Friday, December 04, 2009
The Day That Changed Watch Collecting - The Auction of the Graves Supercomplication - BusinessWeek
The Day That Changed Watch Collecting - BusinessWeek - Stacy Perman : The auction of the Graves Supercomplication netted $11,002,500, which is still the world record, 10 years later.
As Stacy Perman writes:
As Stacy Perman writes:
"Known as the Graves Supercomplication, the unique timepiece possessed 24 complications—or mechanical features in addition to timekeeping—including a different chronological function for each hour of the day, a chart of the nighttime sky over New York City complete with the magnitudes of the stars and the Milky Way, and a minute repeater that played the same melody heard in London's Big Ben.
The storied watch was the most ingeniously complicated mechanical watch ever created and required five years to design and build. Off the market for 66 years, it was also the ultimate prize in a 30-year collecting duel between Graves and the American automaker James Ward Packard, who spent a good part of the early 20th century attempting to acquire the most extraordinary timepiece with the greatest possible number of complications ever made. Both men wanted the best—and for that they chose Patek Philippe."
Monday, January 12, 2004
Fossil and Sunto Smart Watches Come onto the Market
Fossil and Sunto Smart Watches Come onto the Market according to a New York Times article by David Pogue at State of the Art: Microsoft's Latest, Strapped to a Wrist where it is stated:
"Starting next week, two watchmakers, Fossil and Suunto, will offer what Microsoft calls Smart Watches with MSN Direct, which Bill Gates has been describing in trade-show speeches for two years now. The twist is that these watches can download and display tiny bits of text information from the Web: stock prices, news clips, weather data. "
Pogue concludes that this is a watch for "gadget freaks" - but there are a LOT of those around. We shall see how the watch does. I predict it will be a big hit. Watches have always been a mark of one-upmanship Rolex-ing as it were, and this is just the next step forward.
Monday, January 05, 2004
The Vigilant Watch
Via WORDLAB | The Free Business Naming and Branding Community we are directed to Vigilant Watch, a watch of a different kind, which monitors radiation exposure.
There definitely are professions who could use this watch.
Let us hope that the rest of us never need it.
Thursday, January 01, 2004
New Pink Watches
Some great new pink watches for the ladies can be viewed at Yale Diva :: The New Pink.
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Clocks and Time: Horology site for books, magazines, organizations, museums, PC synchronization software, time standards.
Gordon T. Uber has links to Clocks and Time at his Horology site on the following subjects concerning Clocks and Time:
Clockmaking & Watchmaking
Books, Magazines, Journals & Ezines on Clocks & Time
Clock and Watch Museums
The site has not been updated recently, but is a good place to start a web surf on certain aspects of Clocks and Watches.
Monday, October 27, 2003
World's Best Watches
Watchmaking is one of the most subtle blends of skill and art in technology and design.
Websites of the world's leading watchmakers generally maintain the same quality we find in their respective watches.
Here are some that we have selected. Some of these websites are truly "works of art" like the finest watches.
Rolex
Patek Philippe
Cartier
Breitling
Tag Heuer
Ebel
Audemars Piguet
Chopard
Chaumet
Blancpain
Breguet
Vacheron Constantin
IWC
Omega
Jaeger LeCoultre
Girard-Perregaux Ferrari Watch
Ulysse-Nardin
Baume & Mercier
A. Lange & Soehne
Bulgari
Piaget
Rado
Tissot
De Grisogono
Alain Silberstein
Wempe - Overview
Thursday, October 23, 2003
SPOT wristwatches
Via the Feed Room, the website vnu.net.com in an article by Robert Jaques entitled Microsoft watches are Spot on informs us about a coming new technology, SPOT, which is an acronym for Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT).
As written by Jaques, SPOT "will allow information including appointments, calendar, contact phone numbers and weather forecasts to be beamed to small personal devices over FM radio".
Such personal devices are wristwatches and media players although the technology can also be implemented into something as mundane as a refrigertor door magnet.
Jaques reports that Microsoft will soon be bringing such watches onto the market and FeedRoom.com reported that this will probably already be in November of this year. The watches - apparently first to be offered commercially through watchmakers Citizen, Fossil and Suunto - will retail for about $150-300 and will essentially be a mini-screen on the user's wrist.
In order to provide the user with content, Microsoft has launched a wireless wristwatch service called MSN Direct, which will run on watches using SPOT technology on an FM-radio-based network.
Instant messages, data on personal computers and Microsoft Outlook information will be accessible.
MSN Direct will cost something near to $10 a month or ca. $60 a year.
Other detailed accounts of the SPOT technology are found e.g. at Microsoft (with watch pictures), Business World India, and Mobile Mag.
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