Watches

Abraham-Louis Perrelet began working on an automatic watch winding mechanism in 1770 (the year Captain Cook “discovered” Australia). By 1777, he’d perfected the invention and founded the House of Perrelet watches the same year. His success in harvesting energy from the wearer led to his next invention, the pedometer, and he subsequently went on to manufacture a range of firsts in the watch industry. Innovation still underpins the company, and Perrelet patented its Double Rotor (one on the dial side, one on the movement side) in 1995. Now it has put them on show with its TURBINE XL watch, enabling caffeine-addicted, ADHD-suffering freaks (guilty) to amuse themselves for hours. Don’t believe me? See inside. Read More

Today watches are built to withstand varying degrees of water pressure and shocks and scrapes of all sorts. But a new watch from Seiko has been built to withstand the harsh environments found when the wearer is enjoying a pleasant Sunday afternoon spacewalk. Touted as the first watch ever designed for use in outer space might restrict the target market for the Seiko Spring Drive Spacewalk watch somewhat, which is probably why Seiko will release a limited edition of only 100. Read More

Selling watches is no doubt getting harder these days as their primary function, keeping track of time, is duplicated by another technological item that is becoming ubiquitous – the mobile telephone. In recent times we've seen watches given a point-of-difference by including artifacts from the Titanic and the Moon, and the Louis Moinet Jurassic Tourbillon will feature at Basel in Switzerland this month. The Jurassic Tourbillon's dial contains fragments of authentic fossilized dinosaur bones around 130 million years ago. Read More

Once upon a time, golfers had to be content with tossing a few blades of grass in the air and squinting at a distant green, muttering: "it looks like an easy four iron". Fairway distance markers help, but the arrival of pocket-sized rangefinders and GPS equipped golf watches has been another nail in the coffin of what some purists would call the art of golfing. On the other hand - it's a game that would drive a Zen master raving mad at times, so why not make the most of what technology has to offer ... and why not do it in style? Which brings us to the elegant Reconvilier Hercules Golf Master. This rotating timepiece has two functions - on one side it shows a classic analogue display but when tee-off time comes around, it flips over to show digital measurements of the distance to the front edge or center of the green. Read More

Swiss luxury watchmaker Blancpain has continued its annual tradition of celebrating the most romantic day of the year with a new design set for release on February 14th 2010. This speciality timepiece combines an sinuously-contoured silhouette created by a glittering border of over 500 precious stones. A heart is set into the dial fashioned in white and pink mother-of-pearl and echoed in pink sapphires and diamonds encircling the dial. A heart-shaped diamond appears at 12 o'clock, while the pin buckle is set with a pear-shaped pink sapphire. The straps are satin, and only 14 of these extraordinary limited edition ensembles will be created - the price is unknown, but rest assured, it will represent a whole lotta love! Read More

Not so long ago anyone in the market for a new watch was faced with a relatively easy decision – analogue or digital? Those simpler times are but a distant memory with the release of more and more watches that set themselves apart with weird and (not always so) wonderful ways of telling the time. The latest to join the party is the Retsu watch from TokyoFlash, which uses a column of ten LED lights to indicate time instead of the traditional hands and numbers. Read More

While time itself is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity in today’s hustle and bustle world, there is certainly no shortage of innovative timepieces to help us keep track of it. Inspired by the recently discovered dwarf planet Eris, this example does away with the conventional two dimensional approach to timekeeping, instead using a globe design featuring “floating” hands that glide around the “equator” of the watch. Read More

Bonhams' next auction of fine watches on June 10 will feature some celebrated timepieces, including a Patek Phillipe watch from Tiffany & Co, and another Patek Phillipe once owned by Isabel Perón, the former President of Argentina and the first non-royal female to lead a western country. While the Peron watch is expected to fetch between UKP 3,000 and UKP 4,000, the Tiffany Patek Phillip, an 18ct gold perpetual calendar chronograph with moon phases, is regarded as something quite special. Patek Philippe wristwatches retailed and signed by Tiffany & Co. are highly prized by collectors and may fetch as much as 100X that amount. Wanna get a close look at a watch worth as much as a house? Read More

Elite athletes know that training smarter is much better than training harder, and to do that you need to know exactly what's happening in your body. Suunto has introduced its new Triathlon collection heart rate monitors which measure the time interval between heartbeats and its variations to produce seven different body parameters as well as analyze these readings to provide the information needed to maximize their training efforts. Read More