What Sealed The Deal: Colin's Sinn 903 Chronograph
Sometimes, a Time+Tide Watches reader will share a small piece of watchmaking history that makes us turn to each other and wonder how we hadn’t know about it before. This is exactly what happened when Colin strolled into the T+T HQ to look at a couple of DOXA watches, with a familiar looking watch on his wrist, with an unfamiliar name on its dial. He was wearing a Sinn 903 Chronograph, which looked a lot like a Breitling Navitimer from across the room but, as he explained, it was one of the unusual effects of the quartz era. In 1979 Breitling saw parts of its company go into liquidation due to bankruptcy, and Helmut Sinn, the founder of Sinn watches, bought the rights to use the layouts of Breitling’s 806 and 809 Navitimer watch dials. This is the story of Colin’s Sinn 903 Chronograph. During the quartz crisis, Sinn bought the rights from Breitling to manufacture the Navitimer, but they couldn’t call it a Navitimer … so it’s identical; it is smaller, slightly smaller in diameter, but it’s exactly the same. There are a few people who just assume that Sinn ripped off the Navitimer, sort of like Steinhart take…
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When we see something repeatedly, over time, our brains quickly form habits that enable us to infer what we are seeing, bypassing the need to analyse every bit of information. That’s why we can make perfect sense of a paragraph made up of words that are missing their vowels, and why we can read the time on an analogue watch display that has no hour or minute markers. It’s also what makes Franck Muller’s Crazy Hours watch one of the most delightful pieces in contemporary watchmaking. In the first instant the dial appears perfectly normal, with a series of numerals arranged around its circumference. Half a second later, we realise that it’s anything but normal: the usual position of the numerals is completely jumbled. It’s a visual teaser – sense and nonsense – and a brain teaser, playing with how we habitually read time in a natural, clockwise sequence. Since Franck Muller invented the Crazy Hours complication in 2003 it has (unsurprisingly) become an emblem of the brand that bears his name – just as emblematic as the Cintrée Curvex case that houses these colourful limited-edition models. There can be few objects of any kind that combine grown-up glamour and…
Next Thursday, March 19, at Oscar Hunt Tailors in the Melbourne CBD, we will hold an event called Dive Watch Fundamentals. This is at the request of Oscar Hunt, who, like many, noticed that dive watches are featuring more than ever on men’s wrists in the most formal of places. For example, the Oscars. So, the idea was hatched: “Could your team come and talk to us about dive watches?” Rather than an unrestricted lecture, we thought what might be interesting would be a quick history breakdown of the main brands in the game. Which watch brands are part of the dive watch story? Dive Watch Fundamentals is all about learning the basics on offer from each brand. As well as the design tropes and functions that typify dive watches. Crown guards. Bi-directional bezels. Helium release valves. Water resistance. Legibility. Lume. By the end of this event with a difference, you will know it all. We’ll be doing a brand-by-brand breakdown, including all the icons — the Rolex Submariner, the Omega Seamaster, the DOXA SUB 300, Panerai’s distinctive designs — explaining the role they have played in the development of arguably the most popular style of men’s wristwatches on the planet. …