Editorial

There still is a strong desire for vintage-style on the watch market. Hence, there are hardly any brands that don’t offer heritage models in their collections. They meticulously follow design codes from the original models – colours, dials, straps are copied as detailed as possible and some recent models have even been reproduced almost identically.…

Perpetual Calendar watches have a special status at Patek Philippe. The major reason for this might be, that in 1925 they equipped the first wristwatch ever with this mechanism, the reference 97 975. The function however reaches back to watchmaker Thomas Mudge, who produced the first pocket watch with Perpetual Calendar in 1864. Also watch…

For over 20 years, the collection ‘Historique’ by Vacheron Constantin is regularly extended by historically relevant watches of the Maison, models like the Cornes de Vache from 1955, the American from 1921 or the Fine from 1955. Since a crucial horological passion of founder Jean-Marc Vacheron has been in the technical making of calendar watches, it was about time in 2017…

To name a brand after a ‘long meadow’ sounds just as fairytale-like as the history of the watch brand Longines. The brand from the idyllic village ‘Les Longines’ in Saint-Imier literally means ‘long meadow’. Established in 1832 by Auguste Agassiz, the brand has headed skywards just as consistently as the long meadow-grass of the lush…

After the recently launched Premier, Georges Kern continues to hold on to the rich heritage of BREITLING strongly. So strong, that now a 60-year-old watch was re-editioned almost unchanged. You don’t get to see that very often in the watch industry, in which brands indeed regularly introduce new interpretations of older models, but rarely present…

Charles A. Lindberg might have been the most prominent pilot, who trusted the know-how of watch brand Longines in the 1930s, which earned reputation in the field of aviation already from the very start. Their pilot watches distinguished themselves due to the rotating inner disc, which enabled the pilots to synchronize their watch with the…

While visiting the Breguet manufacture in Vallée de Joux some weeks ago, we certainly didn’t want to miss the movement assembly Atelier where the Maison’s tourbillon complications come alive. It was Abraham-Louis Breguet who invented this regulator over 200 years ago and the manufacture today is the world’s biggest producer. They have seven tourbillon families…

According to company documents, Thierry Stern, Patek Philippe president still today tests all minute repeaters himself before they leave the manufacture. And to Stern, it’s not work but pure passion and pleasure. Patek Philippe has gained a special reputation in this field, not least by showing their savoir-faire with the ‘Grandmaster Chime’ from 2014 with…

GMT-Master II Ref. 126710BLNR Last year, Rolex caused a small sensation with the return of the GMT-Master II ‘Pepsi’ (Ref. 126710 BLRO) and its long-awaited steel version. Will the brand score another coup with an unexpected novelty this year? There is no need – why should they not built upon a reliable product and instead…

An exciting and inspiring week comes to an end. We saw double moons, a candy-shop full of colourful timepieces and a Lamborghini for the wrist. We found out, that you can practice sustainable watchmaking with recycled PET bottles, that a power reserve of 65 days (world record) is possible and that a new trend colour…

At the time when Pierre Jaquet-Droz was born in 1721, the golden age for automatons just started. The engineer Jacques de Vaucanson enchanted the people with his ‘mechanical duck’, made of more than 400 moving components and able to move its wings, chatter and sip water. The young watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz was fascinated by this…

At a time when the battleship Royal Louis of the French Royal Navy had to fight for its nation’s defence in the 18th century, its crew had to rely on precise navigation tools to calculate their position. They used marine chronometers – also called longitudinal clocks – because the determination of the longitude on the sea…