In the 1970s, many Swiss brands were in financial chaos with the rise of the Quartz movement coming from Japanese manufacturers. Hence, this period in watchmaking was deemed "the quartz crisis." Audemars Piguet realized it needed to design a watch that would put a stick in the spokes of Quartz, or it would be the …
Continue reading Other Watchy Bits: A Brief History of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
Few stories in the NASA pantheon resonate as deeply as that of the Apollo 13 mission. The weight and impact of that event is due, in part, to its archetypal struggle—an illustration of man’s resilience and ingenuity in the face of overwhelming odds. However, a small but critical part of that struggle began long before lift-off in the watchmaking shops of Omega SA at the foot of the Jura Mountains in Switzerland.
Tool watch is a term often used in the world of horology, but its definition is nebulous and murky and potentially controversial—if you are speaking to the wrong person. In simplest terms, a tool watch has at least one function, beyond timekeeping, for which it was designed. A dive watch, for example, is often equipped with a rotating bezel to track elapsed time while under water. A chronograph has one or more sub-registers which can be actuated to like a stopwatch. It may also work in conjunction with a tachymeter scale to calculate speed over distance.
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