This question is addressed to those of you to whom it is important that your watch is accurate to within seconds: Is your watch digital or analog?
Here’s why I ask. Being accurate to within seconds is important to me, and on most analog faces it is fairly simple to see and read the second hand. But I often have trouble with the minute hand. It is often difficult to tell whether the current time is 9:12:20 or 9:13:20. Theoretically I would ask myself whether the minute hand is closer to the 2 or the 3, but that’s often difficult, especially when there are no minute marks on the face. (Often the face doesn’t even have hour marks!)
That’s why I decided a long time ago that I prefer digital wristwatches. At a glance I know exactly what time it is. What do others think about this?
I have both. I see your point that it can sometimes take a second glance to see which Minute the minute hand is pointing at, but I’ve never found this to be a major issue; after a fraction of a second I can tell the difference. I must add, though, that my analog watch has a 60-unit scale.
But surely those are the people a wealth-signaller would want to signal wealth to, no? So if showing off your money is your primary aim, then getting a Rolex (instead of, say, a similarly expensive but less widely recognised Vacheron Constantin) is a perfectly rational choice that is driven by the nouveau-riche perceptions of the target audience.
Mechanical watches can never, ever compete in accuracy with quartz or electronic watches. Although it is remarkable what they do achieve via mechanical movement alone (and in such a small package). That’s part of the charm.
I think the point of those watches is less about time keeping (your cell phone does that super accurately for you…no need for a watch at all) and more about a piece of jewelry/art that goes beyond pure function.
I’m baffled why Rolex sponsors the tennis Grand Slams. The sport doesn’t need time keeping at all, let alone precise or accurate time keeping.
It’s used to be hard to read numerical displays in the dark, but reflective hands can be seen if there’s any light at all. Modern displays are better, though.
I’m reasonably certain that it’s all about reaching an audience with disposable income; compared to most other sports, tennis fans tend to skew wealthier. Similarly, various luxury goods are often sponsors of golf tournaments, despite the fact that those goods aren’t needed for playing golf.
I expect not only demand for $100000 watches, but a golden age for them in terms of availability of computer-aided design and laser micro-machining, exotic/synthetic/custom materials, yes quartz and other jewels, you name it—seems like one could come up with some rather creative products. That are also accurate.
Not sure what a reasonable “chronometer” standard might be, if it even matters, but we can toss out 1 sec/day as a nice round number.
Yeah. And Rolex positions itself as a luxury sports watch that can double as a nice watch to wear to a nice dinner.
And they make something like 800,000 watches a year so they need a lot of marketing (compare that to someone like F.P Journe who make 900 watches per year). Tennis matches attract their demographic.
I agree that Rolexes were (are?) seen as status symbols. In SoCal 20 or 30 years ago, Rolex watches were ‘part of the uniform’ for people who were ‘successful’ (i.e., above middle middle-class). I’m not riche, nouveau or otherwise, so I have no wealth to show off. It’s not that one wears a Rolex; it’s how they wear them. Mine are often/usually under a sleeve.
I think when you say ‘Rolex’, a lot of people think of gold and flash. What I like about Rolexes is that they (the ones I wear) are not gold or flashy. (Again, I’ll concede the Jubilee bracelet is a little flashy.) I like chunky stainless steel. In my 20s, a newly-minted pilot, I coveted a Breitling Navimeter with all of its dials and scales ang gold touches – and automatic movement. When I could afford an expensive watch, it struck me that the Breitling was way too gaudy. The Rolex ‘sports’ watches are more discreet.
As for ‘more discrete and sincere’ brands, many of them don’t seem especially discrete to me. While Patek Philippe’s Calatrava line they are ‘dress watches’ and not 'sports watches. I wear my Sub when I’m kayaking. A Calatrava would be out of place. Many of their other watches seem to call for attention. The ‘Grand Complications’ remind me of the Rolex Daytona, a watch I’m not attracted to.
Exactly. They aren’t ‘special’. As you say, they’re mass production watches just like a Seiko or TAG. They’re quality watches aimed at the lowest echelon of the ‘luxury’ market; i.e., the middle class.
A lawyer opened the door of his BMW, when suddenly a car came along and hit the door, ripping it off completely. When the police arrived at the scene, the lawyer was complaining bitterly about the damage to his precious BMW. “Officer, look what they’ve done to my Beeeemer!!!”, he whined.
“You lawyers are so materialistic, you make me sick!!!” retorted the officer, “You’re so worried about your stupid BMW, that you didn’t even notice that your left arm was ripped off!!!”
“Oh my gaaad…”, replied the lawyer, finally noticing the bloody left shoulder where his arm once was, “Where’s my Rolex!!!”
The advertising part I can understand. It’s the giant Rolex clock they put on the court that baffles me. (Sorry for not actually saying that part out loud.)
My point was that it is often difficult to tell whether the minute hand is between :12 and :13, or between :13 and :14.
(I might have also pointed out that on analog watches, the second hand and minute hand are often out of sync with each other. For example, the hour hand and minute hand might both be precisely on the 12, indicating exactly 12:00, but the second hand is somewhere else. How does one know if the exact time is 11:59:20 or 12:00:20. But I presume that the more expensive watches have solved this problem.)
To each their own but I am hard pressed to think when it is important for a person to know the exact time with such accuracy outside of a scientific/sport application (in which case you are probably using some other means to know the time in order to be super accurate).
Usually being within a minute (or even a few minutes) of the actual time is sufficient and most watches can manage that (with some reasonable care to occasionally reset them to current time…all watches will become more inaccurate over time without being adjusted).
On the Rolexes, the second hand stops when you set the time. So you just wait until the second hand reaches 12, then pull the crown out all the way. Set the exact time, and then push the crown in and screw it down. I’m not wearing my vintage Seiko today, so I can’t check to see if its second hand stops.
But I don’t need the exact time to the second. If I notice the second hand is at 20 seconds I just set the minute hand approximately half-way between numbers.
I dunno…perhaps I’m ex post rationalising my own pedantry here, but I find it unacceptably bad if a watch is off the correct time by a full minute or more. Part of this feeling comes from the idea that if I bother to get a timekeeper to begin with, I might as well have one that shows the right time rather than something else. But I think there are everyday applications where it matters. I take a lot of public transportation in my city, for instance, and I know by heart the schedules times of the buses, trains or trams that I can take. Those are usually pretty much on time, sometimes late by a few minutes, but hardly ever early. If I arrive at a stop a minute before the scheduled time, and the bus or train is nowhere in sight, then there’s a reasonable expectation that it hasn’t left yet but will come soon, so it’s worth waiting. If I arrive a minute late, then I can reasonably expect that it’s gone, and since I don’t want to wait for the next one there’s no point in hanging around any longer, so I can start thinking of an alternative means to get to my destination. This wouldn’t work if I couldn’t rely on my watch being accurate within, say, half a minute at the most.
IIRC Japanese trains adhere to a near perfect time schedule. If they say the train leaves at 5:35 then it leaves at 5:35. Something they pride themselves on.
Again, ALL timekeeping accuracy becomes less accurate over time. Even nuclear clocks lose accuracy (albeit barely at all). Every watch needs to be reset to an accurate time on occasion. Depending on your needs you may need to do it daily or may be ok with once a month. These days some do it automatically (like your phone…it gets its time from the cell network and it checks occasionally to be mostly spot-on).
Most mechanical watches can keep an accuracy of +/- 30 seconds per day I think. Some much better. Quartz and digital are better still.
Your cell phone is probably the most accurate timekeeper anyone owns. If you need real accuracy just look that that.
I don’t wear a watch, but if I did, it would be something I find beautiful. As for Curta, I agree completely. It would most likely spend most of its time on a shelf in my library, but it would be on my shelf, in my library, and that would make me happy. I first became aware of them from a William Gibson novel back in the early 2000s (it also led me to crave a black Buzz Rickson Bomber Jacket) and wish I had jumped on them at the time, as good specimens were going for a few hundred bucks.
That’s where radio-controlled watches come in handy. They sync automatically, once a day, to a radio time signal provided by a national standards agency (NIST in the United States, transmitting from WWVB in Colorado). It’s a decidedly old school technology (an analog signal on longwave) but still useful. To my knowledge this is what the clocks at airports and railway stations usually sync to.