Tomas Weber reporting for Smithsonian Magazine, in an interview with researcher and inventor, Andrew Parker:
“The brightest colors are being produced from completely transparent materials."
Parker is also the cofounder of Lifescaped, creators of some of the most advanced biomimetic colours on the planet.
I imagine it won't be long before we start seeing applications of this technology being applied to watch dials.
Michael Stadermann speaking to the press at last week's announcement of the fusion energy breakthrough achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The level of penultimate-perfection that Stadermann and his colleagues achieve with each spherical diamond fuel capsule that they deliver is mind bending. A hollow shell crafted from the hardest material known to humankind, measuring two millimeters in diameter, near perfectly round, and polished 100x smoother than the surface of a mirror, filled with fuel through a tube that is a mere 2 microns wide.
Somewhat heartening for Stadermann and his team, I'm sure, is that the weight of future progress in this particular branch of fusion technology does not lie squarely on their shoulders. Encouragingly, the system design iterations and laser upgrades detailed by Annie Kritcher and Jean-Michel Di Nicola, to improve the symmetry of the implosion, made this milestone achievement in December of 2022 possible with a fuel capsule that had more tungsten inclusions—and was therefore less perfect—than the fuel capsule produced for the fusion trial in August of 2021.
James Stacey dives deep into the subterranean laboratories at Rolex to provide an inside look at the lengths that the brand went to to adapt its Superlative Chronometer tests to its leviathan-sized Deepsea Challenge—including an Ultra High Pressure tank developed in partnership with COMEX.
The Deepsea Challenge is tested, in land-locked Switzerland, to a level of water pressure that doesn't naturally exist anywhere on earth.
In an interview with Cam Wolf, reporting for GQ:
"There’s no way to make high-end mechanical watches accessible to everyone who appreciates them, but there is a way, at any price point, to create something that inspires the same feeling of involvement in terms of seeing something that appeals to you and the joy of opening the box, throwing it on your wrist and looking at your new watch with a smile. That emotion shouldn’t have to be expensive, in theory."
Rounding out another remarkable auction season, Phillips can now lay claim to two consecutive years of fully sold lots across all of their watch auctions. The first time any auction has done so and a testament to the world-class team that Phillips has assembled for its watch department over the past eight years.
John Goldberger returns for a second episode of Talking Watches, with Ben Clymer, of Hodinkee.
His pragmatic set of rules for collecting bookended the episode:
JX Su provides an insightful look at first run of impressively well-finished timepieces to come out of Prince Horology School, in Cambodia.
"More broadly, the Lotus Tourbillon proves that high-quality watchmaking can be done anywhere."
The initial 25 pieces produced were presented by Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, who was involved in the development of the watch, to world leaders at the ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh.
Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the entire project, from concept to completion, took a mere 18 months—amidst a global pandemic, no less.
Once used as a setting for an episode of CBC's Murdoch Mysteries, Pass Jewellers and Watchmakers, at 91 John St. S. in Hamilton, Ontario, has changed little since it first opened its doors in 1888.
Now a designated heritage building, the shop has been passed down through three generations of Pass-family watchmakers and is now owned and operated by horologist, Vincent Cino.
