Editors Note: If you’re like us, you have a long list of watches you’d love to own. Watch companies maintain a continuous flow of tantalizing images of their new creations, the Web is rife with chronic watch flippers offering good deals on minty timepieces, and suddenly that watch you’re wearing is starting to look a little rough around the edges.
We’ve always had a love for the timepieces of Victorinox Swiss Army, so a new limited edition version of the Victorinox Swiss Army 1989 Original Chronograph ($495), the first watch they ever made, really tugs at the heartstrings.
How a humble chronograph from the 1950s became one of the most important timepieces of the 20th century.
When Bremont offered to send their newest dive watch, the Supermarine 2000 ($5,900), for a review, I wanted to give this timepiece a fittingly rigorous program. After all, the company’s tagline is “Tested Beyond Endurance”, and some of its watches had accompanied adventurers on polar expeditions and round-the-world motorcycle journeys.
Samuel Adams and Paul Revere would be proud of this one. The Minuteman MM01 PVD ($398+), a handsome timepiece, is built by the CGA Company in the great state of Ohio.
The new Luminox RECON NAV SPC ($450) (that’s reconnaissance team navigation specialist for you civilians out there) is 46 millimeters of tough black carbon-reinforced polycarbonate strapped down with a specially designed synthetic strap.
Watch winders can seem like pretentious, esoteric toys for one-percenters with six-figure watch collections until you own more than one automatic watch. Unfortunately, many of them are trimmed in padded leather, faux carbon fiber, or built into a 16-cylinder Bugatti engine block.
Where better to design a wristwatch for the extremes of polar exploration than Iceland? After all, the northern tip of this island nation is above the Arctic Circle, and its people are notoriously hearty.
Nothing helps shake off the doldrums of mid-winter like a visit to Geneva for the annual Salon International Haute Horlogerie. For the uninformed, SIHH is the watch trade show put on by the watch brands under the Richemont Group umbrella and some of their friends.
When diving, it is as important to know your depth as it is your time. For most divers nowadays, this means using a digital dive computer that puts all the data on your wrist.
The Sinn 140 A Space Chronograph ($4,930) is a Limited Edition update of the 140 S that German physicist/astronaut Reinhard Furrer wore on his voyage to SpaceLab in 1985.
Gear Patrol's Jason Heaton travels to Saxony, home of A. Lange & Söhne, to explore the region, experience the watchmaker and learn its storied history.
Clearly Mayan watchmakers hadn’t cracked the horology of the perpetual calendar complication before their ateliers closed for good. Whether December 21st, 2012 portends an ominous implosion of this rock on which we live, a collapse of civilization or just severe disappointment for the crazies no one knows for sure.
“Time and tide wait for no man”, wrote Geoffrey Chaucer. We spend our days clamoring after bigger homes, nicer cars, the ultimate vacation spot — and time keeps ticking, someday getting the better of us.