dial. And the transfer of Autavia printed right over the Heuer logo inscribed in a pentagon was handled deftly. Whereas the lowest sub-dial in Ref. 2446 Mark 3 had no date window and the word Swiss printed in black against a white backdrop, this year’s Autavia does have a date, and the words "Heuer 02" printed in its place. Just below the date window, off of the white register and taking up a small portion of the chronograph seconds scale, the word “Swiss” is printed. Would a young Jack Heuer, fresh from his engineering training and famously obsessed with the legibility of displays and markers, have allowed a conceit such as a disruption of the chronograph scale? My inclination is to say that he would not, but this is a quibbling detail about a design that is otherwise quite nice.

You’ll notice right off the bat the the hours totalizer and the running seconds sub-dial have exchanged places too, a modification necessitated by the new Heuer 02 automatic chronograph movement at the heart of the Autavia 2017. 

The Movement

The original Autavia 2446 Mark 3 came with the hand-wound chronograph caliber Valjoux 72, and as we’ve already discussed, that movement made for a completely different form factor in the finished watch. While some of the purists out there – perhaps most of the purists out there – are going to wish that the Autavia 2017 also came with a manually-wound chronograph caliber and a thinner case, the fact is that we are dealing with the realities of the modern watch industry. As much as HODINKEE readers are going to want a thinner timepiece and a sub-40mm diameter, the majority of watch consumers, and therefore the people who manufacture and market watches at popular price points, have tastes and objectives that are not always closely aligned with that of the enthusiast. But setting all of that aside for just a moment, if we may, there is so much to be excited about in the Heuer 02.

If you’ve followed TAG Heuer over the last five to 10 years, then chances are you remember the Caliber 1969 launch in late 2013. Caliber 1969 was an in-house column wheel chronograph with vertical clutch that was entirely developed and created in-house at TAG Heuer. (This movement was subsequently re-named Caliber CH80, a nod to its 80-hour power reserve.) The announcement of the movement even came along with a brand-new state-of-the-art manufacturing center in which it was to be made. But just as the movement was about to go into production, news came from La Chaux-de-Fonds that the project would be placed on indefinite hold. Some industry pundits even questioned the wisdom of adding yet another in-house chronograph movement to a stable that already included the more than serviceable Caliber 1887. TAG Heuer had been on a dizzying upmarket trajectory during a time saw a company, long associated with volume and aspirational quartz and ETA-based watches, producing limited, expensive, and experimental chronographs, the most exotic even featuring an escapement that replaced the balance spring with magnets. 

What we know now is that upon taking the reins at TAG Heuer, Jean-Claude Biver wanted to pause the project and determine where, strategically, the movement would fit into TAG Heuer’s future plans. 

This is a great movement that Ben wrote about about way back when it launched under its original name. The finishing is more than decent, even if it’s performed almost entirely by machine. And its performance, as well as the action of the pushers, exceeds what I’ve come to expect from chronographs in this price range.

On The Wrist

So now that you know what I think about the case, with its perhaps too-large size; the movement, with its automatic winding and modern chronograph construction; the bracelet, with its relative heft and stiffness compared to a mid-sixties classic; and the dial, with its fine design that is nonetheless disrupted by an added date window and some additional text – what do I think overall? 

I very much enjoyed wearing this watch, and it made me smile whenever I paused to look at it. If you want a vintage Autavia, you should probably get just that, but don’t expect anything like the performance or reliability of a modern timepiece. Maybe the most telling thing about this watch is that it has the year 2017 in its name, because despite the vintage looks, this is very much a modern watch.

I didn't hold back when wearing this watch – taking it, as I already mentioned, on a punishing rafting trip that left both me and it completely drenched. It stood up to the test without giving me any reason for complaint. The quality of the case and bracelet is definitely there to justify the price. 

Out of curiosity, I asked to see a friend's earlier Autavia Heritage reissue – the 2003 "Jo Siffert" – for the sake of comparison. To be fair, there has been enough variability within the Autavia range to make apples to apples comparisons difficult – the Siffert was cushion shaped, for example, and Ref. 2446 Mark 3 is round. But my expectations were confirmed. Not only is the chronograph movement in the Autavia 2017 a great leap forward from the ETA that equipped the Siffert reissue, but the case, dial and bracelet are too.

I mention this because these qualitative improvements make for a vastly more enjoyable wearing experience than I was expecting, as much as I already liked the look of this watch. So while the Heuer 01 Chronograph, with its Big-Bang-esque aesthetics, and the Connected, with its march into smart-watch territory, may be the product releases that get the most commercial attention in TAG's Biver era, the Heritage Line is definitely getting better and better. If you don't believe me, just take another look at the Monza from last year. The fit and finish on these watches is excellent for the price, and I can't think of many watch lovers who wouldn't get at least some enjoyment from wearing them.

The Competition

What's the Autavia 2017's competition?  If we're talking about affordably priced chronographs of some quality, then you may also want to have a look at Tudor's recently launched Black Bay Chronograph. While this particular watch does not have an in-house movement (Tudor sources it from Breitling, in exchange for allowing Breitling access to Tudor's own in-house time-only movement), it does have an escapement and silicon balance spring made in house by Tudor/Rolex. Staying within the LVMH Watch Division, you can get into a vintage-inspired Zenith El Primero while staying under $7,000. And of course, the Omega Speedmaster Professional more than delivers on vintage looks while keeping you right in the $5,000 range.

Another in-house chronograph you may not be aware of is the new one from Frederique Constant, which debuted in Basel this year. The Frederique Constant Flyback Chronograph Manufacture can be had for under $5,000, and as the name says, it's a flyback chrono. If you're willing to extend your budget up to $8,000, then check out the Master Control Chronograph from Jaeger-LeCoultre. This is a great looking watch from a product family that several of us HODINKEE staffers fell in love with at SIHH. 

But I have to say, especially when you take price into account, the Autavia 2017 is really, really tough to beat.

Final Thoughts

If I were to go forward with this purchase – and on reflection, I very well might – I would go for the bracelet version, even taking into account the above-mentioned limitations. As imperfect as this bracelet may be, it’s a more than justifiable $150 upgrade to $5,300 from the strap-equipped version’s $5,150 price. 

The Autavia 2017 is a special watch indeed, and following on the heels of the Monza of a year before, it adds further proof that the desire to make excellent Heritage models at TAG Heuer is alive and well in the Biver era. The fact that one can have an in-house chronograph with vertical clutch – from a major Swiss brand, no less – for just north of $5,000 is in itself a heartening reminder that there are still pockets of value to be found and enjoyed in contemporary watchmaking. 

For more, check out the Heuer Heritage Caliber Heuer 02/Autavia 2017 at tagheuer.com.

The Horological Society of New York's award-winning classes are on the road again! Classes will be held in San Francisco on October 21 and 22. One week later, October 28 and 29, HSNY will head home and offer its weekend classes in New York for the first time. Then, on November 11 and 12, HSNY will offer a weekend of courses in Miami, hosted by F.P. Journe. Traditionally, HSNY's New York classes have been a series of evening sessions, but now with the weekend classes available, students in New York can choose between an intensive half-day class and a series of evening classes.

At HSNY's Horological Education classes, students discover what actually makes a watch tick. The hands-on classes are taught by HSNY's staff of professional watchmakers. Students work on a mechanical watch movement, studying the gear train, winding and setting mechanisms, and escapement. The weekend half-day classes cover everything taught during the individual evening classes held in New York.

Enrollment is now open for the San Francisco, New York, and Miami classes, and we look forward to seeing you there!

HODINKEE is a sponsor of the Horological Society of New York.

Well, Audemars Piguet has done it again. Today I introduce to you the Royal Oak Frosted Gold in 41mm. If you are anything like me, I know you have been dreaming of this since my last Hands On with the 33mm and 37mm Royal Oak Frosted Gold in rose and white gold. Well, now the iconic manufacture has released a limited edition version of this sparkly number in 41mm for those of you looking for size and sizzle. 

The Royal Oak Frosted Gold was originally introduced at SIHH 2017. It is produced by a hammering technique utilized by Florentine jeweler, Carolina Bucci, that "frosts" the gold prior to assembly; the technique involves striking the gold surface repeatedly with a diamond-tipped tool, which leaves faceted impressions on the surface. It debuted in white and rose gold, in 33m and 37mm sized cases, with a quartz movement and the automatic caliber 3120, respectively. In addition to the smaller versions, we saw one larger version on the wrist of Audemars Piguet's CEO, Francois-Henry Bennahmias, which was clearly a prototype. 

Now the 41mm version can be yours. It comes in white gold only, and has a blue tapisserie dial. It's powered by the automatic caliber 3120 movement (same as the 37mm version). It is a limited edition with 200 pieces, so if you're feeling fancy, you had better act fast. This model is priced at $55,000; check out the Frosted Gold models, as well as a video from AP showing the actual process and case and bracelet assembly, at audemarspiguet.com.

Anyone who has visited more than one watch factory knows that they almost all share a number of things in common. There are the large industrial floors with the bays of CNC machines. There are the open clean rooms filled with white-coated watchmakers with their elbows perched on their benches. And there is some kind of inner sanctum, where a handful of craftspeople furtively create the best things to bear a given brand's name. But each manufacture has a few special things about it too – the things that give that maker its unique flavor and feel. Those are the things that make each visit worthwhile and exciting.  

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to visit Montblanc's two manufactures, the main watchmaking headquarters in Le Locle and the old Minerva facility in Villeret. Anyone who is still skeptical about Montblanc's status as a real world-class watchmaker should take note – there is some really serious watchmaking happening at both manufactures. The former is producing quality watches at relatively large scale and doing so while thoroughly testing everything along the way, while the latter is making chronographs and other complications the old-fashioned way with beautiful movements and excellent finishing.

Instead of giving you the usual step-by-step walkthrough, I thought I'd share six of the coolest things I saw inside Montblanc. These range from watchmaking skill to vintage ephemera to details that happened to catch my eye. Without further ado, here we go.

1. A Real Design Department

A lot of watch design is terrible these days. I'm sure you didn't need me to tell you that, but there it is. This is a result of too many brands not hiring actual designers and instead designing watches by committee to satisfy consumer profiles and other such marketing mumbo jumbo. Montblanc hasn't done that at all. Led by Davide Cerrato, a designer himself and head of all watchmaking for Montblanc, the company's watches feel thoughtfully designed and I got to see how and why first-hand.

There is a small, but focused design department at Montblanc which works just a few steps away from prototyping labs, quality control, and actual watchmakers, meaning they have all the resources to do actual hands-on design work, refining things step by step. Attention is paid to all the details and it's clear from speaking with the design team that they are just as obsessed with things like the curvature of an applied "2" marker and the proportion of one hand to another as you would hope. Everything from cases to hands to dials are all prototyped using 3-D printing (more on that in a bit) and actual movements, and nothing makes it to the production team until it's all been proven to work properly.

Now, before you blast me for my naiveté, I know the documents I photographed here are the press-friendly versions kept in drawers and plastic sleeves for visits just like mine, but I caught some glimpses of screens and notebooks and had more than a few candid conversations, and I can assure you the design department isn't just for show. Trust me.

2. A Trove Of Vintage Minerva Enamel Dials

This might sound familiar, and for good reason – I told you all about this incredible find back in April, right after I got back from my visit. When I first found this cabinet (which you can see below), I didn't quite believe it. Sure, most modern watch brands have archives and stocks of components in their service departments, but this is something completely different. This is thousands of unused components, mostly stunning enamel dials, and the tools used to produce them. It's almost like a compact little museum, and I honestly could have spent all day rifling through the drawers, matching dials to plates and caliber components to vintage references. If you're a watch nerd worth your loupe, you know exactly what I'm talking about here.

3. The Making Of A Villeret ExoTourbillon Bridge

At the Minerva manufacture in Villeret, there is very little that isn't done by hand (even relative to other high-end workshops). On the day I visited, one craftsman in the complications workshop happened to be working on a bridge for one of Montblanc's Villeret ExoTourbillons, the brand's most complicated watches. The unique bridge has a sort of twisted-wire shape to it that gives it a lot of dynamism and visual tension. Each starts as a fairly ridged blank that comes off a CNC machine and looks nothing like the final product. To take the rounded, swooping shape, excess metal is filed away using wooden sticks from a local tree. A single bridge takes two weeks to make, and a single slip means starting over from square one. To me, the results are more than worth the effort:

4. Hairspring Manufacturing

If you look at the ExoTourbillon above, you'll notice something about the hairspring: it's cylindrical. It's also made in-house in Villeret by Montblanc. Very, very few brands make their own hairsprings, even those at the very top. It's an extremely specialized craft and the materials science know-how needed to yield usable results is daunting to say the least. That's also one of the reasons I have so few pictures for you here. I was basically told to leave my camera at the door of this workshop.

However, what I do have for you is a shot of the above machine, which is used to take the raw wire (of an alloy whose composition is closely guarded) and make it the right thickness for various types of hairsprings (again, the diameters of which are top secret). The wire is passed back and forth between the spools, going through circular compression tubes in between. Each pass stretches the wire about 15% and thins it in the process. The wire you see here started at .6mm and will eventually become thinner than a human hair after multiple trips through the machine. From here it is cut and shaped into the final springs (if I'd even asked to shoot photos of that, I likely wouldn't be here to share the tale with you today).

5. Tons Of Vintage Tools And Machines

Old machines are part and parcel of the watch factory tour experience. Nearly every manufacture has some late nineteenth or early twentieth century contraption that hasn't been made in decades that they need for some archaic process so as to not make their watches charmless and overly modern. Or something. What impressed me at Villeret however was just how complete the sets of machines are and how well Montblanc has preserved even those that are no longer in use.

What you see here are heavy presses that were once used to stamp out bridges and plates in the pre-CNC days. Each of the dies is for a single component. One would be rigged to the press, and then sheets of metal or blanks would be passed through as the machine stamped out raw movement parts. Look at the shelf on the lower right and you can see how Montblanc still has the dies arranged by caliber. It certainly wouldn't be ideal, but in theory Montblanc could actual make a number of Minerva calibers from these vintage tools should the array of CNC machines go down. Fingers crossed we never find out if that would work in reality.

6. A 3D-Printed Minerva Caliber

Last, but certainly not least, is this. A 3D-printed Minerva chronograph caliber that I found sitting on a table in the Montblanc design department. I mentioned earlier that all prototyping is done with actual movements, but that's only partially true – Minerva movements are too precious and too hard to come by to have a few sitting around for case tolerance and fitting tests. Instead, the team uses these 3D-printed calibers, which are accurate to a remarkable degree (notice the thin polymer springs on this example) and serve the same purpose.

For more, visit Montblanc online.

The Cartier Tank has existed in a truly bewildering range of variations and sub-variations over the years since it was first introduced in 1917, and yet surprisingly enough almost none of those variants make use of skeletonized, or openworked, movements. Cartier certainly has sold an enormous number of openworked pocket and wristwatches over the years, but it was not until the introduction of the Cartier Tank MC Skeleton in 2013 that an openworked Tank appeared. The MC was followed by the Tank LC Sapphire Skeleton in 2014, which was widely critically praised and generally regarded as a very successful outing ( it was joined that year by a skeletonized version of the iconic Crash, which likewise became a critic's darling though of course, that model isn't a Tank). For the 100th anniversary of the Tank, quite a few new models have been introduced, and for the occasion we have the very first ever, skeletonized version of the Tank Cintrée, an early variant of the Tank that was first sold by Cartier all the way back in 1921.

The Tank Cintrée has appeared in several different variations over the years, but its very dramatically elongated case ("cintrée" means bent, or curved) has never before held an openworked caliber, and the reason why is probably that in order to get a pleasing effect, you really do need a rectangular movement that fits the case well, and which follows the curvature of the case. In earlier models you would have probably found either a round movement or a standard-issue rectangular or tonneau movement drawn from a movement supplier's existing inventory; such an extreme movement shape would not have been part of any movement supplier's standard catalogue and would have been expensive to produce for a single watch – maybe prohibitively so. However, the new Tank Cintrée Skeleton has a movement specifically intended for the purpose, with much more satisfying results than would have been possible with a supplied caliber.

In the original versions of the Cintrée from the 1920s there were several different movement diameters used, which corresponded to relatively longer or shorter models (across the longest case dimensions) with 7, 8, and 9 ligne movements (the ligne is a traditional watchmaking unit of measure; 1 ligne is equal to about 2.2558mm and the unit is still alive in modern watchmaking, as well as in, of all things, button and ribbon-making). The vintage Cintrée models had a very distinctive minutes track.

The minutes track is basically a modified rectangle and as you can see, the movement created for the openworked Cintrée – caliber 9917 MC – uses that minute track as the structural basis for the hand-wound movement.

Generally speaking Cartier does very nicely design-wise by their custom openworked movements (the skeletonized version of the Crash is one of the most flat-out seductive wristwatches I've ever seen) and the arrangement of the components in the Cintrée Skeleton is both logical and beautiful. Everything is held in place by the minute-track shaped upper bridge (visible through the back; remember that to a watchmaker the part of the movement visible through the back is the top) and lower plate, which also doubles as the dial. The mainspring barrel is the dominant upper element, with the motion works and hands in the center, and the balance held in place at 6:00. It's the same in-line construction you see in such movements as the Corum Golden Bridge and the JLC caliber 101; the integration of a dial element to the architecture of the movement is a trademark of Cartier's openworked modern watches (for instance, in the Tank MC Skeleton, the dial side movement plate is in the shape of four Roman numerals at the 12, 3, 6, and 9:00 positions.

The case is quite long across its longest dimensions – it's a 46.30mm x 23mm x 7.96mm watch, but thanks to the curvature of the case and movement it's quite wearable. As we mentioned in our initial coverage, the Cintrée Skeleton is going to be available in three versions – the pink gold model you see here; a platinum model; and a platinum and diamond model (100 of the pink gold and platinum watches, and 25 of the diamond-set model). Price for the pink gold version is $61,000, which is quite expensive but more or less in line with pricing for Cartier's other, more exclusive openworked Tank (the Sapphire Skeleton) and while a lot of factors go into setting a final price, it's probably reasonable to expect a premium for a single-model specific movement which is only going to be used in 250 watches.

As  you can see, despite the 46.30mm lug-tip-to-lug-tip distance, it makes a quite elegant presentation on the wrist and of course you get the added interest of wearing one of only three openworked Tanks that have ever been made over the last 100 years (it seems kind of surprising that this is the case but we've confirmed with Cartier). It would be an awful lot of fun to have this guy, the openworked Crash, and the Tank Sapphire Skeleton all in one's watch rotation – expensive, sure, but fun. 

For more, visit Cartier online.

Well, this was a pleasant surprise. Looking at last week's Style section of the New York Times, I stumbled upon a familiar face: that of friend and longtime HODINKEE contributor Jason Heaton. The always-humble writer and adventurer of course hadn't told any of us that he'd be featured and he did little self-promotion after the fact, so I'm stepping in here to do it for him: Go read this story right now!

As regular HODINKEE readers already know, Jason is the dive watch guru, bar none. He's been taking dive watches under the water for us for years, and has swam with everything from a Rado re-issue to a Richard Mille chronograph. Jason has also debunked common dive watch myths and even found a lost timekeeper on a shipwreck in the Indian Ocean. Like I said, this guy is no joke (or desk diver).

In his interview with Times reporter Alex Williams, Jason talks about why dive watches have become such a popular category in the market, the role that dive watches play (and played) for actual divers, and of course, his favorite little detail of all: the dreaded helium escape valve. The whole thing is informative, charming, and a must-read.

Check out the full interview with the New York Times here.