Recent Articles
Time to Play
JamesFree Fall/Winter 2024
Technological advances made during World War II, a post-war economic boom in places that were largely untouched by battle like the US and Switzerland, and a renewed interest in sport and travel created a new market for watchmakers in the 1950s, the sports watch. What had originally been considered tool watches for professionals was evolving into stylish and robust timepieces made to address the specific needs of sportsmen and adventurers whether diving, mountaineering, yachting, flying, or racing.
Robust in construction and designed for legibility and wearability, sports watches boast sturdy stainless steel or titanium cases, highly reliable movements, and readable, well-laid out dials with luminous hands and hour markers to accommodate a variety of conditions and environments. They also have a tradition of incorporating a dazzling and ever-expanding array of sport-specific functions. For instance, dive watches are by necessity luminous and waterproof with screw-down casebacks and crowns. They also boast specially made straps to fit over wetsuits, unidirectional bezels for monitoring air supply, and since their invention have achieved increasing depth ratings with astounding technological advances like the helium release valve.
Racing watches first rose to popularity in the 1960s through auto racing and featured chronograph functions and tachymeters for timing laps. Racing watches today feature tachymeters with scales specific to the speeds achieved by different types of racers —i.e. watches made for auto, yacht, and even cycling competitors. When pilots began flying routes over the poles, aviation watches became antimagnetic. Several featured 24-hour dials and tracked a second time zone. Today there are aviation watches capable of tracking multiple time zones with some even having an altimeter function, making those timepieces useful for flying as well as climbing.
TUDOR's Wild Ride
Lee Michaels Fall/Winter 2024
(also appearing in ACCENT Fall/Winter 2024)
What began in 1909 as a way for the Italian sporting newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport to garner publicity has now blossomed into the second oldest grand cycling tour in the world, a race on par with the Tour de France and theVuelta a España. The Giro d’Italia, or the Giro as it’s called, has been run 107 times skipping years only for the first and second world wars. Considered to be the most beautiful and most festive of the grand tours, it is also known to be one of the most difficult races on the calendar. The fight for the prestigious maglia rosa, the “pink jersey” worn by the lead rider of the Giro, is not for the faint of heart. Run primarily in Italy, this multi-stage bicycle race takes place over three weeks with only two days off through various terrain with an overall elevation that is the equivalent of ascending Mt. Everest six times.
This year, the TUDOR Watch Company served as the Giro’s official timekeeper, and for the first time entered its own pro cycling team to compete for the maglia rosa. To commemorate this historic occasion and celebrate TUDOR’s ongoing commitment to the sport of professional cycling, the company has unveiled the Pelagos FXD Chrono “Cycling Edition” specifically engineered for the riders on TUDOR team, yet suitable for any level of cycling competitor, enthusiast, or fan.
Precision for the Fearless
Accent Spring/Summer 2024
“Between us and the bottom of the sea was less than an inch of wood,” writes Jack London in his seafaring adventure novel The Sea Wolf, “and yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid,”
The hull of the Alinghi Red Bull Racing AC75 hydrofoil yacht is not made of wood, but rather a proprietary blend of carbon, titanium and stainless steel that flies across the water at speeds up to 53.3 knots (about 61.3 mph). In the London spirit of rugged fearlessness, an eight-person crew will put Alinghi Red Bull Racing’s feat of cutting-edge maritime engineering to the ultimate test this year in Barcelona, Spain, where they will compete in the 37th America’s Cup Race.
Tudor has been named a “main partner” in Alinghi Red Bull’s quest to take home the Auld Mug, as the cup is colloquially known, to Switzerland. Tudor CEO Éric Pirson has said: “Tudor has a history of producing high-quality, precision timepieces for generations in Switzerland, and is renowned for its collaborations in the sporting world, with ambassadors such as David Beckham, big-wave surfer Nic Von Rupp and free-diving World Champion Morgan Bourc’his or the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. Alinghi Red Bull Racing being a Swiss team with a Swiss boat, we feel it is a natural fit for us, a Swiss company, to join forces and we are proud to see our watches sailing with the team.” To celebrate this historic partnership, the Swiss watchmaker has unveiled two new Pelagos FXD models, a chronograph and a time-only watch.
A Legend Lives On
James Free Fall/Winter 2023
Long before there was a Mexican Grand Prix on the F1 circuit, there was the Carrera Panamericana, an annual road race that began in 1950 to celebrate the completion of the Mexican section of the Pan-American Highway. Sponsored by Mexico’s National Automobile Association and encouraged by the Mexican govern- ment to increase tourism, it was a perilous, nine-stage, five-day, 2,096-mile, border-to-border trek through major climate and elevation changes that ran from Juárez in the north all the way
to Cuauhtémoc on the Guatemalan border to the south. In 1951, Time magazine said the route consisted of “hairpin curves, roll- er-coaster dips and erratic paving...bone-jarring at tourist speeds, and highly dangerous for even the most experienced racer.” After the 1955 LeMans racing disaster, authorities decided the Carrera Panamericana was too dangerous to continue.
During its five-year sojourn, however, the alluringly dangerous race attracted F1, Rally and NASCAR drivers from all over the world as well as European and American manufacturers. It drew close to two million spectators, was marked by a shocking 27 fatalities, and inspired two of Mexico’s greatest racing drivers, brothers Pedro and Ricardo RodrÍguez, for whom Mexico’s Grand Prix circuit, the Autódromo Hermanos RodrÍguez, was named.
When Jack Heuer met the RodrÍguez brothers at Twelve Hours of Sebring in Florida in 1962, they regaled him with tales of the short-lived Carrera Panamericana, which in turn inspired him to create a wristwatch reflecting the spirit of that legendary race. One year later, Heuer debuted what would become a legend
The Heyday of Watchmaking, U.S.A.
Accent Magazine Fall/Winter 2021
For a time, Yankee ingenuity-- the new mass production methods-- had Switzerland on the run, and then the Swiss struck back. An article about the rise and fall of the American watchmaking industry with a sidebar about IWC, a Swiss brand that was born in the U.S.A.
Dates With Destiny
Accent Magazine Spring/Summer 2023
The Roman poet Virgil wrote, “All our sweetest hours fly fastest.” Virgil, of course, was not making a scientific observation, but a psychological one about the human perception that time accelerates in correlation with how joyfully it is spent. Time, however, moves at a constant rate independent of our endeavors whether sweet or bitter and requires precision instruments to accurately mark its passage like Patek Philippe’s remarkable collection of simple, annual, and perpetual calendar watches.
Mark of Success
Accent Magazine Fall/Winter 2021
In art and architecture, Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, is often depicted as a winged figure holding a palm leaf. Though Victoria was particularly worshipped by the Roman military, the people of Rome believed she presided over all their victories and successes including those in sports, science, art, and business. Today palm leaves, or fronds, bring to mind a subtler version of success characterized by the sunny skies, warm island breezes, and lush tropical landscapes of an earthly paradise.
Inspired by Audacity
Accent Magazine Spring/Summer 2022
Beginning in 1927 with Mercedes Gleitze, the first Englishwoman to swim the English Channel and Rolex’s first brand ambassador, Rolex has long championed women with the audacity to strive for and achieve excellence. The role of women continued to evolve in the years after World War II. Inspired by women like actress Audrey Hepburn, writer Francoise Sagan, and equestrian Pat Smythe, women began to manage their own time and chase their own successes. Rolex took note, and in 1957 Rolex unveiled a watch inspired by and created for assertive, independent women forging their own paths to success, the Oyster Perpetual Lady Datejust. At just 28mm, the Lady Datejust was a technical and cultural achievement putting the reliability and precision of a men’s watch into a case sized for a woman.
The Golden Ellipse
Lee Michaels Fall/Winter 2024
In 1509, Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli published a book about mathematics and artistic proportions called De Divina Proportione. It was illustrated by none other than his friend and contemporary Leonardo da Vinci and details what is known as the Golden Ratio or the Divine Proportion. A concept dating back to ancient Greece in Euclid’s Elements, the Golden Ratio refers to a system of aesthetically pleasing proportions based on a division of space that corresponds to a ratio of 0.618 to 1 or 1 to 1.618. Examples of the Golden Ratio and its mathematic derivations exist throughout nature and are represented by the number of petals on a flower as well as the spiral patterns found in pinecones, snail and nautilus shells, the cochlea of the human inner ear, and even in the Milky Way galaxy. The ratio repeats so often that some believe it to possess mystical properties.
Signifying exceptional beauty, the Divine Proportion has been used to create some of humanity’s greatest works of architecture like the Parthenon, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and Notre-Dame de Paris and art including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Vitruvian Man, Last Supper, and Annunciation and serves as the inspiration behind Patek Philippe’s iconic form watch, the Golden Ellipse.
First launched in 1968, the Golden Ellipse was a bold departure from traditional watch shapes. Falling somewhere between a rectangle and a circle, it was originally presented in a case of yellow gold with a blue gold dial. Over the years, it has appeared in other colorways, but throughout its design history has remained a standout in Patek’s collection renowned for its sense of inner harmony and unwavering appeal to aesthetes and connoisseurs alike. This year the manufacture introduced the Golden Ellipse 5738/1R-001 in rose gold offered on a brand-new chain-style bracelet whose patented construction unites supreme elegance with comfort and ease of use.
The Shortest Distance Between Two Points
DandyWatchman.com
Nov 14, 2024
On the 70th anniversary of the first commercial transpolar flight, Dandy celebrates the role of the Polerouter
We are all taught at some point in our elementary mathematics education that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so why is it when you look at a plane route on a map or you follow your flight’s progress on a screen when traveling, it always looks as if your pilot is taking an unnecessarily circuitous route to your destination? The flight path appears as an arc rather than a straight line which means it’s longer than it should be, yes?
Actually, no.
The caveat to the lesson about the shortest distance between two points is a straight line is that it is only true on a 2-dimensional plane like a piece of paper or a screen. When the distance occurs in 3-dimensional space, like the kind a globe exists in, the shortest distance between two points becomes what is known as a geodesic or a great circle. When a geodesic is represented on your flat, 2-dimensional iPhone screen, it takes the form of an arc giving the illusion that it is a longer route than if the pilot had flown in a straight line.
This is why the SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) navigation team headed by World War II veteran and transatlantic navigator Einar Sverre Pedersen achieved something extraordinary in the 1950s when they pioneered transpolar navigation.
Snow Geese: a side bar about a daring Aviatrix
DandyWatchman.com
Nov 14, 2024
Snow Geese are incredibly strong fliers and swimmers. When migrating they fly high and fast, expertly navigating along a single meridian from their northern breeding grounds in Greenland and Siberia to their southern wintering grounds on the North American coast. They also mate for life.
A few years after the first trans-polar commercial flights began, Einar Pedersen served as navigator aboard another historic flight. The plane, a single-engine Cessna 205, was aptly named Snow Goose as the pilot was none other than Pedersen’s wife, Ingrid.
Only the 13th woman in Swedish history to obtain a pilot’s license, Ingrid Pederson earned her Commercial, Instrument, and Airline Transportation ratings. In July 1963, she became the first woman to pilot a plane over the North Pole. For her achievement, she was awarded the Amelia Earhart Medal from the Alaska Chapter of the 99's and the Gold Plaque by the Royal Swedish Aero Club.
Ingrid Pedersen went on to have a long and adventurous career as an aviator. She served as a commercial pilot on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. She ferried aircraft from the US to Europe over the North Atlantic. She even made numerous landings on drift ice in the Arctic Ocean first as a commercial pilot and later as a commissioned pilot for the Norwegian Polar Institute placing meteorological buoys between Spitzbergen, Greenland, and the North Pole.
After the Pedersens emigrated to Alaska in 1979, Ingrid worked as a flight instructor in Anchorage, flew sightseeing trips out of Skagwa, and served as the Associate Director of the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum. In 1995, she published a book about her polar flying experiences called Perfume & Motor Oil.
Ingrid and Einar Pederson each made history by flying over the North Pole. While there has yet to be a watch made to honor Ingrid Pedersen’s achievements, her contributions and legacy remain an important part of aviation history.
The Tudor Tradition
Accent Magazine Fall/Winter 2023
The War of the Roses was a 13 year-long conflict in medieval England between the House of Lancaster and the House of York, so named because both houses used a rose as their emblem: red for Lancaster and white for York. At the conclusion of the war, a Lancaster man sat upon the throne. He quickly and smartly married a York woman. The man was Henry VII (father of Henry VIII and grandfather of Elizabeth I), the very first Tudor King. Understanding his new dynasty required a new emblem, Henry VII created what is still known today as the Tudor Rose. Sometimes called the Union Rose, the Tudor rose is made up of five red petals surrounding five white petals to symbolize the unification of the two previously warring houses.
Perhaps it is this idea of a union between two things at odds that inspired Hans Wilsdorf in 1926 when he wrote, “For some years now, I have been considering the idea of making a watch that our agents could sell at a more modest price than our Rolex watches, and yet one that would attain the standard of dependability for which Rolex is known. I decided to form a separate company with the object of making and marketing this new watch. It is called the TUDOR watch company.”
Watches with Principles
James Free Fall/Winter 2023
In 1904, talented watchmakers Paul Cattin and Georges Christian decided to go their own way. They left Le Locle, the city at the heart of the Swiss watchmaking industry, for the small village of Hölstein deep in the spectacularly beautiful Waldenburg Valley. There they purchased a recently closed hat factory and formed a new company they named for a nearby brook, Oris.
Since its founding, Oris has claimed “go your own way” as its guiding principle. Today that sentiment is one of three pillars that form the foundation of the company’s value system. The second is that “things must make sense.” This independent spirit, guided by a tradition of rationality, inspired Oris’s role in overturning in 1966 a watch statute that had impeded industry innovation. The idea guided the company through the quartz crisis of the 1970s and ’80s, galvanizing a successful management buyout and the subsequent decision to abandon the manufacture of quartz watches for mechanical ones only. In 2021, Oris was certified as a climate-neutral company by ClimatePartner underlining the third pillar, “change for the better.”
The Spirit of Aviation
Accent Magazine Fall/Winter 2022
On the morning of April 3, 1933, 33,000 feet above sea level in two open cockpit planes battling an air temperature of -50° F and adverse winds of more than 100 mph, Sir Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, David McIntyre, Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker, and Sydney R. G. Bonnet made history by flying over the summit of Mt. Everest. Rolex Oyster wristwatches were on board.
Workmanship as Art
appearing in Lee Michaels & Accent Magazine Fall 2022
The technical skills of a master photographer are often overlooked in our quick-snap smartphone culture. Even as the more thoughtful among us admire professional work as aesthetically exceptional, we are not necessarily conscious of the photographer’s technical skill and deep knowledge of light, space, time, geometry, physics, and aesthetics and art history that form the foundation of his or her virtuosity.
Such is the case with many of the world’s art forms. As spectators we admire and appreciate the beauty of a piece, but rarely the technical and functional skills painstakingly acquired and deployed throughout the process of creating it, with one great exception, fine Swiss watchmaking. Swiss watchmaking is one the few art forms that wears its technical prowess on its—and your—sleeve, marrying the beauty of a wearable piece of art with the technical perfection of a highly functional tool.