Environmentally aware, sunpowered, sonic watch for the politically correct
Andre Jute
sunpowered, sonic watch for the politically correct, in my case a
Citizen Eco-Drive minute repeater http://www.citizen.com.hk/?content=45
in rose-tinted stainless steel. Or I will be from today.
http://www.watches88.com/prod_images_large/BL9003-85A1.jpg Nice clear
sound from the minute repeater and, best of all, it never needs a
battery. The rose colour is much more subtle than in the piccy; in
fact at first I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't redder, like an
Audemars I once had which I traded for a scarcely-used Citroen SM
touring car.
My favourite watch of all time is my Eterna-Matic 3000 with the ur-
urhwerk, the 1466-U ebauche, the granddaddy of all the current good
automatic mechanisms. But that has to be sent away occasionally to be
cleaned. My second fave is my flying watch, a custom titanium job with
the Citizen C300 movement http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/YULtideUTC.html
but that has to be sent away at every battery change for pressure
testing to preserve the 200 dive rating (it is the watch I also wear
rain and shine to cycle, and to swim, and to take steam).
My new minute repeater gets its power from the sun (or any incidental
light) and never needs a battery. For watch freaks among you, besides
the minute repeater and the politically correct batteryless solar
powered drive, it of course also has a grand perpetual calendar (it
knows the x000 years are not leap years), a second time zone (there
are three time zones but the one for the minute repeater is normally
set to duplicate a displayed time), the date and month (you work out
the day of the week with the old idiot savant Doomsday trick, and the
year is indicated as the nth after the last leap year), an alarm in
each time zone, a low power warning (why? once fully charged it runs
for nine months!), an AM/PM indicator, what on a less high-tech watch
would be called a "hack" setting to align the seven hands to the split
second, and so on.
Andre Jute
'Tis my day in the year for being politically correct