Rolex, Patek, Tudor and TAG plus 34 other brands to show at Watches and Wonders in April
I will be perfectly honest, ever since starting to write about watches, my sincere wish has been to meet up with the Time+Tide team at Basel, SIHH or even some far-flung Far Eastern destination. But then, KER-CLUNK! It was as if a giant hand pulled down a large POWER OFF handle, the lights dimmed and it all went eerily quiet. COVID-19 signalled the temporary end of watch fairs. Yet thanks to the determination of Jean-Christophe Babin at Bulgari and various other horological powerhouses that pulled together Geneva Watch Days, things didn’t end as glumly as they might have. The GWD sent a signal to the world that we might be looking at a new future of watch fairs that are up close and personal (well, as close and personal as you can get with a mask on ). Now Watches and Wonders have announced their 2021 dates and it’s “phygital”! Yes, Watches and Wonders, the extravagantly monikered version of SIHH, is now back according to the press release (phygital is a cross between physical and digital, apparently). Five main brands are on board for the 2021 Watches & Wonders Geneva digital show: Rolex, Tudor, Patek Philippe, Chopard, and Chanel. They…
The post Rolex, Patek, Tudor and TAG plus 34 other brands to show at Watches and Wonders in April appeared first on Time and Tide Watches.
To understand the Vacheron Constantin Twin Beat, we need to begin with a universal truth: in most areas of life, the most meaningful innovations are those that address real-life needs, solving practical problems in a sensible way. And those solutions come through questioning orthodox assumptions. In the case of mechanical watches, the received wisdom is that the running time of a watch before it needs rewinding (its power reserve) is fixed by the amount of energy the mainspring can store. In other words, the mainspring barrel has a fixed capacity and thus can release energy only for a fixed timespan. Therefore, a longer power reserve requires either a longer mainspring (much larger barrel) or multiple mainsprings that release their energy one by one (multiple, series-coupled barrels). Both of these conventional solutions require more space in the movement and, consequently, a bigger watch case. It’s like the range of a car: have a bigger tank or build in some energy-saving technology. Now, for time-only automatic watches this limitation of power reserve is not a huge issue, since even a very slim case can accommodate enough mainspring to provide 60 hours of running time (and those who really do find it an…
