As Matt noted in his original writeup on the G. Gerlach Kosmonaut, this is indeed a watch that draws very heavily from the past. Specifically, the first quartz watch made in Poland, and the one worn by Polish Kosmonaut, General Miroslaw Hermaszewski. While I may not have traveled space, I could not help but to think of Major Tom as I wore the watch. Let’s see what I thought of the piece after spending some time with it.
When it comes to chronographs there are two schools of thought. One school focuses on the platonic ideal, the watch the catapults you to the moon, dark-faced and simple. The other school loves the idea of the chronograph as robot, full of odd dials, weird movements, and four more buttons than needed. The Mercer Brigadier Chrono sits firmly and handsomely in the first camp.
This review is one that has been a long, long time coming. While we tend to work to get things turned around rather quickly on reviews, this is one that slipped down the queue time and again. This is because, you see, this Division Furtive Type 40 is actually my own watch – the first (and only) watch I backed on a Kickstarter project – and as such, got bumped in priority for those coming in on a loan. Well, that oversight is being corrected today. Even though the Division Furtive Type 40 is no longer available, it’s review will set the stage for a later model in the lineup what we will also be reviewing.
The Caliper View watch offers a tightly designed modern automatic watch that should make every architect and engineer cry. This is a new watch company taking its namesake from the tools used to measure distances between two sides of an object. I got to wear the prototypes to see how they measure up. Read on for my impressions!
Though it seems to have lost some of it’s luster and momentum lately, there is no denying that steampunk styling is an active, well, “thing”, for lack of a better term. This is an aesthetic that I had some interest in some years ago, and I still look keenly upon steampunk reimaginings of things. Today, we have a pocket watch – the Starling Watch Inception – that goes for a steampunk feel with an interesting bit of very modern technology hidden under the dial.
My first watch-crush was on a Hamilton military issue field watch from the 60s. When I had a few extra bucks recently, I found a reliable substitute in the newer Hamilton Khaki Automatic.
The AVI-8 Hawker Hunter Automatic watch was as unknown to me as the 1950s British jet by the same name. This automatic watch does not disappoint in keeping with AVI-8’s aviation designs that look like the watch was ripped off the plane’s instrument panel and given a leather strap.
The brand gets its name from the British horologist, Thomas Earnshaw, who made improvements to chronometers in the late 1700s. This is a polished, stainless steel chronograph powered by a Swiss quartz movement.
When it comes to the connected watches, we often see that they bundle in some sort of step tracking, as quantifying our lives has become all the rage (myself included). The Wellograph I looked at did get more into the realm of monitoring more things relevant for fitness (including a heart rate monitor), but it was not something that would feel particularly right on the wrist at the gym or out on the trails. For myself, I have found myself spending more time in the gym, and my Fitbit – while a tidy little tracker for daily use – was not giving me the full picture I wanted. That then brings us to my new workout companion, the Garmin Forerunner 920XT.
It was back in July that we first brought you word of a new Dutch brand, Van Speyk, and their inaugural watch. As I concluded in that writeup, the Van Speyk Dutch Diver had a thread running throughout it – familiarity with differentiation. That observation was all based off of what I was seeing in the photos. The question loomed, however – would that impression hold up after seeing the watch in the steel?
