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What's the most complicated wristwatch?

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superboyac:
I have an odd fascination with really complicated wristwatches.  You know the kind with lots of buttons and a bunch of little dials and rotating bezels.  I don't ever dive, but those diver watches are sure cool!  The Vacheron Constantin Tour de l'Ile is supposedly the world's most complicated watch.  It's two-sided, see the picture below:
What's the most complicated wristwatch?  What's the most complicated wristwatch?

The watch I use is Casio Pathfinder.  I removed the band and attached a silver chain to it and use it as a pocket watch, because I don't like wearing watches on my wrist.  I got it because it has a digital compass on it, and I never get lost in Los Angeles with it.  LA is so big that if you're not familiar with an area, sometimes you don't even know what direction your headed.  It recently ran out of batteries after 6 years!  I opened it to replace the battery and guess what?  THere are 4 batteries inside!  No wonder it lasted so long.  And not only that, I couldn't find a way to get to the batteries because there's all sorts of stuff in the way.  A couple of tiny springs fell out from somewhere, so I got scared and put the cover back on.  Apparently, to replace the batteries, you have to mail it to Casio, and they'll mail it back.  It costs like $30 total or something ridiculous like that.
What's the most complicated wristwatch?

Darwin:
Please, I beg you, don't do this to me, Aram! I'm a recovering wristwatch (and pocketwatch) addict! My grandfathers Burlington Railroad Pocketwatch is on my desk before me and a titanium Citizen Eco-Drive is on my wrist as I write this. In a dresser drawer I have about 60 other watches (nothing in the same leagues as a Vacheron et Constantin, but Rolexes, Longines, Omegas, Hamiltons, Girard-Perregaux, etc.). I'm actually just revisiting an obsession over my Hamilton 992 Crown set pocekt watch in display case - it's GORGEOUS (but sadly won't run for more than a few hours - needs a cleaning).

What's the most complicated wristwatch?

What's the most complicated wristwatch?

Yeah, I know, I'll never win any awards for my photography!

CWuestefeld:
I have what I think is the descendant of your Pathfinder, the Pro Trek. This one never runs out of batteries, because it has a solar charger. I bought mine after going to a consulting gig in NYC, coming up out from the subway, and realizing that I knew where I was, I had no idea which direction to walk in to get to the client. Luckily, it was early morning, and I spotted the sun to the east through the skyscraper canyon.

The compass is a big help. I like to geocache, and a GPS doesn't actually know what direction you're facing, just what direction the last update changed the reading, which is hopefully the direction you're moving in.

I also like having the barometer when I'm on vacation, to get an idea about upcoming weather. And the altimeter is cool when hiking in mountain areas.

The thermometer is just this side of useless, since I'm not at all interested in what the temperature the skin of my wrist is.

superboyac:
OOo, Darwin, very nice pocket watch.  I love pocket watches.  I was totally obsessed with them in college, and my friend and I bought a few of the cheap windup Russian pocket watches on eBay.  I thought I was so classy:
What's the most complicated wristwatch?
I still like them, but I need the compass so I use the Pathfinder now.  Unfortunately, it's not quite so classy when you pull out a Pathfinder at the end of a nice silver chain...a lot of people laugh at me for it.

My brother in law also gave me a swiss army pocket watch recently with a flip top.  It's my backup watch and I use it for fancy situations.  But the lid doesn't spring open like my old Russian pocket watches, you have to pull it open.  Still, it's nice:


I'd like to see your collection, Darwin, I bet it's really cool.


CWuestefeld, where did you find this Pro Trek?  I've never seen it anywhere.  I've been wondering about the solar Pathfinders...I keep the watch in my pocket, so I figure that solar power will actually be a bad thing for me.  Is that true?  Are there really no batteries in the watch at all?  I'd also like to have that atomic timekeeping.


One of the watches I thought were really cool was one the early G-Shock models that came out around 1991.  It looked really tough, and it's chronometer was accurate to 1/1000 of a second.  For some reason, I was obsessed by that 1/1000 of a second thing.  Anyway, I never got that watch, but I got the sister watch at the time, but it was too enormous for my wrist (I was 5'3" and 95 lbs at the time).  Anyway, years later in 2000, I saw the watch on ebay, but someone outbid me in the last second.  I told him my sob story and begged him to sell the watch to me.  He agreed, took my money, and never sent me the watch (~$100).  Lesson learned.  I'll probably cry if I ever see that watch somewhere.

superboyac:
Just FYI, here is the 1991 model of the watch I got for my 8th grade graduation:
What's the most complicated wristwatch?
It was a very cool watch, I used it on my wrist and as a pocket watch until about 2000.  I still have it, but all the rubber around it has come off.  But the one I really wanted was the sister watch:
What's the most complicated wristwatch?
Why I'm so obsessed by the 1/1000 second thing, I don't know.  At this point, it's a nostalgia thing.  I'll tell you one thing, if my girlfriend or someone were to ever surprise me with this someday, it would be pretty emotional for me.


Then, in 10th grade (~1994) or so, my G-Shock mysteriously stopped working.  I changed the battery and it still didn't work.  Surprisingly, my mom wasn't mad and the next day or so, she got me a new G-Shock, also quite cool because it had the blue nightglow in the back which was new at the time:
What's the most complicated wristwatch?

One day, in the summer of 1999, I was home from college, and I took that first G-Shock that supposedly didn't work anymore, and I opened it up.  I took all the parts out, looked at them, did nothing else, put them back in, and it worked!  I was pretty happy!  A little later, on one of my flights from school, the newer watch fell out of my pocket at the airport somewhere and I lost it.  So I started using the resurrected one again...that's where I got the idea to put a chain on the digital watch.  I've been waiting for it to become a fad but it hasn't.  I'm just a nerd for now...William Hung style, although I don't know what's hanging at the end of his chain (it's probably a wallet).

I should have made this story one of my blogs here.  Oh well, it's not like there are that many people who care about my G-Shock saga!

You can read all about G-Shocks at this guys website devoted to it:
http://www.g-peopleland.com/
Great site!

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