/fa/ - Fashion

>>14853603
>Railroad pocket watches were expected to be within +/- 30 seconds per WEEK or they were sent to a watchmaker to be adjusted/regulated. If the rate is consistent, you're looking at a pocket watch that runs +/- 3 seconds a day, which is well within modern COSC cert and very close to Rolex's +2/-2 that is their publicly stated 'Superlative Chronometer' rating.
This is a pretty inapt comparison. Railroad watches spent almost their entire life in one position. That's very different from a watch with good enough positional variance properties to be a modern wristwatch chronometer. Pocketwatches also had it easier because they could be larger, which made making a more accurate timekeeper easier.

>>14774918
>get 0s deviation over more than two weeks

>>14380030
Actually, I found it.

>>13880497
The only production watches to ever have met 60s observatory criteria were the 32A made by GP and the 4580 made by Seiko. Not coincidentally, these were the first two 36k bph movements in history. That was one major technical innovation that allowed the watches to achieve better precision (a higher beat rate allows for better positional variance since it is less influenced by gravity). Few modern watches use 36k balances, presumably largely because of service intervals.

I personally blame COSC. COSC used to issue certificates stamped "especially good results", but retired that distinction when the ISO chronometer standards were brought to the modern levels. The observatories also stopped chronometry competitions when quartz watches became available (and yes, yes, when Seiko mopped the floor with the Swiss). I see a place for a truly superlative (not in the Rolex sense) chronometer certification, of the kind that had previously been offered by observatories. I imagine at least some mechanical watch makers rising to the occasion (perhaps some independents like FP Journe, who does take precision pretty seriously). You do see some attempts at high-level chronometry - GS had their 20 limited pieces of VFA watches (at $60k), although those again only reached the 2spd standard set by GP, Longines, Zodiac, et al back in the 60s. I could see Journe making an observatory watch though. Or even GP, why not, drawing on their history. I'm also encouraged by the ZO342, specced at 15spm - it is, ultimately, the most precisely specced production watch in history that doesn't use electricity.