Horological Machine HM3

This is a crazy watch. It's got three dials. One of the dials shows off the automatic rotor through a glass top.

It's called the HM3 Sidewinder if you buy it in bronze. It is called the HM3 Starcruiser if you buy it in silver. I don't know how much it costs.

LOL

Horological Machine HM3 product page [MBandF.com via Watchismo Times]

[#1 posted by dculberson , October 15, 2008 11:16 AM]

See, isn't this so much better than some blathering screed about neural this and flux that? Goodness yes, I feel informed already.

CONFORM OR BE DESTROYED!

[#2 posted by zuzu , October 15, 2008 1:12 PM]

I assume the H3 is supposed to refer to John Harrison's marine chronometers?

In the spirit of "wasting transistors", I've wanted for some time now a real-time simulation of an exposed H3 running as the clock on the desktop of my computer.

[#3 posted by Freddybear , October 15, 2008 7:43 PM]

If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

[#4 posted by Anonymous , October 15, 2008 11:17 PM]

Pippin Cray is a genius. Accept it.

[#5 posted by Anonymous , October 15, 2008 11:56 PM]

Actually the sifferent between the sidewinder and the starcruiser is orientation - one is rotated 90 degrees from the other so sits along rather than across your wrist.

Still awful though

[#6 posted by BastardNamban , October 16, 2008 9:04 AM]

I like that BB occassionally lists these one-off boutique brand watches. It's nice to see people can still awe over sheer mechanical complexity.

As for price, yeah, they usually run around 400-500 thousand & up for watches this exclusive. Look at the work of Greubel Forsey!

On a final note, any layman can tell you that of COURSE no one ''needs'' watches like this. Some outright get angry that people buy stuff this ''frivolous'', given our modern mastery of time per se, in things like quartz watches & cesium clocks.

I say there is no need to get angry. The right frame of mind to see when you look at expensive watches, especially wild, very limited stuff like this, is that it's a form of ART. That's why people pay so much for it. Car people have vintage UK roadsters, the art crowd has Picasso, Rembrant, etc. etc, who would pay what most of us consider astronomically ridiculous sums for what amounts to a canvas & some paint.

The only thing that separates these watches from those is precisely that- nothing. They stir the passions in people with what would normally only be a contrivance of a normal object, a car, a sketch. Art can be expensive BECAUSE it is art. That means some will pay dearly for it. The people that create things like this also know the futility of any practicallity of what they make, even if it indeed is an exceptionally good timekeeper. They do it precisely for the same reasons that VanGoh painted- not to fill a societal need, but a personal desire to create that which moves them, and hopefully others.

These watchmakers are artists. They produce mechanical art, not watches, if you want to look at it that way. I salute their efforts. Of course this watch is practically pointless in our quartz society, that isn't the point. This is art for art's sake.

[#7 posted by BastardNamban , October 16, 2008 11:00 AM]

On a related note- Prices.

I live in Japan, and happen to be a watch afficianado. American watch related publications almost never list prices for anything above 100,000$ USD. Hell, they hardly ever list prices.

If you're a REAL watch nut like me, subscribe to JAPANESE watch magazines. They have ridiculous amounts more info in detail about every watch in them, and as is the Japanese way in magazines, far more pictures than US stuff. I can only read parts of it, and I get most of the stuff in it by pics!

Sugguestions (the best Japanese mags)-

1.CHRONOS (http://www.webchronos.net/)

2.TIME SCENE (example: http://www.tokuma.jp/magazine/mook/1176089491113)

3.SEKAI no UDEDOKEI (世界の腕時計, example: http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/switch-language/product/4846526690/ref=dp_change_lang?ie=UTF8&language=ja%5FJP)

Those 3 are good, with many pictures, and often have prices even for the rarest of the rare watches (like that DeWitt STEAMPUNK-esque watch on here a while back, around 467,000$).

The rest are total crap. Don't live in Japan? Can't read Japanese? GO TO Kinokunya Japanese book store in New York City! They'd have all of these, just show em' a printout, and they could probably even help you set up a subscription!

Sorry for the rant.