Horolonomics

I first became acquainted with independent watch brand Zeitwinkel sometime in 2020 during the pandemic. The doorway into Zeitwinkel's workshop. For a while, I'd seen a lot of folks posting about watch chats on Clubhouse, a new social media app experiencing shockingly rapid adoption. I hadn't been able to participate, though, because Clubhouse was iOS-only for quite a while. Eventually the app was released for Android and I hopped into a channel hosting watch industry chats. The discussions were informative and enjoyable. One of Zeitwinkel's co-founders, Albert Edelmann, was a regular. I appreciated his candor as well as his sense of humor. As time passed, we continued to chat online and I had the opportunity to meet Albert in person at a Redbar event and during Watchtime in New York. He extended an invitation to visit Zeitwinkel's workshop in Switzerland, which I really appreciated, but just couldn't arrange until this year. So back in September I found ...

This week, an article in Swiss media caught my attention. An aerial view of the COSC lab in Le Locle. Screenshot from YouTube account SWISSKY. On Monday, the criminal trial of a 37 year old man began in the watchmaking hub city of La Chaux-du-Fonds. Allegedly, the defendant trafficked in marijuana. But what really drew my attention was the prosecutor's charge that "Boris" (the pseudonym given to the defendant in the case) had also trafficked in stolen watch parts. I read a bit more and the allegation is that Boris participated in a robbery in Le Locle at one of the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres (COSC) labs. I was surprised to read about this because I'd never heard about it before. As a reminder, COSC tests watch movements for accuracy and certifies them as "chronometers" if they pass the test. The process goes roughly like this: 1) a brand delivers movements to COSC for testing, 2) testing takes place, 3) chronometry certificate is issued...

I woke this morning at "zero dark thirty" in order to catch an Amtrak train into New York City. The exhibition entry. My destination was a preview of "Icons of Time," an exhibition and collaboration between UBS (a bank) and its "House of Craft," Hodinkee and Hodinkee's founder and President Ben Clymer. I'd missed the last gathering of this sort, held around the same time last year. But this time around my schedule allowed me to participate so off I went. The event promised to offer twelve timepieces, one for each hour marker on a watch dial, curated by Clymer. According to my invite, these timepieces were selected because they are rare and "[embody] both the vision of its maker and the enduring legacy of those who have worn it." I decided to see if I could guess ahead of the event which twelve might be featured. I promise I'm typing up this list as I ride the train. My first guess would be an Omega Speedmaster because that watc...

There's a certain genre of watch lore involving lost and recovered timepieces. Arguably the most important of these is Cole Pennington's 2019 story of a watch worn by a Marine Corps pilot whose plane was shot down during a covert CIA operation over southern China in 1952. A photo of the recovered watch in question, photo credit Logan Barnard and Hawaii News Now. I've posted a couple of these stories as well, including one in which a watch owner faked throwing away a watch (only for his relatively to later find the watch was kept and sold) and another watch which was lost in a field by a farmer and later recovered. Rolex, the company, celebrated the "lost and found" story genre in the 1950s. An example of the "Fantastic Stories" campaign, this one about a watch lost underwater for seven years. In a series of advertisements dubbed "Fantastic Stories," Rolex retold some compelling experiences of watches and watch owners. At least two ...

In 1946, economists Arthur Burns and Wesley Mitchell provided a formal definition of business cycles. I asked AI to create an image in the style of Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory featuring the letters "RHT" and this is what I got. Their conceptualization is extensive but one of the most important elements is the idea that cycles are "recurrent but not periodic." In other words, fluctuations happen over and over again, but they do not follow a regular pattern. In the world of horology, recurrent but non-periodic processes are familiar and a great challenge when it comes to tracking the passage of months and years (as well as other events like Easter). The end of a month recurs twelve times each year, but the length of a month is not always the same (and leap years mean that February has an extra day every four years, I'd rather not even begin to talk about leap seconds). The past two years provide compelling evidence that the watch industry als...

Philanthropic activity is sometimes overlooked when it comes to the watch industry. Satellite view of the Pont Hans Wilsdorf. There are certainly marketing campaigns which publicize watch industry support of the arts and the environment, for example. But some activity is less well-known but no less important. For example, consider a certain bit of road in Switzerland. Geneva's Pont Hans-Wilsdorf, or Hans Wilsdorf Bridge in English, is architecturally very unique, with an organically designed superstructure reminiscent of the work by famed architect Antoni Gaudí (well, reminiscent to me at least). The bridge spans the Arve River and allows pedestrians, bikes and cars to move between the neighborhoods of Les Vernets and Plainpalais. I've heard some lore about this bridge, mostly due to the fact that the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, the non-profit owner of Rolex, paid for its construction. Generally, infrastructure like this would be funded out of public coffers. The bridge wa...