If You Are Going to Be Wrong, Be Wrong on the Safe Side: The Tudor Black Bay
A dive bezel turns in one direction only. The reason is not ease of manufacture. It is to guarantee that …
Awards
Reviews of watches honoured at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève and other awards.
So That No Air Remains Between: The Ressence Type 3
The space above the dial was filled with three point seven five millilitres of oil. Not for ornament: to remove …
The Arm That Lengthens as the Force Fails: The Romain Gauthier Logical One
As the mainspring weakens, the arm through which it acts grows longer. The product of the two stays the same. …
One Mechanism That Forgets and One That Remembers: The Lange 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar
Two seconds hands share one axis. While one keeps running the other is held still, then leaps back onto the …
However Hard You Push, the Same Answer: The Girard-Perregaux Constant Escapement
A silicon blade fourteen microns wide stands at the centre of the dial. Held buckled, it has two stable positions …
The Time That Falls Between Two Beats: The Lange Datograph Up/Down
The balance swings two and a half times a second, which divides the second into five. This watch refuses to …
The Machine That Writes the Hour in Liquid: The HYT H1
Inside a wristwatch a column of liquid advances. Where two fluids refuse to mix, a curve forms, and that curve …
The Watch That Distrusts Its Own Reading: The Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 2
A tourbillon was invented to average out the effect of gravity. This watch carries four cages: two inclined inner cages, …
If He Had Been Born a Century Earlier: The MB&F Legacy Machine N°1
Maximilian Büsser asked himself an odd question: what watch would I have made if I had been born in 1867 …
Five Ten-Thousandths of a Second: The TAG Heuer Mikrogirder
For three centuries every mechanical watch has carried a balance wheel and a hairspring at its heart. This one threw …
The Calendar You Need Not Fear: The H. Moser & Cie Endeavour Perpetual Calendar
The manual of almost every perpetual calendar carries a warning: do not touch the correctors between eight in the evening …
Beginning at Sixty-Three: The Laurent Ferrier Galet Micro-Rotor
Two friends who shared the same Porsche for twenty-four hours at Le Mans in 1979 founded a watch house thirty …
Force Reined In by a Chain: The A. Lange & Söhne Richard Lange Tourbillon "Pour le Mérite"
A mainspring is strong when wound and weak when spent, and that weakening spoils a watch’s rate. Rather than hide …
The Silent Journey: The Urwerk UR-110 Titanium
There is no hour hand on this watch. Three satellites take their turn, deliver the time along the right edge …
One Day in a Hundred and Twenty-Two Years: The De Bethune DB28
On the evening of 19 November 2011, Geneva gave this watch the highest prize of the year. What won it …