Often in our Historical Horology posts, we go delving back in to the history of a brand, or even of a specific model/lineup from a brand. In today’s look at Bell & Ross, however, we’re going to stick a little closer to current day.
Welcome back to our weekly installment, where we have a quick look at some interesting watches and articles that have popped up over the last week, as well as taking a second look at what some of our more popular articles this week were. Today, we’ve got an unexpected article on watches from The Economist, and an review from last month from The Time Bum. After those, we’ll highlight (as usual) some of our more popular posts from the last week. Read on to see what we’ve got in store for you.
It’s been awhile since we’ve had a TRIWA watch on our pages – the last one we looked at I deemed to be a perfect watch for summer, so I think it’s a bit fitting that we’ve got another one landing on the pages with summer waiting in the wings. Now, you might be tempted to think that the TRIWA Walter Lansen Chrono is part of the “Sort of Black” line (which Matt covered here), but it’s definitely not.
A lot of smart watches I see try to be everything. Email, facebook posts, texts, weather, and so on and so on. They are not watches in a traditional sense, but rather wearable computers that display the time. Today, I wanted to highlight two watches that are more “connected” watches than a do everything wearables. The HotBlack by Hoptroff.com and the Withings Activé, with the former connecting you to your favorite football (soccer) team and the latter tracking your daily fitness goals. Interestingly, both watches are coming out of the UK.
TokyoFlash has made a name for themselves creating digital watches that can be… a wee bit tough to read. With one of their latest designs, the Kisai Rogue Touch Silicon, they have bucked their own trend a bit, and created a watch with two time zones that is actually readable at a glance, with a minimal amount of training.
Like that Clint Eastwood/Chrysler Commercial from the 2012 Superbowl, Detroit is not done yet. Shinola has done a good job in marketing their American Made roots with their quartz driven watches, and now the Detroit Watch Company is offering automatic watches made in the motor city, though of foreign sourced parts.
If you think you have seen the Acionna by Lew & Huey on our pages already, you would be correct. I wrote up the Kickstarter project for the site back when I was still a “friend of the site,” and Patrick had a chance to spend a little time with a prototype. Now that they are in production, the company sent over a pair of watches for a final hands-on review.
When it comes to brands with long and storied history, we do generally head on over to Switzerland, as it’s been the cradle of some very high-end horology. Not too many brands are still in the hands of their founding families as is Audemars Piguet.
Welcome back to our weekly installment, Watching the Web, where we have a quick look at some…
Kickstarter has been good for the Padron Watch Company, so they are back for their third (hopefully) successful campaign on the site. The Hennepin watch is a chose-your-own movement project, with options for Swiss quartz, or Chinese, Japanese or Swiss automatic movements in the watch. In 2012, the hand wound Vuelta was launched, followed by the automatic Tessera in 2013. Both these watches far exceeded the funding goal, and with the Hennepin at more that 50% less than a day in, it looks like this will be 3 for 3.