The Breitling Watch Source Forums

It has nothing to do with progress (although I would argue that improving from + / - 5 to + / - 1 is rather a lot more than "a little progress")

Put a quartz watch in a temperature controlled, humidity controlled, vibration free environment and it will happily run at + / - 0 when properly regulated. It's when you strap the thing on your wrist that things get screwed up!

Perhaps it is a lot of progress, but nothing about it strikes me as impossible or inherently unreasonable.

How many machines do you know of that are capable of accuracy to 1 part in 31,536,000 (that's greater than 99.9999968% accuracy) when they are subject to temperature change, humidity change, shock, frequent motion and are powered by a depleting power source?

Bulova introduces the most accurate watch in the world, the Precisionist
and its +/- 10 seconds per year all that at a reasonable price what will they think of next !

There's no harm in wishing, but if we're constructing our ideal Breitlings with features that don't exist, it becomes a very different type of thread. Driver's original post asked what kind of watch we would build if we were Breitling's design team. Obviously any watch company's design team is limited to making their watches with features that actually exist. That having been said, there really isn't any need to beat this one to death. You like super accurate watches; there's nothing wrong with that. You probably won't find a lot of compatriots here, though, since most of us greatly prefer mechanical movements, which are less accurate than your most basic quartz movements. I will say, though, that if Bulova put out the Precisonist in styles I like better, with sapphire crystals, and kept them to under a grand, I'd at least think about buying one.

The vast majority of my watch collection which spans over 110 years and 127 watches starting with an IWC from 1895 when they where still called JWC are mostly mechanical movements I own very few Quartz pieces . The Breitling style is very appealing to me as well but if your after accuracy in a mechanical movement then a Tourbillion (the whirlwind) is required , Do you think in your wildest imagination that in 1795 when Breguet invented it to counteract the effects of gravity on the main spring to keep his watches accurate people would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on them ? I'm thinking no. So not having them is a price to pay for moments that are not super accurate or super expensive.

personnally, i would just love a 48mm diver. that s not asking too much

Wristwatch tourbillons have no beneficial impact on accuracy.

So you drop a hundred grand on a watch with one cuz there pretty , my god people are stupid.

"H. Bouasse, professor at the Science Faculty of Toulouse, France, adds fuel to the tourbillon controversy, in which he writes in his book "Pendule, Spiral Diapason": "In order to cancel the centering errors of the balance, someone had the ingenious idea of making it turn: this resulted in the tourbillon escapement"

"Nowadays, with the precision of quartz watches and radio controlled or atomic watches whose accuracy is ± 1 second every 1 million years, it begs the question of what "purpose" such a device now serves. While the tourbillon regulator was probably of greatest benefit to an escapement whose function saw use mainly in the vertical positions, such as in a pocket watch, its value to the performance of escapement in conventional wristwatches is arguably dubious, furthering the tourbillon controversy. Still, it is clear that the tourbillon was never intended by its inventor to be a practical and common answer for everyday timekeeping, and to criticize it because of this is missing the point. The tourbillon exists for the same reason that Formula 1 racing cars exits - not because it is something we need, but as a demonstration of the edge of the envelope - the forward edge of man's technical creativity and skill. "

The hard drive on my laptop does this easily and every day. My point was that this is really an engineering problem and not something physically impossible. If the argument is that they won't because there is not enough demand to offset the development costs then that is entirely different.

If I'm not mistaken Bulova is owned by Citizen. Citizen makes a watch, called "The Citizen" strangely enough, that can be accurate to with 5 seconds a year. Even the old Marine Chronometer from the 70s kept time within 10 seconds a year. This is a watch that is getting close to 40 years old. For a quartz movement this is no longer terribly special.

Run a diagnostic on your hard drive that dumps errors, you'll be amazed.

Clearly no point in continuing this discussion as we have very different views of what is realistically achievable.

You hard drive's transfer speed is probably north of 300 Mbits/second, but let's say for a moment that it is that slow. If it was as inaccurate as a watch that gains or looses a second a year it would produce at least 10 errors per second of transfer time. Did your diagnostic dump look like that?



Probably not, as the only reason you given me to believe that it is unachievable is because it is difficult. From my standpoint, precision instruments are often difficult to design and implement. I don't see why a watch would be any different.

Minus the stupid part, you've pretty much summed up the whole game when it comes to acquiring luxury wristwatches, although to "pretty," I might also add "fascinating," "gratifying," "satisfying," or what have you. If you want accuracy, get a Casio. WISes are after something else. With as many watches as you have, evidently you know this.

I have no idea whether it's achievable or not, purely in technical terms. As a layperson, I'd accept the argument that it would be difficult, but not necessarily impossible. More realistically, though, I don't see a +/- 1 second/year quartz wristwatch coming about, as there really is no practical need for one. Radio-controlled atomic wristwatches already exist, so right now you can buy a watch that, in its way, is as accurate as the most accurate time-keeping devices on the planet. It's doubtful a quartz movement could ever beat that, so at best it would be playing catch-up. I understand the difference is the quartz movement would be keeping its own time, rather than being reliant on a signal to set itself, but the market segment that would need a watch accurate to within 1 second per year that is also not signal dependent has to be miniscule. I'm sure the techno-geek faction would appreciate it, but I don't know that they would constitute a viable market, such that we'll see such a movement come about.