This announcement is for the man who lost the Gold Rolex….

[lungimsam]

…Just wanted to let you know that the time is now 9:45pm.


(Heard over the intercom on Royal Caribbean Enchantment of the Seas last week. I thought that was hilarious.).

 

[Guildedagain]

I wore a vintage 5513 for a while and the saying back then was "A Rolex for looking good, and a Timex to actually know what time it is.

Guys with Rolexes rarely know what time it is, they like the way it looks and they like to feel pretty ;]

I was wearing my 5513 when courting wife, bragging about how neat it was and this other gal asks how much it was worth, and I told her and she says "Wow, like you really want to know the time" ;]

 

[GAD]

Modern Rolexes keep great time because they have new mainsprings that cannot be magnetized.

 

[Guildedagain]

Very expensive mainsprings...

This is the one I want, the 1655 "Steve McQueen" Explorer.

 

[davidbeinct]

Modern Rolexes keep great time because they have new mainsprings that cannot be magnetized.

I mean, still not as good as the myriad cell networks everyone’s phones are connected to, but yeah.

 

[GAD]

I mean, still not as good as the myriad cell networks everyone’s phones are connected to, but yeah.

No one needs atomic clock accurate time.

Note that I have atomic-clock accurate time in my home lab via an amplified GPS antenna on the roof, but I am far from normal.

Also, my Rolex will continue to work when civilization collapses. I mean, it will work until the lubricants inside wear out, but it will continue to work.

 

[davidbeinct]

No one needs atomic clock accurate time.

Note that I have atomic-clock accurate time in my home lab via an amplified GPS antenna on the roof, but I am far from normal.

Also, my Rolex will continue to work when civilization collapses. I mean, it will work until the lubricants inside wear out, but it will continue to work.

I love Rolexes and have always wanted one. I merely meant that even with the better timekeeping their ability to keep good time is not the main reason most owners have them.

 

[Guildedagain]

My 5513

Quite possibly the most beautifully rugged watch case in the history of mankind.

James Bond's Rolex 5513 For Sale, Complete With Hyper Intensified Magnetic Field Generator & Buzz Saw Bezel

You want a James Bond Rolex? Well, it doesn't get more James Bond than this. In the seminal Bond flick Live and Let Die, Roger Moore is donning a Rolex Reference 5513 Submariner that has been modified by Q to include both a buzz-saw bezel, which Bond uses to free himself and Solitaire (Jane...

www.hodinkee.com

 

[chazmo]

I've never enjoyed wearing a wristwatch -- pretty much as jewelery -- so Rolex watches have never really appealed to me. For me, I've like Movado and other very thin watches, if that were something I'd even wear... Smaller is always better for me which shows in my taste in cellphones, where I have the smallest iPhone available.

 

[Guildedagain]

Absolutely, the Rolex is like an Albatross around your wrist, enter the Gruen Verithin and other similar very streamlined/curved watches.

Jaeger-LeCoultre stands out, as well as Movado, for incredible and thin mechanical men's watches.

 

[fronobulax]

No one needs atomic clock accurate time.

I have persisted in keeping analog time displays because I don't need precise times as often as I need ballpark answers. The pattern recognition that yields "about quarter of" works faster than processing 10:47. I spent most of my life wearing wristwatches. The most recent one needs repair and instead of finding a repair venue I just swapped it for my grandfather's pocket watch. I have found that pulling the watch out is a PITA but as a result I have learned that I don't really need to know the time as often as I thought I did.

 

[chazmo]

I have persisted in keeping analog time displays because I don't need precise times as often as I need ballpark answers. The pattern recognition that yields "about quarter of" works faster than processing 10:47. I spent most of my life wearing wristwatches. The most recent one needs repair and instead of finding a repair venue I just swapped it for my grandfather's pocket watch. I have found that pulling the watch out is a PITA but as a result I have learned that I don't really need to know the time as often as I thought I did.

I can see the appeal of a pocket watch. I think of my iPhone as more a pocket watch than a wristwatch.

 

[beecee]

Modern Rolexes keep great time because they have new mainsprings that cannot be magnetized.

Then you'd love my Acqua Terra 8500

 

[chazmo]

Note that I have atomic-clock accurate time in my home lab via an amplified GPS antenna on the roof, but I am far from normal.

This just needed to be quoted. I have nothing further to say here being speechless.

 

[FNG]

No one needs atomic clock accurate time.

Note that I have atomic-clock accurate time in my home lab via an amplified GPS antenna on the roof, but I am far from normal.

Also, my Rolex will continue to work when civilization collapses. I mean, it will work until the lubricants inside wear out, but it will continue to work.

Honest question....what purpose does a home GPS antenna serve?

 

[lungimsam]

You can see wherever your house is at any given time !

 

[GAD]

Honest question....what purpose does a home GPS antenna serve?

Legitimate purpose? LOL.

I have a laboratory grade rack-mount clock that’s disciplined via GPS and was used to feed a 10MHz signal to my arbitrary waveform generator and frequency counter so that they perfectly matched. I have no real need for such precision but my used Agilent gear supports it so why not? I also had a small pile of slave clocks fed from the GPS disciplined clock for no other reason than I couldn’t stop.

I’m not alone in my obsession over accurate time. Many are similarly unable to show restraint with such endeavors:

Time-Nuts -- Precise Time and Frequency for Amateurs

At one point I was going to buy an old rubidium clock but then some other shiny thing caught my eye.

Anyway The new house doesn’t have a wife-approved location for such antennas so I muddle through life with only normally accurate time obtained via the Internet time servers and slightly out of sync test equipment.

 

[chazmo]

Prior discussion about atomic clocks and available silicon:

Atomic clock

I would love to have this!

letstalkguild.com

 

[Cougar]

I love Rolexes and have always wanted one. I merely meant that even with the better timekeeping their ability to keep good time is not the main reason most owners have them.

My brother collects these nice watches like they were guitars, lol. I think he said his most expensive is not a Rolex but a Patek Philippe. I mentioned the old $100 blue-face wristwatch I had stopped working even with a new battery, and he sent me a blue-face Grand Seiko he had. Nice watch! I set it correct to the second via NIST's "official U.S. Time" site several months ago. I just checked to see if it gained or lost any time. It was exactly on time! Of course, I rarely need to know what day it is, much less what exact time it is.

 

[WaltW]

My brother collects these nice watches like they were guitars, lol. I think he said his most expensive is not a Rolex but a Patek Philippe. I mentioned the old $100 blue-face wristwatch I had stopped working even with a new battery, and he sent me a blue-face Grand Seiko he had. Nice watch! I set it correct to the second via NIST's "official U.S. Time" site several months ago. I just checked to see if it gained or lost any time. It was exactly on time! Of course, I rarely need to know what day it is, much less what exact time it is.

I know exactly what you mean. I stopped wearing a wrist watch the day after I retired from my job on Thursday May 12, 2022. I have 5 different watches and they've all wound down or the batteries need replacing. I was driven by time for more than 50 years when I worked in the toolmaking profession ie making jigs, fixtures, molds, stamping dies all types of production manufacturing tools.