Five SIHH Watches We Adored
Hiren Kumar Bose came back impressed by the five watches at the recently concluded Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie 2018
GREUBEL FORSEY GMT Earth
The 45.50mm watch displays a spinning globe as a real-time reproduction of the Earth’s rotation offering an intuitive view of time all over the world as well as a day/night indication. A lateral window also floods the globe with light to symbolize daytime and reveals more of the southern hemisphere. This timepiece features the Tourbillon 24 Secondes and displays its information on various dials and sectors. With this creation, limited to 33 pieces and involving 3 patents, the watchmaker duo has totally reinterpreted the very notion of the GMT as a watchmaking complication.
ROGER DUBUIS Lamborghini Squadra Corse
Crafted from the same C-SMC carbon used to create Lamborghini’s sports cars, utilized in both the case and dial of the watch, the Excalibur Aventador S Blue boasts a completely skeletonized build. The 45mm watch places its detailed complication on full display, showing off its double sprung balances linked with a differential, a unique feature to this model, of which only 88 pieces are available worldwide.
IWC Pallweber
The 45mm stainless steel watch is IWC’s first-ever wristwatch featuring a digital hour and minute display, just as it appeared on the Pallweber pocket watches back in 1884. These innovative timepieces showed the hours and minutes in a digital format with large numerals on rotating discs. In its anniversary year, IWC honours this pioneering achievement with the IWC Tribute to Pallweber Edition “150 Years”. This model is limited to 500 watches and has a stainless steel case, a blue dial with a lacquered finish, and white display discs. As a reference to the design of the historical Pallweber watches and a tribute to F.A. Jones – the American watchmaker who founded IWC – the windows of the digital display are labelled as “Hours” and “Minutes”. The IWC-manufactured 94200 calibre advances the display discs by using a separate wheel train with a barrel of its own. The fact that the flow of power in the main wheel train is uninfluenced guarantees a precise rate and a 60-hour power reserve.
PANERAI L’Astronomo
The Luminor 1950 Tourbillon Moon Phases Equation of Time GMT is the first of Officine Panerai’s creations to have moon phases indication and an innovative system using polarised crystal to indicate the date. Made to order, and the skeletonised movement, the P.2005/GLS (standing for Galileo Luna Scheletrato in Italian), is personalised to operate in accordance with the geographical coordinates of a place chosen by the client.
A LANGE SOHNE Triple Split
The 43mm Triple Split is the first mechanical split-seconds chronograph that allows multi-hour comparative time measurements. Additional rattrapante hands on the minute and hour totalisers make it possible to stop lap and reference times of events that last as long as twelve hours. The watch can compare the times of two opponents in a Formula 1 race or a marathon. It can also record the times of consecutively starting events, such as the outbound and return legs of a long-haul flight. Also, it is possible to add the times of multi-hour events, such as the duration of individual Ironman disciplines. Any number of lap times can be stopped during an additive time measurement. Available in a limited edition of 100 pieces it is endowed with a flyback function that involves all three hand pairs as well. Thus, the chronograph can be reset and instantly restarted by pressing the lower chronograph pusher even during an ongoing measurement. A power-reserve indicator based on Lange’s typical Up/Down display shows how much of the 55-hour reserve remains available.
