Watches

This is the watch. Luckily I will never be able to affort it. Vacheron Constantine.

Yes I bought the Omega Speedmaster Mark II 1972. I could not afford that either. So I am to be regarded as a card-carrying lunatic myself.

I cannot understand this craze for mechanical watches, which are unwieldy, uncomfortable and very heavily overpriced.

But they did come back.

Fools like me put $ 12.3 billion in watches last year = 10 billion euros. In Switzerland 2/3 went to mechanical watches.

Turnover of Swatch group was more than half, 5.5 billion. In Europe we say milliards. They pay now 40 % to their share-holders.

The average price of a watch manufactured in China 2006 was $ 1, in Hong Kong $ 8 and in Switzerland $ 400.

Whatever happened?

After Omega Speedmaster etc. during early 7oies the Swiss watch-industry went kaput.

People believe that the idea of a digital wristwatch was derived from A Space Odyssey 2001. The LED-watches were horrible. You had to push a button to get the reading and the battery would end in a whiz. But hey were more coveted after than most of the mechanical marvels. Then came LCD and the Japanese Seiko, Citizen and Casio made mincemeat out of the Swiss with their inexpensive quartz-movements.

There is no doubt whatsoever that watches like Timex and Casio still are by far the best buy. - Swatch group sells now mechanical self-winding Tissots for a puny 320. Price quotation by the department-store Stockman. Very expensive for you, sir.

But as said, a marvellous watch for use is e.g. Citizen, let us say the titanium-cased thing, without gizmos like radio-controlled timing or perpetual calendar. It will only cost something like eur. 200.

The new book in picture is nice no-nonsense account. A bargain is the three-lingual Wristwatches by Köhnemann publishers. I got it for 28 euros, and it is a coffee-table book, meaning large and quite well printed.

Yes, sir. The one thing omitted in these books is a trifling I once found in a serious history about the Napoleonic wars. The Black Watch was translated into Finnish as the black wrist-watch - shock-proof at Waterloo.

There has been some talk of innovations lately. The Swatch quartz watch, manufactured almost entirely of plastic, was one of the most unexpected in consumer market. The Swiss industry was dead and gone. Then two notorious Swiss banks sent a guy called Hayek - no relative to the economist F.A., as far as I know. And he gave a beating to the Asian competition on the price bracket $ 40 - 400 combining humor (!) with microelectronic skill.

What a weasel!

Omega and Tissot hand joined resources before the war. Now Swatch owns them, and Blancpain, Breguet, Longiness, Rado etc.

Nobody has yet come up with a plausible explanation for the shortcomings of the Asian giants to pruduce really good software. And although Toytota Corolla is far superior, I buy a Citroën.

And so we are back in the basics of industrialism and information technology. The Swiss were actually forbidden to dabble with jewels and precious metals. Jean Calvin himself said that God does not like that kind of tomfoolery. But Calvin and reformed theologians, among the most notable the late Karl Barth, actually saw God as a watchmaker - not a blind watchmaker. We see the intricacies of the machine and believe it was evolved by natural selection out of a random lump of metal.

A disclaimer: this is not my interpretation. I am trying to explain why the Swiss and some Germans and some French Huguenots were so devoted to clockworks - and still are.

Besides the Asian Socialism cold not cope with watches. The German Glashütte was expropriated by the state and turned into a VEB, Volkseigene Betrieb. That was the end of it. After DDR the representants of the family Lange bought back their industries, and presto, A. Lange & Söhne is once again one of the most expensive and beatiful wathes in Germany.

The watchmakers developed the tools needed for tools. They were the first to unerstand the tolerances, gauges and standards in the industry. They were the first to develop smithys into factories and start dealing with interoperable parts. Naturally the arms industry was very fast to follow.

Watches are an example of the information industry or informationalism. Mechanical watches with an USB-socket for calibrating already are in stores. My guess is that mr. Hayek and his counterparts are just waiting until they give us watches with virtual dials. I could have all the dials shown in the book just by clicking.

Nokia - what are you waiting? There is no copyright in watch dials, as Swatch itself has testified by meticulously copying nice dials from 20ies and 30ies.

I really do not believe in multi-function PDA:s. Give us a flat watch that can be turned today to a suitwath and tomorrow to a chronograph and then to an aviator's watch and then to a diver's watch.

Time and date we cannot escape. They will be engraved in our gravestones - date, at least.

So give us some time.