Watchmakers are always striving to add more features to their timepieces, but it’s the most simple and obvious feature—accurately keeping the time—that’s the holy grail of horology. And now you can 3D-print a tourbillon, a complex device that improves a watch’s accuracy, and marvel at its mechanics.
Editor's note: This is the last in a series of introductory pieces on mechanical watches from our friends at Hodinkee. You can read the rest here.
Editor's note: This is part two of a series of introductory pieces on watches from our friends at Hodinkee. You can read part one here.
The mechanical watch is one of the few remaining practical, day-to-day items that has remained unchanged in many ways since its inception hundreds of years ago. Of course, materials and production methods have come a long way since the seventeenth century, but if you crack open a modern mechanical watch, you'll find…
You may have noticed yesterday that io9 — and the rest of the Gawker network — went down for several minutes yesterday. Other sites, including Reddit, 4Chan, LinkedIn, The Pirate Bay, Yelp, and Meetup, had lengthy outages, all at the hands of one tiny unit of time. But how did a single leap second fell these websites?
On this coming Sunday June 30, intrepid horologists from around the world will daringly attempt to hold back the relentless onslaught of time. Well, to be fair it won't actually be that difficult. July 1st is scheduled to start an entire second later than it should, a feat of temporal distortion that will be…
We've shown you some beautiful retro-digital watches recently, but this timepiece takes the prize for integrating real old technology: a tourbillon escapement. Invented in 1795, this type of escapement actually rotates inside its frame and was designed to counteract lop-sided gravity effects caused by the vertical…
Looking at this limited-edition Di Grisogono Meccanica DG, you probably think it's a hybrid mechanical-digital watch. Well, chaps, you're wrong. Despite its appearance, the Meccanica DG is completely analog, comprising of 651 pieces and absolutely no digital parts or LEDs whatsoever. Video and pics after the jump.
