Extreme Watches

The adjective "extreme" makes me smile. It reminds me of the idiots in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle who seemed to have only two adjectives in their working vocabulary: "so extreme" and "so not extreme." When they inflicted some torment on the undeserving Harold and Kumar they would laugh and say, "That was so extreme!" And when Harold and Kumar got a little well-justified revenge, they indignantly exclaimed,"This is so not extreme!"

Still, I don't know how describe these watches, as a group, other than to call them extreme.

I've already blogged about 2 of these watches, the Hublot MP-05, which runs for 50 days on one wind-up and is made to resemble a Ferrari engine,

and the Urwerk Atomic Master Clock or AMC,

which I'm sure is a very nice watch to begin with, accurate, I would guess, to well within a second or two per 24 hours, but which comes with a suitcase-sized atomic clock which sets it to a far, far greater degree of accuracy.

Some hand-wind Swiss watches with a power reserve of a mere 2 or 3 days require some muscle power and determination to wind them. I had wondered just how difficult it was to wind up the 50-day Hublot -- hand-wind only, no automatic winding -- until I found out recently that "hand wind' is not an entirely accurate term to describe this watch, because it comes with an electric implement which resembles a small power drill. The part corresponding to the drill bit fits into a whole like the one which a 19th-century watch had, into which a key was fitted which one turned to wind the watch. In the case of the 50-day Hublot, one pulls the trigger on the drill-like machine, and it winds the watch. I wonder whether Hublot also offers a manual option for macho nut cases with things to prove, who are determined to wind it the hard way. And I wonder just exactly how hard that hard way would be and how well I would do it, because clearly, I have issues.

Is it just me, or does the suitcase atomic clock for the Urwerk AMC look exactly like a suitcase nuclear bomb in every movie which has one? Did Urwerk do that on purpose, the sly devils? Speaking of needing to prove things, do jet-setting Urwerk customers actually carry the suitcase atomic clock everywhere they go,  getting wrestled to the ground and interrogated in airports and downtowns all over the world until the police and security figure out that that it's an atomic CLOCK and not an atomic BOMB? 

And when the cops and security personnel figure out what the suitcase-sized thing is, do they laugh and high-five the extreme-watch owner, or are they quite annoyed? Or is it a mix of both?

After the last Formula 1 season, Hublot was replaced as Ferrari's official watch partner by Richard Mille. Check out one of Richard's watches:

If you said: Wowzer. Me likey! I'm surprised that Ferrari likes something so extreme -- that's exactly what I said. Word for word.

But wait! There's more! There's something out there which is too out there for me! I admire what this guy is doing, but frankly, I don't want it on my wrist because it would give me motion sickness. Behold, Crazy Hours by Franck Muller:

See where the 1 is on the dial? See how you have to skip the 6, 11, 4 and 9 to get from the 1 to the 2? And then how you have to skip the 7, 12, 5, 10 to get from the 2 to the 3? You getting dizzy and nauseous yet? The minute and second hands go around and around on this watch just like on a normal watch, but the hour hand skips. That's too much for me, I'm out!

There are a lot of watch snobs who hate Hublot, and who hate Richard Mille even more. But they don't hate Urwerk, maybe because of who the ancestors of the creators of Urwerk were. I don't know how they feel about Franck Muller.

I also don't know how I would like any of these brands if I saw them close up, picked them up and felt them in my hands and put them on my wrist. So far I've only seen photos and video, and by now I know that photos and video just aren't the same as being there. 

A lot of you may have seen video of Urwerk without realizing it: Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, wore an Urwerk in Spiderman: Homecoming. Not the AMC shown above. The UR-110.

"Is Quartz Finally Cool?"

That's a headline at Time & Tide, an Australian website devoted to watches. They're asking whether quartz watches are cool now. The answer is no. Time & Tide, for some reason, have jumped onto the quartz bandwagon with both feet, and all it's done is make Time & Tide less cool.

For decades, there have been only two kinds of cool watches with quartz in them: Casio G-Shocks, indestructible, mostly very cheap quartz watches, mostly with digital readouts, with various additional functions, timers, alarms, lights etc, on various models, popular with military commandos and action-adventure movie tough guys; and Grand Seiko Spring Drives, which, although each one has a piece of quartz in it, aren't really "quartz watches" in the usual sense. As the name implies, a Spring Drive is driven by a spring. The quartz is there to help it run more accurately. I don't understand how, but I still think it's really cool -- and definitely NOT a quartz watch. They cost four figures and up. The G-Shock, like most devices referred to as "quartz watches," is powered by a battery which needs to be replaced every now and then. No battery in the Spring Drive.

There are also no batteries in some electronic watches, such as those powered by light, which strikes me as being much cooler than the battery-driven option. Do they also each have a piece of quartz crystal inside, like the Grand Seiko Spring Drive, to make them more accurate? I'm not sure, which should give you some idea of the overall quality of this blog post. I think they do. In any case, in most devices referred to as "quartz watches," there are batteries which need to be replaced every couple of years or so, more often if unusual stress is put on the battery by constantly turning on a light in the dial or by heavy use of some other extra functions. Some G-Shocks are described as "solar." Does this mean they use light instead of batteries, or in addition to batteries? I don't know. Some G-Shocks can be had for as little as $30 or so, most for under $100, and a very few extra-fancy ones cost more than $1000.

Some people say that this is all very simple: quartz watches are better, they say, because the purpose of a watch is to tell time, and quartz watches are more accurate. These people are completely missing the point of watch ownership. We have accurate electronic timepieces in our laptops and phones, on the dashboards of our cars, in our TV's and radios and microwave ovens and so forth. We wear watches because we like them, not because we need them. It's been quite a while since anybody has actually needed a watch. Rather than actually using our watches to tell time, we use all of the above-mentioned electronic timepieces to measure how accurate our spring-driven watches are.

The brilliant watch manufacturer Urwerk recently underscored this point when they introduced a watch sold together with a suitcase-sized portable atomic clock which very, very accurately sets the time on the watch.

Combined price: over two and a half million dollars, mostly for the atomic clock, although it's a very, very nice spring-driven watch, as are all Urwerk watches. I wonder how many people get the joke.

SIHH 2018 is underway!

Here is the official website. SIHH -- the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie Genève, the International Salon of High Horology in Geneva, is one the 2 biggest watch shows in Switzerland, the other being Baselworld, which will happen in March. SIHH is smaller and snootier. The automobile industry has auto shows, the watch industry has watch shows. As far as I can tell, auto shows and watch shows are very similar, and if you'd been to one, the other would feel quite familiar. But don't quote me, because so far I've only actually been to auto shows.

My Facebook feed is full of reports from SIHH. It's all really overwhelming. I don't know much to tell you about it, because it's too much and I'm very new at this and I don't know how to process and evaluate the information. Also, I'm exhausted from setting up my new computer. The new purchase may prove to have been a total waste, besides being an emotionally shattering and exhausting experience. I wasn't able to import any downloads or bookmarks, as I wanted to, but I do have the same settings, which I didn't want to have anymore and which I don't know how to change. Also, the screen is smaller, which is bad, because I like large type. On the other hand, this new computer is touch-screen. How much difference will that make? I have no idea. I'll keep you posted if there's anything about touch-screen significant enough to mention.

Here is one of the watches unveiled today at SIHH, a piece by Urwerk which I like:

It's called the Black Platinum UR-210 Royal Hawk.

I may have a more detailed report about SIHH tomorrrow -- about SIHH, not from SIHH, like many horological publications -- and then again, I may not.

Horological means having to do with time and timepieces, but I think that these days it's mostly used to refer to watches and not clocks. Don't quote me on that, cause I'm not 100% sure. A few of the fanciest watchmakers also make clocks these days, and there may be some clocks at SIHH and Baselworld 2018. But again: don't quote me on that.

Batteries

Batteries are what I've been thinking about lately.

For one thing: the thing which will make solar power the answer to everything and the source of all the power we need, would be: if batteries got a lot better. And: batteries are getting a lot better, in large part because lots of people are very excited about not burning Earth to a crisp by continuing with fossil fuels. When it comes to large batteries: according to the Washington Post,

Less than a month after Tesla unveiled a new backup power system in South Australia, the world's largest lithium-ion battery is already being put to the test. And it appears to be far exceeding expectations: In the past three weeks alone, the Hornsdale Power Reserve has smoothed out at least two major energy outages, responding even more quickly than the coal-fired backups that were supposed to provide emergency power.

When it comes to somewhat smaller batteries than that: an individual home can combine rooftop solar with batteries to not only be impervious to grid blackouts, but also to help provide power to others during grid blackouts. Between the huge batteries like the one Tesla just installed in Australia, and the ones for individual homes, what we're talking about here is, eventually, and maybe quite soon, and end to grid blackouts. This makes me want solar even much more than I had. I think that imagining an end to blackouts might just make people in general want solar very much. So imagine that, and spread the word.

Speaking of grid blackouts, and smaller batteries than the ones which go with home rooftop solar: earlier today, while I was sitting before this PC, the power went out for about 2 seconds. The PC didn't know why it was now on battery power, and it told me that I might want to think about re-charging my battery because it was at 12%. I'd been worry about blackouts because I'd noticed that my battery was always at around 12%, plugged in and not charging, according to my desktop battery icon. I couldn't figure out why it never seemed to be higher than 12%. Anyhow, after that 2-second blackout, it occurred to me to see whether the problem was that the battery wasn't plugged in all the way. I fumbled around with it for a second, wasn't sure whether or not I pushed it in farther than it was, and now, whether I did anything to it or not, it's at 95% and charging.

Speaking of even smaller batteries: I noticed some pictures of Devon watches:

And I like the way they look. (Yes, my friend, that's a wristwatch.) So I researched them, and found, to my great disappointment, that they run on batteries. Not the kind of batteries which are in most battery-powered watches, which have to be replaced when they run down. The Devon batteries are rechargeable. But still, ewwwww.

That's right: I'm talking about batteries being a large part of our being able to refrain from wiping out our own species, but I still don't want one in my watch. Some watchmakers agree, and manage to combine the waycool styling with a movement that runs because you wind up a spring, manufacturers like Hublot:

and Urwerk:

But maybe I'll keep Devon in mind since their batteries are rechargeable, and since we might be just this far away from running the whole planet on renewable electricity, with the help of modern battery technology.

Does Devon make mechanical timepieces in addition to the battery-powered kind? The first FAQ on their website, and I quote: "How often should I charge my Devon watch?" does not make me hopeful about that. The website gives a list of authorized retailers, which in the US includes an online watch store in addition to some brick-and-mortar locations. The online store carries a whole lot of watch brands I've never heard of. One I had heard of is Shinola (made near where I live, hugely hyped, all-battery). And they don't carry Detroit Watch Company (made near where I live, relatively tiny company compared to Shinola, lots of really nice-looking mechanical watches.)

It seems that once again I've written an essay which was supposed to be about something else but ended up being mostly about mechanical watches. What can I say, I think they're really cool.

So support battery R&D, and just maybe we'll avoid that climate-change apocalypse. In conclusion, France is a land of many contrasts.