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Why The Most Expensive Watches Are So Expensive
"The use of the chronograph, or stopwatch, fundamentally changed the world of sports."
Remove the back of even the simplest mechanical timepiece and the mechanism you see inside looks impossibly complicated. This mechanism, known as the movement, is typically made up of 200 or more individual parts, most assembled manually in a workshop by someone with very steady hands. Here's a look at one of the complications that represent the height of the horological craft.
On April 15, 1970, a hand-wound mechanical wristwatch saved three astronauts hurtling through space in their crippled craft. The wristwatch, a chronograph, was of a design that was unchanged since the mid-1950s. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, it performed where millions of dollars worth of machinery and computers had failed. Used to time a critical engine burn to align the Apollo 13 capsule for Earth re-entry, the chronograph, an Omega Speedmaster Professional, confirmed its place as perhaps the most useful of watch complications.
Time Writer
The word “chronograph” literally means “time writer,” and that describes its function perfectly. At a glance, the chronograph user can see elapsed time “written” on its dial, from as little as one-hundredth of a second up to twelve hours. The uses for a chronograph are endless, from timing your boiling pasta to laying odds at the horse track to getting a spacecraft home safely.
In this modern age, it is difficult to imagine a world without the chronograph, where time would only exist minute by minute and everything would be estimated. There would be no world speed records for cars, humans or horses. We would have to devise a way to compare times.
While other watch complications have their place, the ability of a chronograph to time events longer than one minute makes it a viable tool more than an exercise in horological prowess. With few exceptions, complications are created to display a watchmaker’s or watch company’s expertise and artistry. But a chronograph was created with a specific, crucial purpose.
Most watch historians credit the invention of the chronograph to a Frenchman, Nicolas Rieussec. In 1821, Rieussec unveiled a machine consisting of a clock movement housed in a wooden box, which drove two rotating paper discs. A person could start and stop the machine by means of a switch, and an ink pen suspended above each disc would literally write the elapsed time on the discs. While Rieussec’s chronograph was a huge breakthrough, it was hardly a practical timepiece. Nor did it tell the time of day.
The pocket watch was the way men told time up through the 19th century, and it was only a matter of time before the chronograph complication made its way into pocket watches. Though not a common complication in pocket watches (a chiming minute repeater was the one to have back then), for scientists, horse trainers and anyone else who needed to measure time precisely, a chronograph became essential.
