Welcome to the HourTime show, the best 30 minute (+/-) hour podcast on the web.

This week, in our 100th episode, we discuss:

• The availability of the all new HourTime iPhone and Kindle apps. Coming soon to an Android Market(Google Play) near you.

• iTunes LINK
• Kindle LINK

All of us here at HourTime want to thank each and every one of our listeners for their support and feedback … but since we only know of six of you, we will have to just give a blanket shout-out to everyone in general.

Thanks so very much for making the trip with us to the big ‘one oh oh’. You’re the best! 

- Audio Ninja (for the record; not a jerk) 

I got to sit down with Steve Hallock, the North American president of MB&F and driving force behind the Swiss watch brand’s western expansion. The watch he brought for us is the LM1 aka the Legacy Machine #1, a new piece we wrote about earlier last month and that is just now shipping to oligarchs and captains of industry around the world.
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The reclusive horologist George Daniels, famous for his work on Breguet and his important co-axial escapement, died last Friday at his home in the Isle of Man. Daniels was 85.

The horologist was one of the first to catalog some of the best known watches in the world, traveling through Europe to examine rare and odd pieces from his favorite manufacturer, Abraham-Louis Breguet, and great watches from manufacturers like Patek Philippe. He was also an avid motorist and noted trickster, pretending to misuse some rare watches while he was photographing, nearly driving their curator to apoplexy.
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I’ll be presenting at Nerdnite on October 14. Nerdnite is a great gathering of geeks at a great spot in DUMBO in Brooklyn where you can learn all sorts of great stuff. I’ll be talking about watches. Come on out!

*Presentation #3
From Sausages To Swiss Watches: How The Quest For Barbecue Created Western Civilization (The Abridged Version)
by John Biggs

Description: What does savory slow cooked meat have to do with French monks, a doomed Queen, Rolex, and the Enigma machine? We’re going to explore the connections between early cooks and modern timekeeping technologies that keep us on time and connected.

Bio: John Biggs is a tech writer and bon vivant with a love of old watches. He writes for the New York Times, CrunchGear, and is working on a book about Breguet and the French Revolution.

As you’ll recall, I’m a big watch fan and a bigger MB&F fan although I am quite pleased I don’t own one of these $77,000+ monstrosities. These watches are for men who are living the yachting life while injecting human growth hormone taken from the pituitary glands of the recently dead and drinking rum out of human skulls, not for us mere mortals.
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If you want to “make” your own watch can buy a case/movement/hands then over time put them together. This is not a trivial task and has a lot of geek cred associated with it (and at the end of it you have a mechanical watch).
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I just noticed that my profile has appeared in the NAWCC Bulletin and I thought I’d leave a note here. I’ve been busy writing a book on Breguet and so have had no time to update this blog but you can see who I am and what I do on this site, on my personal site, and you can see my “social media” life here. My day job is writing for CrunchGear.com.

Here is my position statement from the Forums I posted a while ago:

Hello, fellow NAWCC members.

I’m a long-time horology fan and a writer with a fascination with wristwatches and pocket watches. I’ve run a watch blog, WristWatchReview.com, since 2004 and have written about horology for multiple magazines and newspapers including Watch Journal and the New York Times. I’m also working on a book on the life of Breguet to be published in 2011. I also run a watch podcast with another watch blogger that can be found at HourTimeShow.com

My goal has been to bring watchmaking and watch collecting to a new audience and to express the history and wonder of watchmaking to consumers convinced that all that matters is the brand name slapped across the face.

I joined the NAWCC after researching at the headquarters library in Pennsylvania and attending my first Mart. Thanks to the NAWCC Museum and Library I’ve discovered many new things related to watches and watchmaking and I’ve become more enthusiastic about the art and science of timepieces.

What are my goals for the association if I’m elected? To increase awareness of the associations classes, seminars, and resources and to attempt group outreach to the various online sites and forums to encourage growth in membership. The NAWCC is a learning organization and the various workshops should inspire and instruct a new generation in the horological arts.

I am fairly new to the organization but I respect its mission and resources and see them as an excellent opportunity to groom a new generation of watchmaking enthusiasts. My efforts will be focused on improving our Internet presence and leveraging various techniques to spread the word about the organization. Why is this important? Because in quick poll of some of the more prominent watch bloggers I know the NAWCC was recognized once. For such a prominent and valuable organization, we are sadly underrepresented in the watch collecting world at large.

Thank you and I would sincerely appreciate your vote.

Again, thanks for visiting and hope to speak to you at a Mart or Meeting soon.

Bruguet announced their latest addition to the Marine line, the Royale 2009. Based on an original design from 1815, the Royale is a tourbillon equipped chronograph.

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What Russian economy collapse? Apparently, despite the fact the people in Russia are starving and with out heat during the winters, government officials still find the funds to buy the little things that make life easier. Like $240,000 Patek Phillipe wristwatches. Everyone snickered a little bit over the Jorg Gray worn by President Obama, but these Russians really know their time pieces.

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If you’re lucky enough to live in Cali or NYC you can see the reborn Marie-Antoinette (Breguet’s no 1160) on October 14 (in Cali) and October 19 (in NYC). Here are some specifics.
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Before the Internet, when a gentleman wanted to polish the brass knobs of his dear mum’s armoire he would depend on his internal spank bank which, potentially, included nudes he had seen in postcards and museums as well as racy lines about breasts he may have read in the Bible. However, barring a visit to the local establishment of vice, there was little way to view two people giving it the old Charles and Diana, if you catch my meaning.

Thus they had to resort to horological erotic automata. These were watch movements featuring two or more figures giving each other a good, filling Hardee’s breakfast either on command or at a set time. These things appear in all sorts of watches including clocks, pocket-watches, and even modern wristwatches.
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I just found a mention of my book in QP magazine. The magazine also has a nice piece about the M-A by Thomas Byczkowski who I’m going to hit up in a minute about his research.
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I pulled the trigger, friends, and I think I found a nice match between form, function, and tradition. I bought the Jaeger LeCoultre Master Compressor Extreme World Chronograph – a review is forthcoming – and I think I found the right balance here. I was constantly going back to watches like Glashütte Original and even, dare I say it, Breguet but they just didn’t seem like watches I’d wear on a regular basis, unlike this monster. Even the Panerai I was eying would end up being relegated to the winder.

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Well, it’s official. I’ve got my first book deal.

Tech journalist John Biggs, who edits the blog CrunchGear.com and has contributed to The New York Times, has signed a contract with Susan Kamil at the Dial Press to write a book called Marie Antoinette’s Watch.

The book will tell the story of an impossibly elaborate wristwatch that one of Marie Antoinette’s lovers commissioned around the time of the French Revolution from the master watchmaker Abraham Louis Breguet. The watch—the “iPhone of its day,” according to Mr. Weissman, because of its unprecedented range of features and functions—took 44 years to make, and Marie Antoinette was long dead by the time it was complete.

What’s my goal? To pull horology out of the fashion ghetto and show it for the scientific and engineering endeavor it really is. The M-A was the Revolutionary Moon Shot, something so amazing that we can barely understand it today.

All watchmakers and watch experts please contact me at john @ wristwatchreview dot com. Let’s talk and get the story of watchmaking right for the first time in a long time.

Nothing amazing… just a flyback chrono in Louis Vuitton brown, but it sure looks pretty.

Breguet Transatlantique Type XXI Flyback