Urwerk is no stranger to the avant-garde — the brainchild of master watchmaker Felix Baumgartner and chief designer Martin Frei, the company, established in 1997, makes some of the most fanciful, outlandish and outrageously expensive horological creations known to man.
The UR-100 SpaceTime is no different. With a case shape partially inspired by the company’s original timepieces, the UR-101 and UR-102, the SpaceTime includes an outlandish complication utterly devoid of any value for all but MIT-trained aero-astro majors and Jet Propulsion Lab physicists: two small scales on the dial track A: an approximation of the distance the Earth covers as it spins on its axis, and B: the approximate distance the Earth covers as it orbits the Sun.
Baumgartner was inspired to include these most esoteric of complications via a 19th-century Pendulum clock once gifted to him by his father. Constructed for the 1892 World’s Fair in Chicago by clockmaker Gustave Sandoz, it features a rectangular dial with a scale around its perimeter calibrated in 100km-increments. Each tick of the central hands indicates a further 500 kilometers traveled by the Earth at its equator as it spins on its axis. A small subdial indicates every 10km traveled by the Earth as it spins on its axis, and a second subdial measures every 40,000km traveled by the Earth as it spins on its axis.
Featuring a domed sapphire crystal that gives an unobstructed view into the orbital complications, the UR-100’s case will be available in both titanium and steel, dubbed the UR-100 Iron, and titanium and steel with a black DCL coating, called the UR-100 Black. Both versions feature the automatic UR 12.01 caliber that indicates the time with an orbital mechanism that sweeps across the front of the dial.
Each version is limited to 25 pieces and will be priced at CHF 48,000, or approximately $48,492.
