Friday Watches - November 2023
As sure as night follows day, November followed October. For once lets focus on a positive achievement of Humankind. This month saw the first photographs from the Euclid mission. Euclid (named after the ancient Greek mathematician of two and three dimensional geometric fame) is yet another space telescope. However this Euclid is more focused on the geometry of the Universe. Its 1.2m mirror gathers the electromagnetic utterances of the stars and galaxies and splits them into their visible and infra-red components. The visible light gets directed onto the equivalent of a 600 Megapixel array of CCDs so that it can take exceedingly sharp images of the universe. So sharp in fact that one of the first images shows over 100,000 galaxies. You were no doubt wandering what happens to the IR wavelengths. Well this is where the magic really happens. Using the near-infrared spectrometer and photometer scientists will be able to measure the red shift of the galaxies to determine their distance from earth, thus creating a 3D map of the universe. Oh and it might just help us find out more about Dark Matter. Cool!
Let me bring you back down to Earth so that I can tell you more about the watches we wore while Euclid was peering into the vastness of space. November was another four Friday month during which we wore a measly 468 watches, falling straight through the hesalite floor of fewest watches worn in a month to reach a new low. Commensurately we also saw the lowest weekly average of 117. Every nebula has a silver lining and thanks to the good number of brands (113) diversity came in at the second highest we have seen (0.241) thanks in particular to the 24th where we did achieve something positive. We entered that fabled sunlit uplands of 0.5 diversity. The 110 watches shown that day were from 56 different brands, giving a diversity of 0.509. Smashing!
Rolex started the month strongly with sixteen, beating Omega (eleven) and Seiko (ten). Seiko topped the table on the tenth and seventeenth which left the month finely balanced for the last week with Rolex having the slimmest of leads over Seiko (forty one vs forty). However Omega decided to upset the apple cart and came top with ten. Rolex's nine was enough to add a further point to their lead over Seiko who only scraped eight. Dramatic!
Despite the low numbers notable achievements were still being made. Zenith had their best month of the year with twelve, as did IWC, this time with twenty which equals their all time record set in October 2021. Brietling had a good month, scraping their way to eleven which they last did back in March. G-Chock equaled their best weekly score of the year (seven) but fell four short of a monthly high for the year. Frustrating!
Lets talk about brands, the 113 making appearances this month included nine which returned for the first time this year and five more brands making their first ever appearance on the Friday thread. We saw the welcome return of 6B (although I was a little disappointed that it wasn't the t2021 WOTY, the Scramble MKIII), their first appearance since October last year. Dietrich also returned, having not made an appearance since September 2022 and finally Talis who have not been seen since May 2021. New arrivals included Phosphor (Caruso's example with an e-ink display), Schauer (Fullbreakfasts' single hander)and MHR (courtesy of notnowkato). Now MHR had an interesting, if short, history. Founded by a jeweler in 1987 (when Swiss firms were still on their knees from the onslaught of quartz watches) it seemed foolish to be starting a whole new company producing mechanical watches. However they did things differently. Keeping costs low by using an off the shelf movement and generally the same case shape, they produced small batches of watches with different dial colours, hand styles and font sizes (nothing unusual in this day of microbrands and endless LEs from the big brands but a bit novel back then). And they sold. Very well. So well in fact that they were brought by Franck Muller in 2000. Sadly they were never heard of again. Tragic!
The whole MHR story can be read here: https://www.watch-words.com/watches/...-got-away-mhr/
And finally the ones which caught my eye. Now, I am not one for roman numerals on a dial (they seem a bit stuffy and fuddy-duddy for my liking) but Griswold's Record Deluxe is a rare example of Roman numerals looking good on a watch. Paul J's vintage Seiko Sealion has one of the coolest applications of lume ever. Finally there was Dapper's Aerowatch sporting a fine example of case engraving. Nice!
Well, that's all we have time for folks. I am off to watch more Ogmios and I will leave with the numbers in all their glory.
1 Rolex 50
2 Seiko 48
3 Omega 41
4 Timefactors 23
5 IWC 20
6 Panerai 18
7 Tudor 17
8 Sinn 16
9 G Shock 15
10 Zenith 12
11 Breitling 11
12 CWC 10
13 Citizen 8
14 Grand Seiko 7
15 Oris 6
16 Fortis 5
17 Hamilton 4
18 Damasko 4
19 San Martin 4
20 Heuer 4
21 Glycine 4
22 KMK 4
23 Universal Geneve 4
24 Senraw 4
25 Bulova 3
26 Patek Philippe 3
27 HGP 3
28 Yobokies 3
29 Longines 3
30 Lorier 3
31 Alpina 3
32 Swatch 3
33 Zeno 3
34 Bremont 2
35 Di Milano 2
36 Eterna 2
37 Garmin 2
38 Nomos 2
39 Pulsar 2
40 Yema 2
41 Christopher Ward 2
42 Ming 2
43 Stowa 2
44 Vacheron Constantin 2
45 Audemars Piguet 2
46 Helm 2
47 Aevig 2
48 Airain 2
49 Ball 2
50 Girard Perregeaux 2
51 Glaschutte Original 2
52 Smiths 2
53 Zodiac 2
54 Steeldive 2
55 6B 1
56 Apple 1
57 Baume et Mercier 1
58 Clemence 1
59 Credor 1
60 Doxa (modern) 1
61 Ebel 1
62 Gruppo Gamma 1
63 Heimdallr 1
64 Hublot 1
65 Lanco 1
66 Major 1
67 MHR 1
68 Orient 1
69 Rdunae 1
70 RLT 1
71 Safari 1
72 Skmei 1
73 Tag Heuer 1
74 Aerowatch 1
75 Anonimo 1
76 Archive 1
77 Casio 1
78 Deep Blue 1
79 Delcona 1
80 Moser 1
81 Newmark (Modern) 1
82 Phosphor 1
83 Tutima 1
84 Unidentifiable 1
85 Ancre 1
86 Baltic 1
87 Blancpain 1
88 Gevril 1
89 Jaeger-LeCoultre 1
90 Nodus 1
91 Octopus Kraken 1
92 Record 1
93 Sterile 1
94 U-Boat 1
95 Victorinox 1
96 Zelos 1
97 A. Lange & Sohne 1
98 Aera 1
99 Bell & Ross 1
100 Dietrich 1
101 FWM 1
102 Hermes 1
103 Incipio 1
104 Junghans 1
105 Ollech & Wajs 1
106 Porsche Design 1
107 Rado 1
108 Rotary 1
109 Schauer 1
110 Squale 1
111 Sturmanskie 1
112 Talis 1
113 Tissot 1
114 Wolbrook 1
