⌚ Watch Out

Some more unusual and unique analog watches, from microfluidics to my first Apple watch:

1)Top left: my first Omega, and aesthetically the most elegant to my eye, with a central co-axial titanium tourbillon. It’s the De Ville Tourbillon Master Chronometer, Serial Number 2

2)Top center: The Ressence Type 1 Slim HOD3 in titanium, one of 20 made. The entire face is flat and rotates while the flat sub-dials rotate as well, all driven by magnets from below and immersed in a refractive-matched fluid so it looks like a 2D sheet of paper. A series of bellows on the backside allow for temperature variation of the fluid without any bubbles. Better image of it below.

3)Top right: HYT Moon Runner Ghost, a crazy engineering marvel with fluidic time and a hand-painted moon sphere. Two immiscible fluids — one black and one glow-in-the-dark white — circulate through a glass capillary, driven by a pair of piston bellows on the backside. They meet at 2pm in this photo. One of the bellows incorporates thermal compensation to maintain the precision of the fluid boundary as temperatures fluctuate. The mechanism advances the liquid just 1.5 microns per minute before completing a full circuit of the dial every 12 hours and resetting (retrograde). Unlike prior HYT models, the Ghost is monochromatic with a beautiful moon. Painted entirely by hand under UV light over the course of a full day, it displays the current lunar phase through a central aperture. Built from titanium and carbon fiber, the watch is quite light. But it’s also large for those like me with a petite wrist. I bought it from Pharrell Williams, one of 15 made.

4)Middle left: A unique 1 of 1 from Mont Blanc, made of platinum in 2009 for a charity auction. A unique design element: the two chronograph discs rotate instead of the hands.

5)Center: A Mad Mad Watch from MB&F, this particular design was a unique variant never released to the public. Instead of putting the automatic self-winding rotor blades on the backside, they spin madly on top with any movement of the wrist. The time is indicated by a rotating circular band that runs the outer circumference of the watch.

6)Middle right: Breguet Marine Chronograph, the most functional of the batch, with easy-to-read hands in the traditional Breuget style. Founded in 1775, Breuget invented the self-winding watch and was a favorite of Marie Antoinette and Napoleon, who had four and brought them into battle.

7)Bottom left: Ulysse Nardin Blast Skeleton, Serial Number 2, a memory of a trip we took to New York’s Central Park.

8)Bottom center: This is a very silly watch. I witnessed a Jacob & Co. Astronomia sell in a charity auction for $1M and marveled at its unique design with tourbillon, watch face, rotating gemstone, and rotating sphere for seconds out at the ends of four separate shafts. And now, Facebook served me an ad for a similar-looking knockoff… costing just $499. How could anyone assemble a copy for so little? While this GEYA Planetary Flywheel Mechanical Watch has “mechanical” in the title, it’s a bit misleading. The tourbillon, seconds sphere and rotating gem are all mechanically driven like the expensive original, but the watch face on the left post is entirely disconnected. It is an electronic quartz watch hanging out there with a battery that’s impossible to replace! It’s wild how it looks so similar at a distance.

9)Bottom right: My first Apple watch! It was an employee recognition award from 1994, the year I worked there. The backside is engraved with “Golden Apple Club FY’94”