Glashütte Original
Time to Move: Glashutte Original Raises the Bar
Throughout the ’70s the Swiss watch industry suffered terribly from the onslaught brought on by inexpensive quartz watches from Asia, so much so that manufactures began closing, key tooling and machinery was discarded and mechanical movements were sold by weight. As the Swiss industry reeled from the effects of the Quartz Crisis, East Germany watchmaking remained largely unaffected. That’s because by this time East Germany was part of the Soviet bloc and the watchmaking competences found in the horological hotbed of Glashutte had been nationalized and placed under a single factory known as the GUB which produced mechanical watches for the Soviet occupied countries.
Because amid the non-stop, speed of light schedule around Switzerland visiting the mighty SWATCH Group’s high watchmaking manufactures, it would be easy to miss out on the absolutely amazing technical achievement that is the world’s first flying tourbillon with a zero reset cage/seconds indicator that is precisely synchronized to the minute indicator. I give you the Glashutte Original Senator Chronometer Tourbillon, a watch that has to be a shoe-in for the technical achievement prize for the 2019 watch year.
Senator Chronometer Tourbillon
With the existence of a seconds hand on this tourbillon it can also be tested to chronometer accuracy by the German Calibration Service, entailing a 15-day trial in five positions and three temperature variations. The caliber 58-05’s silicon hairspring created at the group-owned Nivarox certainly aids in concentric breathing. Note to Time to Move organizers: a trip to Nivarox would be most welcome in the future. It’s too bad they are no longer holding the Concours International de Chronometrie won by a Jaeger-LeCoultre tourbillon the first time and a Greubel Forsey the second time as I’d love to see how this 150k Euro German watch would perform.
SeaQ
So it’s no mystery that one of my favorite numbers is “69.” This is of course for two reasons. First, my year of birth is 1969 – the same year of both the Moon landing and Woodstock – and because 1969 gave rise to the automatic chronograph, one of my favorite horological achievements. What were you thinking? Clearly 1969 was also a significant year for Glashutte Original as this was when it debuted the Spezimatic Type RP TS 200, a handsome functional and very cool diving watch. OK, let’s return to the context of Cold War Soviet Bloc East Germany which as part of the German Democratic Republic was tasked with producing large quantities of functional, reliable and accessible work horse timepieces which included the tool watch Type RP TS 200 with its rotating bezel and its unique combination of sword hour and broad arrow minute hands.
Says von Keith, “One of the greatest resources for our brand is the Glashutte Original museum which shows you the incredible diversity and range of watches we created throughout the 20 century. On a visit there, Marc Hayek (a man with a clear penchant for vintage-themed diving watches) saw the Spezimatic TS 200 and he immediately thought this could be the first in a new range of highly functional, well-engineered and attractive vintage-themed sports watches for us.” Using this watch as his genetic antecedent Hayek applied his typical design flair in collaboration with Glashutte Original’s team to create the SeaQ. Now, the thing with diving watches is it’s genuinely quite difficult to come up with an all-new design that is at once functional and genuinely and uniquely attractive. The world already has the 50 Fathoms, the Seamaster 300 and the Submariner. What is charming about the SeaQ is it achieves just that – the creation of an atypical, authentically charming dive watch that is a good value proposition (8.5k euro on the strap), resonates with some very cool design elements and hosts many of the SWATCH Group’s innovations such as the ceramic rotating bezel.