Year in Review: Our Best Stories of 2020
As the year winds down, I’d like to thank everyone for reading. And I want to revisit a few of the best stories of the year – if you haven’t read them, they are worth a look. These are not the most-read stories, which are inevitably concerned with watches from the biggest brands. Rather, the best stories are of the sort that I myself appreciate: an in-depth look at topics that might be unexpected or intriguing. I loved these articles and trust you will too. Watchmaking Although time has flowed in the same manner since the start of the universe, mankind’s perception and use of draft has evolved, most drastically during the Industrial Revolution, when time came to govern all aspects of life, a phenomenon explained by Alvin Chong. Time, as it happens, has been crucial to medical care for over four millennia, as Dr Andrew Hantel explained in his history of the pulsations chronograph, starting with Louis Moinet’s invention of the stopwatch until the modern-day smartwatch. Continuing with the chronograph, but now rewriting its history: Dr Christian Müller documented the first flyback-chronograph wristwatch, a 1929 Longines that he owns, which also happens to be the first-ever two-button wristwatch chronograph. A Patek Philippe ref. 5004R with a special-order pulsations dial; the first photo shows its movement And then there was also the end of history in a sense: Alan Downing told the story of how the observatory chronometer trial, revived in 2009 as the Concours In...
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