OT: Thing of beauty...

[Nick]

Another one for the madness here - there's an exhibition in the DIFC (Finance Centre) where I'm based - specifically for Swiss watches.

At lunchtime, I went down and had a chat (just for fun, you understand). As the show was a bit quiet, I tried on several watches, including the one below on the Vacheron Constantin stand... (1 of 10 made)

Guess how much you can pay for a manual watch? (note: there are NO diamonds etc. on this watch, just glass/metal and sapphires for the pivots etc.)

Hint: It tells the time and not a lot else; however every single part is handmade and engraved from scratch, including the case which is solid platinum. and the glass and face - total time for a master watchmaker: about 4,800 hours per watch.

As a slight aside, I was lent a jewelers' loupe so that I could closely examine the mechanism - it was like a fractal or Sierpiński curve - the closer you looked, the more detail emerged, seemingly never-ending.

Whatever they cost, they are works of art - truly beautiful works of engineering wonderment.

But mad.

Nick

[gregebert]

Sounds a lot like our home-made nixie clocks. I dont have an accurate time log, but I know it's many hundreds of hours for a new design. And like the watch, you cant just look at it to fully appreciate what went into creating it. 

One of my nixie clocks has been on my desk at work for nearly 5 years. I'm in a cube-farm in a large building, where hundreds of EE's work, and have easily seen it, yet very few have inquired or commented about it despite the glass-front case showing the PCB, wiring, and of course, 6 nixies. Maybe people are just too busy these days to appreciate finer works.

4800 hours to make a watch ? That's more than 2 years fulltime work. I dont know how I would put a price on it; I imagine I could give one of my clocks to someone who really appreciated it and feel better about that versus selling one to someone who simply paid money and tossed it out after a few months because they got bored with it.

[GastonP]

Or they are shy and go and look it over when you are not in your cubicle :)
I know... I'm an EE too...