Who Watches the Watchmen (Our Chit Chat Thread)

I thought this was a joke when it came up on youtube,

But no, it's a real thing. How much of a lazy barsteward and a gullible one at that would you need to be?

The trials have an interesting history alright. Most of the big brands competed hard to win as it was good marketing. For most of it Zenith, Longines and Omega made it a three horse race. Longines won the most, though oddly were the least likely to sell official chronometer dialled watches. They did use the tagline "the world's most honoured watch" as part of their marketing speil. Brands like Movado could stand out too. Brands like Patek and AP didn't figure, neither did Rolex. Even though Hans Wilsdorf put forward the first wristwatch movement for chronometer rating, it seems they didn't see the marketing value after that. To be fair it required the deep pockets of very big companies so you'd want to see the cost/benefit.

Later on Seiko came along o try and gain traction outside of Japan and started to upset the Swiss. Them and Girard Perregaux with their high beat calibre were pretty much the last men standing with mechanical chronometers, as by the mid 60's the Swiss were entering prototype quartz calibres, which they were very proud of. In the last trial the only mechanicals in the top ten were GP with Seiko ahead of them. The most accurate mechanical watch in the Swiss trial's history competing with the latest tech was a Japanese brand. So the Swiss got the hump, closed the trials and took their ball back. 😁 There's talk of them starting up again, but not open to non Swiss competitors, of course...

That Seiko and the GP were the only two watches that were entitled to print "astronomical observatory chronometer, officially certified" on their dials. That was another difference; only GP and Seiko sold watches fitted with the chronometer trial movements. You could actually walk in off the street and buy one(by selling a kidney). You couldn't in the case of Longines, Omega, Zenith et al. You could buy the base calibres alright, but not the fettled to within a micron chronometer movements.

The wider observatory rating were much tougher than the old COSC chronometer rating. For a start they included the whole watch, not just bare movements and went on for much longer and subjected the watches to wider temps and vibration. To get more marketing behind the new quartz Girard Perregaux put their 350 series through those tests and passed, though as far as I know never put that on the dials. Probably added too much to the cost and retail price.