Results for Marine Chronometer & The Longitude Problem

The Magic in the Words ‘Marina Militare’

Spotlight on the 1999 PAM 36B Marina Militare

Oris Introduces The Aquis Date Kelp Forest Limited Edition

Oris returns to ocean conservation with the Aquis Date Kelp Forest Limited Edition. This new 41.5mm dive watch draws inspiration from underwater kelp forests and their role in marine ecosystems. Limited to 1,000 pieces, it combines the familiar Aquis Date design with a textured green dial that evokes the colors and textures of swaying kelp. […] Visit Oris Introduces The Aquis Date Kelp Forest Limited Edition to read the full article.

First Look - Time Set to the Second on the New Arnold & Son DSTB Stop-Seconds

Arnold & Son has forged its identity around the legacy of the 18th-century English chronometer maker John Arnold. Its collections are grouped into three categories (astronomy, chronometry and world time), each reflecting a different dimension of his work. One of the brand’s signature complications is the true seconds, also known as a deadbeat seconds mechanism. […]

Five Rolex Watches For Those Thinking Outside The Box

Say “Rolex” to most people, and their mental image is fully formed before you finish the sentence — a Submariner, maybe a Datejust on a Jubilee bracelet, something that has been photographed on a thousand wrists. For some enthusiasts, that image is precisely the problem. Rolex has produced plenty of watches that never made it […] Visit Five Rolex Watches For Those Thinking Outside The Box to read the full article.

Breguet Revamps Its Iconic Marine Collection

Breguet has long been a brand with a deep reverence to its history spanning over 250 years. In this tradition, Breguet’s designs have remained consistent and timeless. The brand’s Marine collection is a core part of this lineage, with roots that trace back to 1815 when Abraham-Louis Breguet was appointed watchmaker to the French Royal Navy by King Louis XVIII. At the time, these marine chronometers were crucial scientific instruments, but as years passed and needs changed, the collection later evolved throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. On the coattails of Breguet’s 250th anniversary last year, we’re really seeing the brand’s offerings come into the modern era with new design updates. The latest comes to the Marine collection, which the brand has revamped with a new aesthetic that aligns with its latest stylistic codes.Two references anchor the contemporary Marine line: the 5517, a classic time and date version, and the 5527, a chronograph. For the first time, both the Marine 5517 and 5527 will feature Breguet numerals and the “Quai de l’Horloge” guilloche pattern that was unveiled to mark the 250th anniversary. This motif takes its name from the address on the Ile de la Cite where Abraham-Louis Breguet established his workshop and where his early marine chronometers were produced. Its design draws inspiration from two sources: first, the contours of the Ile de la Cite and Ile Saint-Louis as well as the repetitive movement of ocean waves. Several other ...

Breguet Expands Marine Fleet

The Breguet Marine 5517 and 5527 chronograph have been with us since 2018, remaining largely unchanged even as the rest of the catalogue has been thoroughly modernised. Now, the Marine collection gets its refresh with new dials and a range of materials, from titanium to 18k rose and white gold. The Marine 5517 in titanium Initial thoughts The Marine is something of an outlier among high-end integrated bracelet sports watches, being one of the few designs that avoids the 1970s-inspired styling that dominates the segment. Instead, the Marine carries design DNA from the brand’s heritage producing marine chronometers, dressed in a suitably seaworthy case and bracelet (or rubber strap). One of the most notable design changes for the updated Marine is that the roman numerals have been retired in favour of Breguet numerals. This update gives the Marine obvious Breguet design DNA, but some may find the mix of traditional Breguet elements on the dial with the contemporary case too much of a clash. The Marine 5527 in 18k rose gold There’s little question about the overall quality of the Marine, but the pricing puts its head-to-head with popular models from Audemars Piguet, such as the Royal Oak Chronograph, which is actually $500 cheaper than the 5527 in 18k rose gold. That said, the titanium variants are priced competitively, relative to titanium sports watches of similar quality from the likes of Vacheron Constantin. Six references, with bracelet or strap A little against conv...

Introducing - Breguet Updates its Marine 5517 and Marine Chronograph 5527 with More Refined Dials

While Breguet is mostly known for its classic watches adorned with guiloché dials and the numerous inventions of its founder, Abraham-Louis Breguet, the venerable manufacture nevertheless holds two sportier collections: one intended for aviation (the Type XX), the other for naval exploration (the Marine). And both are actually inspired by important historical moments in the […]

The Formex Aria Proves The Phrase “Don’t Knock It ‘Til You Try It”

Without a doubt, one of the most talked-about recent releases is the Formex Aria Manufacture Chronometer, or simply Aria, as most people will refer to it. After I wrote the introductory article based on the press info, I was curious to learn more. While the design didn’t necessarily make me swoon, I know Formex well […] Visit The Formex Aria Proves The Phrase “Don’t Knock It ‘Til You Try It” to read the full article.

The Tudor Northflag Returns Sharper and Stronger

A decade after it first debuted, Tudor has revived the Northflag. Originally a 1970s-inspired sports watch to showcase Tudor’s first-ever in-house movement, the Northflag has been upgraded inside and out. The rebooted Northflag gains a GMT function plus refinements all round, ranging from superior detailing on the case to lume blocks on the dial. And the movement is now a Master Chronometer, while the price stays true to Tudor’s value-oriented focus at just over US$5,500. Initial thoughts The original North Flag was a bit quirky with its power reserve indicator, and also probably ahead of its time; a Tudor with an in-house movement seemed like an odd concept back then. I liked it then, but the North Flag wasn’t a commercial success, so it is surprising that Tudor has revived the model. But the new Northflag is an immediately appealing watch, reflecting Tudor’s advancements in design, manufacturing, and branding. In fact, the Northflag is one of the most interesting watches in the current Tudor catalogue, alongside the equally recent Monarch. Although practically everything Tudor makes is well priced and an easy recommendation, almost all of Tudor’s best watches are variations of the Oyster case and Black Bay diver. The Northflag, on the other hand, is something else entirely. The angular, 1970s-style case is different, as is the dial. But all the elements are harmonious, and the design works. This is one of my strongest recommendations in the Tudor line-up today,...

Sunday Morning Showdown: Straum Expedition Vs. Laventure Marine Type 3

Welcome, one and all, to the weekly spectacle that is Sunday Morning Showdown. This week, we’re giving Daan a break and bringing our illustrious head of content, Nacho, into the ring. In the red corner, defending his six-win streak, is Jorg. More importantly, the watches going head-to-head today are two angular, adventure-ready titanium timepieces from […] Visit Sunday Morning Showdown: Straum Expedition Vs. Laventure Marine Type 3 to read the full article.

The new Christopher Ward C60 Trident Biscay looks back across six decades of diving

Tom gets hands-on with the Christopher Ward C60 Trident Biscay, a 1960s-inspired dive watch collection in steel and marine-grade bronze.

Hands-On: Frederique Constant Rebuilds Its Classic Worldtimer From The Ground Up

I've always had a certain fascination with world timers—for one, it's a practical complication, but mostly because I love watching brands solve the problem of presenting a lot of information—text, numbers, data—and condensing it into a dial that actually works. When it works, it really works. So when I heard Frederique Constant was updating their Classic Worldtimer at Watches and Wonders this year, I was intrigued. The broader market is fascinated with world timers too. If the upper end is any indicator that world timers are trending, look at what the ref. 2523 "South America Map" Patek sold for a few months ago. Couple that with brands exploring different ways into the complication—our own Ben Clymer spent time in Geneva last fall and came back with lavish praise for a world timer from Andersen Genève, calling it the favorite thing he saw on the entire trip. But the big hiccup for me with world timers has always been simple: they're often quite expensive. World time, generally, was historically reserved for a brand's most exclusive references, in precious metals, running mid-five-figure to low-six-figure—only in recent years have brands like Nomos, Omega, Breitling, and IWC started offering steel versions, which dragged the entry point down to the mid-four-figure range. Frederique Constant has been chipping away at that problem for well over a decade now, and with the Classic Worldtimer Manufacture release at Watches and Wonders this year, I think they've crack...

Christopher Ward Cleans Up with the Trident 30×30

In the brand's latest charitable push, it is again teaming up with Blue Marine Foundation to help save our oceans.

The Titanium Treatment: Introducing The Doxa Sub 300 Ti5 Clive Cussler

Doxa is marking what would have been Clive Cussler’s 95th birthday with a new take on its most emblematic dive watch. The Doxa Sub 300 Ti5 Clive Cussler keeps the shape of the 1967 Sub 300 but features a case, crown, case back, and even the dial crafted from Grade 5 titanium. This COSC-certified chronometer […] Visit The Titanium Treatment: Introducing The Doxa Sub 300 Ti5 Clive Cussler to read the full article.

First Look - The new Yema Navygraf Barracuda CMM.20 Limited Edition, Developed with the French Navy

Yema seems to be focused on combining its historic dive watch designs with more sophisticated mechanics, especially since the arrival of the manufacture CMM.20 micro-rotor calibre. Following the Navygraf Slim CMM.20 and the Navygraf Pearl CMM.20, the French brand now introduces a more specialised interpretation of its vintage-inspired diver. Made together with the French Marine […]

Watches, Stories, & Gear: Mechanical Keyboards, the Werwulf Trailer, and a Stunning New View of the Milky Way

“Watches, Stories, and Gear” is a roundup of our favorite content, watch or otherwise, from around the internet. Here, we support other creators, explore interesting content that inspires us, and put a spotlight on causes we believe in. Oh, and any gear we happen to be digging on this week. We love gear. Fixing the Biggest Problem With Mechanical Keyboards I don’t think it would be fair to classify me as a luddite, but I would say I’m more of a nostalgist. While I have made a nice little career for myself online, I do miss when things were a bit simpler. You know, when tech oligarchs didn’t rule the world and I could play my little Flash games on Neopets and it would take four hours to download one song onto my Microsoft Zune. Sure, I have an office now, but it doesn’t have the same charm as a computer room.  This, of course, is bootstrapped by the physical memories, too. The soft grey ball inside the computer mouse, for one. Turning the computer on with my big toe while balancing my dinner plate on my lap. And, of course, the clickity-clackity of the keyboard. It was elevator music to the millions of AOL messages I sent throughout my high school years and the bane of my father’s existence, who swore he could hear it from all the way down the hall. Now I use a Macbook and it’s a soft and gentle tap on my fingertips. Not to quote Joni Mitchell here, but you really don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone. All the same, I’m glad I’m not alone. It see...

Citizen Expands Its Dive Watch Lineup with Four Affordable Promaster Marine Models

Citizen introduces four new Promaster Marine divers with the Eco-Drive Caliber E118, offering a year-long power reserve in a 40.6mm case.

First Look - Breguet Releases 3 new Tourbillon Watches for the 225th Anniversary of its Invention

Precisely 225 years ago on this day (on June 26, 1801, or on 7 Messidor An IX, to use the French Republican calendar in force at the time), Abraham-Louis Breguet was granted the patent for what is, without a doubt, its most famous invention: the tourbillon. Designed to counter the problem of gravity affecting the […]

Vacheron Constantin Brings Back the Traditionelle Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar

What is the ultimate first world problem? I can think of a handful. There’s the classic notion that we just have too much content to scroll through, stream, and consume. As the Boss put it, there’s 57 channels and nothin’ on. As I sit here typing up this article on hot early summer day with my AC blasting, I’m realizing it’s getting cold enough in here that I might need to add a layer. Woe is me! Just a few weeks ago, I bought a new iPhone and quickly found that Apple Music hadn’t automatically moved over all of my locally downloaded tunes during the initial data transfer. I was pretty disappointed when I realized only the second half of Turn on the Bright Lights was available to me on a late night drive home over the weekend. I just want to hear “Obstacle 1”! These are all annoyances, for sure. But none of them truly compare to the King of First World Problems, which is very obviously not being able to keep your perpetual calendar sufficiently wound. I mean, have you tried to reset one of these things recently? It can be really frustrating. Plenty of brands, like IWC earlier this year, have made moves to make their perpetual calendar movements more forgiving when resetting. Gone are the days, hopefully, when jumping past the current year means an expensive trip back to the manufacture in Switzerland.  Vacheron Constantin has a slightly different solution, which is to enable your perpetual calendar to remain wound for weeks at a time by allowing the wearer...

Introducing: The Vacheron Constantin Traditionelle Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar Is Back

What We Know Vacheron just brought back its incredibly unique Traditionelle Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar, and it's a welcome sight for dedicated collectors of the brand, along with general enthusiasts of unexpected yet innovative takes on complicated watchmaking. If you're not familiar with the original Traditionelle Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar, launched back in 2019, the watch offered an incredibly novel solution to a problem often found within perpetual calendar watches. Let's be honest, though the entire appeal and genius of the perpetual calendar is for someone wearing one watch all day, every day, for the whole year, watches like these are most often owned by those with a large collection to begin with. A weekend for a perpetual calendar in a watch box or drawer would mean that the complication would need to be set again after winding, and so Vacheron introduced this perpetual calendar with a whopping 65-day power reserve. To achieve this, rather than putting in an unfeasibly large mainspring in the barrel, the Traditionelle Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar lives up to its name by offering a new system that allows for switching between two beat rates for the watch—a contemporary high-beat 5Hz frequency with a 4-day power reserve for normal timekeeping during wear, but a much slower 1.2Hz mode with that prolonged power reserve for the "Standby" phase. The Caliber 3610QP comprises two separate gear trains for the two regulating systems, with a series of differentials tha...

Highlights: Exotic Mechanics at Christie’s Hong Kong

A menagerie of exotic movements features in Christie’s upcoming Hong Kong auction, Important Watches: Featuring “Kronos: Titans of Time”, “The Eternity” and “The Chronicle” Collections, from Double Splits and double movements to torque management and monitoring. Lot 2352 – F.P. Journe Chronomètre À Résonance (Brass Movement) While the current iteration of the Chronomètre À Résonance is far more elaborate, using a differential to split the trains — each of which contains its own constant force device — this early F.P. Journe Chronomètre À Résonance with its 18k pink gold dial was much more ambitious in its time, developed by an upstart restorationist from Paris in a market that was hostile to independent brands compared to today. Resonance timepieces, or more accurately, those using coupled oscillators, can be traced all the way back to Christiaan Huygens, also known for inventing the pendulum clock and many, many contributions to mathematics and the sciences. He described the coupling of his pendulum clocks as an “an odd kind of sympathy” and sought to exploit this dampening effect to make pendulum clocks viable at sea, though this was ultimately unsuccessful. It would take more than a hundred years for Abraham-Louis Breguet — often hailed as the greatest watchmaker — to bring this phenomena to a watch, and then almost two hundred more for arguably the greatest living watchmaker to bring it to the wrist. That was, of course, François-P...

Serica Introduces the new Ref. 7505

One of my favorite things is when a brand releases a watch that feels like the watch they always should have made. I’m sure we can all point to examples of this – that feeling that a new watch really belongs in the brand’s catalog, and we’re kind of surprised it never existed in the first place. That’s sort of how I think about the latest release from Serica, the Ref. 7505 Field Chronometer. Doesn’t it seem like Serica always had a 35mm field watch in their collection?  More than any other watch the brand has released to date, this feels like a distillation of what the brand is really about. You’ll recall that they launched with a collection of military inspired field watches all the way back in 2019, which at the time felt like they were already going a little against the grain at just under 38mm in diameter. In the years since, they’ve iterated on this general idea, with an ongoing series of sporty selections rooted in a kind of imagined vintage world, never borrowing too much from any one classic reference, but pulling from a variety of sources to create something that is uniquely their own. Part of that has always meant keeping the watches fairly compact. Looking over the press materials for this watch and thinking about the direction the brand has gone in, I wonder if, if circumstances had been different, they may have started here, with a 35mm field watch, to begin with.  This is unquestionably the right time to introduce a watch like this, at a mom...

Tudor Pelagos FXD Review: A Modern Military Dive Watch That Earns the Hype

A week with the Tudor Pelagos FXD Marine Nationale revealed why this modern military diver has become one of Tudor’s most respected tool watches.

First Look - The Two-Tone & Chocolate Girard-Perregaux Laureato Chronograph 42mm

The Laureato is Girard-Perregaux’s answer to the integrated luxury sports watch. Born in 1975 as a chronometer-certified quartz sports watch, Girard-Perregaux revived the Laureato in 2016 as a limited edition to celebrate the brand’s 225th anniversary, and later as a collection in 2017. Produced three years after Gérald Genta’s landmark Royal Oak but a year […]