Tuesday, October 5, 2010

5 Tricky Time Tellers


Some watches leave you scratching your head and staring at the length of shadows. These watches are tricky time tellers.
Check out this infection watch created back in 2008 by TokyoFlash. A company well known for high tech wrist ware. This watch is known as the "infection' watch, probably because 27 different colored LED light move like virulent infections in a petri dish. Okay so let's use our prefrontal cortex for a minute and figure out how this works. Twelve red LEDs indicate hours (got it), eleven yellow LEDs represent time in groups of five minutes and four green LEDs show single minutes.The light show is pretty cool, but I'm a bit undecided on the infection part of it.




Sphaera by Otium. Founded in 1999 in Germany, by Dirk Hillgruber, Otium has changed all the rules of time display. Not only is the time display unique, the elements of the movement operate in a different way. In the Sphaera, the minutes are depicted as usual (phew), but it is the hours that require some additional steps. First one must locate the slit in which the ball is in an extreme outside position, then go clockwise to the next slit and you get the hour. Pontos Decentrique Phases de Lune watch by Muarice Lacroix has a unique way of time display. An off-center single hand dial tracks the minutes. The concept of one hand dials is as ancient as the first pocket watch - almost 500 years old! Way back in 1524, Peter Henlein, a locksmith from Nurenberg, Germany created the first pocket watch which only had a single hour hand. Minute hands only arrived 150 years later in 1675.
The hours of the
Pontos Decentrique Phases de Lune watch are tracked by a "bathroom scale" like disc. Peaking out at the 4 'o' clock is two superimposed discs displaying the moon phase and indicating day and night. My favorite aspect of the watch is the date on a disc just above the 6 'o' clock set in a metalized sapphire crystal window. The date utilizes a uniquely in-house patented return system.
Then there is the abacus watch. For some reason I find this watch faintly disturbing. The vacant dial surrounded by 36 dots looks a tad desolate while the edges look somewhat cluttered.
Yeah baby! This one is for you. What you are looking at is a 01TheOne Unisex Split Screen Romero Britto. A splash of color and a whole lot of life. The artist behind this time telling artistry is none other than Brazilian artist, Romero Britto. Britto has gained word wide attention as the premier contemporary artist of this generation. Romero's unbridled optimism showers all his work with magnificent color. Now one can have Romero Britto's work on ones wrist. The unusual time display compliments the creativity of the watch design. The left LED's display the hour and the right display the minute. The 01TheOne collection is the brain child of Anton Kraft. The name refers to the binary code with the numbers 0 and 1. Time Technology Ltd., the makers of o1 The One was founded in 2005.