A Watch With A View Of The Solar System

There were plenty of serious watches on display during “Las Vegas Jewelry Week.” Most of the important new releases I and others on this site covered extensively at Baselworld. However, there was one exceptional timepiece I missed that was shown off-site during the discount watches and jewelry show in Switzerland. I caught up with it and its owner while in Vegas.

It’s actually more than a timepiece. It is also an orrey, a device that shows the relative positions and motions of bodies in the solar system using balls moved by clockwork. There’s currently only one available and it was on the wrist of Eric Loth, CEO of the watch brand Graham, who was in a suite at the Wynn Las Vegas, separate from the tradeshows on the Las Vegas Strip.

Graham is a maker of automatic watches. The mechanical movement that powers this timepiece was made exclusively for Graham by independent watchmaker, Christophe Claret. Its accuracy is exceptional. Loth explained that the earth revolves at exactly 365 ¼ days so there is no adjustment for the leap year. Corrections to the orbital patterns are minimal and are planned and indicated on the back of the sports watches.

For the moon it’s every seven years, for Mars it’s every 25 years and for the earth (wait for it) every 1,152 years. The moon and mars have self correcting indicators. Loth said the orrery should be functional for 300 years before needing to be taken to a watches for women for a minor adjustment to the perpetual calendar.

If you're into any kind of serious underwater adventuring, you'll probably balk at Swatch's new Scuba Libre line. But at just $90 they're not targeted at timepiece connoisseurs or wannabe Jacques Cousteaus. They're designed for an afternoon at the beach where you won't be too devastated if your watch gets destroyed after an epic tubing run.

Available soon in nine brightly colored designs, the watches for men are rated to a depth of 200 meters and feature basic faces and numbering so they're easy to read even when underwater. Silicone bands keep the watches lightweight, and most of the designs even include a date indicator at the three o'clock mark. It's nice that Swatch is still committed to bright, bold designs, but even nicer that with the Scuba Libres you're also getting some useful functionality at a decent price.