Great article, Jack, as is the BHI article. This whole topic--essentially, the pursuit of accuracy/precision in wristwatches--is one that's always confounded me. On the one hand, I love mechanical watches, the gears and springs and the resulting "aliveness" that they somehow bring to an inanimate object in a manner that no quartz watch ever can. And of course, a watch being an instrument used to tell time, ever-greater accuracy/precision is a goal that's hard to argue against. So yes, cheers to Spirate's maybe getting us to within a second a day. Not bad. Not bad at all. And certainly more than adequate for almost any reasonable use. Especially if it doesn't end up doubling the cost of any Omega that incorporates it. So, in spite of what's going to follow, cheers to Omega!
But something else nags at me: what of the other costs of this pursuit of accuracy? The costs, that is, of moving ever-further away from the workbench, from the metals and oils that went into every watch made until maybe 20 or so years ago and thus made them unmistakably "alive"? For example, the dependence on advanced silicon technology. No, this isn't microchips, whose "wires" have widths of maybe a hundred atoms. But it's also hardly something that the proverbial "little old watchmaker" could ever have incorporated. Are these things bad? No, of course not, but they do suggest a spectrum of sorts--at one end, the most basic end, would be a watch that could have been made by Breguet himself back in the day. Just metal, and totally makable in a Breguet-like workshop back in the 1800s. And the other end? Well, depends on how you limit the conversation--obviously the other extreme would be GPS-controlled watches accurate to a second per life-of-the-universe days. But let's ignore those for now, and set other limits to the "more accurate" end of the spectrum.
One limit would be "what could Breguet use, back in the day?" Metal, obviously. No silicon. Spirate need not apply. And certainly not quartz. But you can tinker with things like innovative escapements, e.g. Daniels' coaxial, maybe not improving accuracy but maybe improving maintenance intervals.
Another, less stringent, limit, might be "gears and springs." Any material you'd like, no matter how technologically advanced, as long as it's just gears and springs. Spirate gets to play in this game, and probably represents the current opposite extreme of the spectrum from the basic "what could Breguet do" end of things, as long as we limit things to gears and springs.
But nowadays, how much point is there in pushing this end of the spectrum? One second a day is great, but even if we forget about radio- or GPS-controlled watches, Rolex has reached +/- 2 seconds per day with everyday mechanical movements, and going WAY out there, Citizen has developed a quartz watch that's good to one second per 365 days. That's more than two full orders of magnitude better than Spirate. And for (probably, if Omega incorporates it into their overall line) about the same price. So here's Spirate, which (maybe) your AD can adjust to a second a day--and here, for not all that much more money (well, at least at list price...) there's Rolex, which is good for 2 seconds a day right out of the box.
What, in the end, is the best accuracy that we can expect from the "basic Breguet" mechanical watch? One that can be made by a watchmaker in a workshop much like Breguet's, without silicon, without CNC machines, made more or less the way Breguet did? Would a watch like that be acceptable these days? Would it keep time to within, say 10 seconds a day on the wrist? Five? Three?
And, of course, if we limit ourselves to that sort of watch, how scalable would its manufacturing be? Would it be possible to make, say, 500,000 such watches a year? Or would they be so limited in production as to be, well, Dufour Simplicities? Because ultimately, to me, "that sort of watch" would be my mechanical watch preference, rather than the silicon-enhanced versions that are coming out these days--I guess I'm kinda with you on this score: get me a functional 19th century observatory chronometer and I'll be a very happy man! (And dead broke, but hey, we can't have it all, and meanwhile, yes you're taking my GPS-controlled Citizen away from me over my dead body! Different horses for different courses, as they say.)
Thank you for the thorough explanation, I'm more impressed now than when it was announced. This is the kind of writing current HODINKEE is lacking: someone with deep expertise explaining watches from the engineering side with a heavy dose of history and a splash of philosophy.
I met an old man years ago who worked on jet engines in Connecticut (he was retired in the late 1990’s when I met him). He worked making marine chronometers during the war, and in the defense industry as a precision machinist and “tool & die” guy, whatever that means.
Needless to say, he told me (now i was a teenager and drunk university student at the time), but he told me that the difference between a marine chronometer and standard clocks all came down to the tolerances of the components. The marine chronometers were made to ultra-tight tolerances, just like jet engine parts or defense-related toys (missiles and such).
He explained to me that they would make two marine chronometers for a ship, then a watch for the naval time keeper guy. They also had to wind them all multiple times per day because the clocks were most accurate in a certain range of winding (and when they serviced the clocks they always replaced the spring).
Now, I know this is all simply for kicks now that better technology exists, but I assume that Rolex can get their million watches per year to ±2 seconds also using those ultra-tight tolerances. Changing the K seems like the only reasonable variable left, and it is only possible because the materials used are so ultra-consistent. I do not think there exists another avenue for advancement. Also, I want to say that many of the clocks they made for the Navy in WW2 never were good enough (rejects). They had some that simply failed for reasons not worth examining. In other fields where materials are everything (CPU’s, GPU’s), they basically bin the chips to see which are best. The bottom tier get sold as lower grade, the middle make the mark, and the top is creamed off and sold as premium. There tolerances are insanely small (measured in microns or angstroms) and the manufacturers only roughly know the reasons why. Their yields improve over time, but it is a crude process because observation is so difficult.
Given the inherent inferiority in time-keeping for mechanical movements, I genuinely question whether we want high-technology “solutions” to our charming, ticking time pieces. Perhaps you are right to want traditional methods. I certainly agree with your view that keeping traditional methods is more important than gaining accuracy to rival quartz at orders of magnitude more cost and complexity.
Great article, Jack, as is the BHI article. This whole topic--essentially, the pursuit of accuracy/precision in wristwatches--is one that's always confounded me. On the one hand, I love mechanical watches, the gears and springs and the resulting "aliveness" that they somehow bring to an inanimate object in a manner that no quartz watch ever can. And of course, a watch being an instrument used to tell time, ever-greater accuracy/precision is a goal that's hard to argue against. So yes, cheers to Spirate's maybe getting us to within a second a day. Not bad. Not bad at all. And certainly more than adequate for almost any reasonable use. Especially if it doesn't end up doubling the cost of any Omega that incorporates it. So, in spite of what's going to follow, cheers to Omega!
But something else nags at me: what of the other costs of this pursuit of accuracy? The costs, that is, of moving ever-further away from the workbench, from the metals and oils that went into every watch made until maybe 20 or so years ago and thus made them unmistakably "alive"? For example, the dependence on advanced silicon technology. No, this isn't microchips, whose "wires" have widths of maybe a hundred atoms. But it's also hardly something that the proverbial "little old watchmaker" could ever have incorporated. Are these things bad? No, of course not, but they do suggest a spectrum of sorts--at one end, the most basic end, would be a watch that could have been made by Breguet himself back in the day. Just metal, and totally makable in a Breguet-like workshop back in the 1800s. And the other end? Well, depends on how you limit the conversation--obviously the other extreme would be GPS-controlled watches accurate to a second per life-of-the-universe days. But let's ignore those for now, and set other limits to the "more accurate" end of the spectrum.
One limit would be "what could Breguet use, back in the day?" Metal, obviously. No silicon. Spirate need not apply. And certainly not quartz. But you can tinker with things like innovative escapements, e.g. Daniels' coaxial, maybe not improving accuracy but maybe improving maintenance intervals.
Another, less stringent, limit, might be "gears and springs." Any material you'd like, no matter how technologically advanced, as long as it's just gears and springs. Spirate gets to play in this game, and probably represents the current opposite extreme of the spectrum from the basic "what could Breguet do" end of things, as long as we limit things to gears and springs.
But nowadays, how much point is there in pushing this end of the spectrum? One second a day is great, but even if we forget about radio- or GPS-controlled watches, Rolex has reached +/- 2 seconds per day with everyday mechanical movements, and going WAY out there, Citizen has developed a quartz watch that's good to one second per 365 days. That's more than two full orders of magnitude better than Spirate. And for (probably, if Omega incorporates it into their overall line) about the same price. So here's Spirate, which (maybe) your AD can adjust to a second a day--and here, for not all that much more money (well, at least at list price...) there's Rolex, which is good for 2 seconds a day right out of the box.
What, in the end, is the best accuracy that we can expect from the "basic Breguet" mechanical watch? One that can be made by a watchmaker in a workshop much like Breguet's, without silicon, without CNC machines, made more or less the way Breguet did? Would a watch like that be acceptable these days? Would it keep time to within, say 10 seconds a day on the wrist? Five? Three?
And, of course, if we limit ourselves to that sort of watch, how scalable would its manufacturing be? Would it be possible to make, say, 500,000 such watches a year? Or would they be so limited in production as to be, well, Dufour Simplicities? Because ultimately, to me, "that sort of watch" would be my mechanical watch preference, rather than the silicon-enhanced versions that are coming out these days--I guess I'm kinda with you on this score: get me a functional 19th century observatory chronometer and I'll be a very happy man! (And dead broke, but hey, we can't have it all, and meanwhile, yes you're taking my GPS-controlled Citizen away from me over my dead body! Different horses for different courses, as they say.)
Thank you for the thorough explanation, I'm more impressed now than when it was announced. This is the kind of writing current HODINKEE is lacking: someone with deep expertise explaining watches from the engineering side with a heavy dose of history and a splash of philosophy.
I met an old man years ago who worked on jet engines in Connecticut (he was retired in the late 1990’s when I met him). He worked making marine chronometers during the war, and in the defense industry as a precision machinist and “tool & die” guy, whatever that means.
Needless to say, he told me (now i was a teenager and drunk university student at the time), but he told me that the difference between a marine chronometer and standard clocks all came down to the tolerances of the components. The marine chronometers were made to ultra-tight tolerances, just like jet engine parts or defense-related toys (missiles and such).
He explained to me that they would make two marine chronometers for a ship, then a watch for the naval time keeper guy. They also had to wind them all multiple times per day because the clocks were most accurate in a certain range of winding (and when they serviced the clocks they always replaced the spring).
Now, I know this is all simply for kicks now that better technology exists, but I assume that Rolex can get their million watches per year to ±2 seconds also using those ultra-tight tolerances. Changing the K seems like the only reasonable variable left, and it is only possible because the materials used are so ultra-consistent. I do not think there exists another avenue for advancement. Also, I want to say that many of the clocks they made for the Navy in WW2 never were good enough (rejects). They had some that simply failed for reasons not worth examining. In other fields where materials are everything (CPU’s, GPU’s), they basically bin the chips to see which are best. The bottom tier get sold as lower grade, the middle make the mark, and the top is creamed off and sold as premium. There tolerances are insanely small (measured in microns or angstroms) and the manufacturers only roughly know the reasons why. Their yields improve over time, but it is a crude process because observation is so difficult.
Given the inherent inferiority in time-keeping for mechanical movements, I genuinely question whether we want high-technology “solutions” to our charming, ticking time pieces. Perhaps you are right to want traditional methods. I certainly agree with your view that keeping traditional methods is more important than gaining accuracy to rival quartz at orders of magnitude more cost and complexity.