Moon Watches - A History

Illuminatingwatches

11 months ago

Moon phase - is it lunacy?

Tidal displays useful or eclipsed by other more relevant complications?

Get ready to be moonstruck and gain some appreciation for the many ways where our hobby of watchdom collides with the moon

Month and day displays

The moon has an influence on more complications and watch history than you may think. If we take the “month” display this originates from the moon and the lunar cycle with the new moon to new moon period being 29 day 12 hours and 44 minutes. There had to be some nudging about to make this fit with the 365 day solar calendar based around the earth orbiting the sun as the numbers didn’t really add up, but it still holds that the basis for todays month was originally the lunar month. So your month display is actually a moon related complication. Fun fact: because the lunar month is slightly shorter than our calendar months means we can occasionally get the phenomenon of a blue moon - that is two full moons in one calendar month which occurs around every 2-3 years - hence the expression once in a blue moon. Of course there are multiple other names for specific moons like hunters moon or blood moon, harvest moon, wolf moon, super moon. Even if we take the day display - we see an influence of the moon there with Monday or Moonday originally revolving around worship of the goddess of the moon amongst Nordic cultures.

Moonphase

But the complication most associated with the moon is of course the moon phase. Using markings to track the lunar phases goes back to pre-historic times like this circa 6000-9000 BCE - calf bone of a baboon with lunar markings , and was an important focus of the incredible Antikythera mechanism from Ancient Greece - a civilisation that deified the moon with multiple gods like Artemis (romanised as Diana) and Luna (romanised as Selene).

A reference I can’t resist here is that Selene had 50 daughters with Endymion known as the Menai - meaning months - that represented the 50 months of the Greek Olympiad which was a four year period - which could also be measured by the Antikythera and is the reason we have a four year period between Olympic Games. The lunar phases move from new moon to waxing crescent , to first quarter , to waxing gibbous, to full moon, to waning gibbous, to third quarter, to waning crescent and back to New Moon.

Lunar phases were an important part of early clock history with Cathedral clocks having prominent moon phase displays even before we knew that the sun was at the centre of the solar system. For example the Hampton court clock. From at least the end of the 16th century German and english clocks were including moon phase displays. More modern clocks and pocket watches would deploy the moon phase - with the classic display being the dial with two moons that rotates over the 29.5 day period concealed by two humps on either side to indicate the waxing and waning of the moon.

A great example is the incredibly complicated Patek Philip Packard pocket watch which includes the moonphase amongst many other complications. Moon phases would first start to were being deployed in wrist watches from around 1925 with this awesome patek Philippe model as part of their first perpetual calendar.

Rolex also made an iconic moon phase watch in 1949.

There are some different ways of grouping moon phase complications:

First - the level of precision moves all the way from things like the seagull redstar moonphase chronograph watch where the moonphase is essentially taking place over a 30 days period and you will need to reset it every couple of months.

There are models with a 59 tooth gear that can get some decent precision. High end models with 100-200 teeth gears and gear trains that can get precision into 100s and 1000s of years. Astronomical grade moonphases with watches like H Moser, A Lange & Sohne, Patek Philippe and Ochs und Junior

And the absolutely bonkers Andreas Strehler Lune Perpetuelle that has accuracy up to 2 million years using the remontoir d’égalité mechanism with the newer lune exact adding in a moon age complication.

The second aspect of moonphase watches is the design of the moonphase itself. The vast majority of moonphase complications adopt the classical format with the stars and two moon dial - sometimes with month and or date indicator. There have been variations over time on the design of the moon itself like the man in the moon and other faced moons, through to more realistic looking versions with texture added to show the craters etc.

But there are some new approaches to presenting the moonphase with some examples being the Hermes Arceau L’Heure De La Lune watch , the Arnold and sun perpetual moon watch and 3d Luna Magna.

The Christopher Ward Moonglow and Kristian Van Der Klauuws super accurate 3d moon phase.

A third way of considering this complication is the type of watch within which the moonphase is being deployed. The classical use of this complication is more within the sphere of dress watches. However, there have been more field style tactical deployments such as the glycine moon phase and this Sinn model with moonlight indication.

Moon phase isn’t just in the realm of the mechanical watch either as we have nice quartz examples like TGVs Cartier santos with moonphase ,

as well as within automatic quartz with the Seiko Kinetic range and solar with the Citizen Eco-Drive.

Of course, the moonphase display is now also used in some digital watch ranges like these g-shock models - including the frogman and the casio range such as the W753 that have an LCD version of the moonphase ,

the super popular classic casio moon graph showing age of the moon, phase and angle -

and one of the coolest I’ve seen is this Yes range which have a very cool moon phase - including moon rise, moon set and % illumination visualisation.

A related area to lunar phase is the planetarium watch which sometimes includes the moon with this Van Cleef and Arpels model, Graham’s Orrery Louis Moinet being good examples.

Towards the simpler end of the spectrum - use of the sun and moon as indicators of day and night - essentially as an AMP/PM indicator can be seen in models like the Orient Sun and Moon which sometimes folks may mix up with a moon phase.

Another complication that can be layered onto moonphase is solar and lunar eclipse indicators. There are mechnical iterations of this from Krisitaan van Der Klauuw and the hublot Antikythera Sunmoon MP-08.

The casio cosmophase is able to provide solar eclipse details due to these dates being stored within the watch rather than arriving at them mechanically.

Eclipse inspired watches are another angle like this beautiful vanta black Moser & Cie with red gold that looks like the corona.

Tidal displays

The final moon related complication I will mention is the tidal display showing the high tide around every 12 hours 25 minutes. The connection between the tides and the moon had been seen since ancient times and tide tables such as this one from St Albans abbey from around 1250 linked age of the moon to high water at London Bridge. In the late 17th century the detail oriented first astronomer royal in England John Flamsteed really upped the detail in his tide tables and link with the moon - which would be taken up by Isaac newton and leveraged as part of his broader work on gravitational force. This explained why there were two tides a day caused by two bulges: one pulled by the moons gravitational power, with the bulge on the opposite side being explained by complex mathematics linked to orbital motion that is beyond my small brain.

As the earth spins on its axis places go through these bulges which are the high tide, with the low tide being at the point in between. Tide and time are very interrelated - for example our word for tide comes from the German zeit which means time. Time and tide wait for no man as they say and like clockwork each high tide arrives every 12 hours and 25 minutes.

There are mechnical iterations of tide displays showing the ebb and flow of tides like this Kristian van Der Klauuw watch.

Many sailing and surfing watches include tidal displays like the G-shock G-Lide range, often combined with moon phase displays

and brands focused on this area like Ripcurl, Nixon, Vestal and the analog smart watches of Weret.

More simplistic measures are the use of tide bezels like on the Timex Reefgear.

Of course, tides also link with the behavioural patterns of fish - so fishing focused tidal displays are also another moon related complication with watches like the g-shock Fisherman , Casio fish en time, fishing gear and pro-trek.

Watches worn to the moon

Outside of complications there are of course watches that have been worn to the moon on the Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 missions - which surprise surprise are primarily Omega speedmaster professionals. Reference ST 105.012 was the moon mission version with reference ST 105.003 being used during training and earlier missions. Later Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins would wear the 145.012. Apparently Armstrong in his own daily life wore a Omega CK 2605 from around 1954.

It sounds like it is possible that the Apollo 17 Pilot Ron Evans Rolex GMT master made it onto the moon in a personal preference kit or PPK carried by his colleagues.

And of course there is the famous story of Apollo 15’s David Scotts glass popping off his Speedmaster - which he replaced with his own personal early version of the Bulova chronograph which later sold at auction for 1.6mn USD.

Of course, to draw the link with our previous category of watches - there is an Omega Speedmaster professional moonphase watch that is METAS certified.

One model I’ll briefly double click into - as it taps into a very mysterious part of the moon is the Omega Darkside of the Moon.

The dark side or far side of the moon as astronomers more accurately refer to it - as it does get sunlight - is the side we are unable to see from earth as the nature of the moons orbit and its tidal locked status with earth means we don’t see around 40% of its surface. The cool named “lunar terminator” separates our perceived bright side from dark side. The Apollo 8 mission astronauts were the first people to see the dark side of the moon up close which was commemorated in the Apollo 8 limited edition. The only way the rest of us have been able to see its features is through photos from satellites - like these original ones from the Soviets. More recently the Chinese lander Chang-e’4 - named after the Chinese moon goddess - has landed on the far side of the moon with the Yutu-2 rover - named after her companion the jade rabbit - which opens up many more possibilities for understanding it further.

One of the mysterious facts about it is that it doesn’t have all the dark grey patches like we are used to seeing on the bright side as there hasn’t been seepage of hardened lava onto the surface due to the crust being significantly thicker and pale looking. One of the leading theories of how we arrived at this scenario is that the proto version of earth known as Gaia and another smaller proto planet known as Theia collided with some of the spill off material forming the moon - which is why we share much of its material - with the theory being that we may have had two moons that over time merged into one another as they came closer together which resulted in this thicker crust on one side. The link to this mysterious part of the moon makes this particular watch seem much cooler to me.

Of course - more recently amongst all the planetary options is the moon themed Swatch x Omega speedmaster - notably including the dot over ninety which is a topic that speedmaster historians geek out a lot in similar way to the writing on the back of the case which has had multiple variations over the years.

Moon watches in film

We’ve covered real life moon watches - but fictional moon watches are another angle - for example in moon raker Roger Moore wears the Seiko M354 5019 Memory-Bank Calendar.

Sam Rockwell wears a Diesel DZ7076 in Moon

and there is the model that Hamilton made for Kubricks 2001 space odyssey.

Moon inspired watches is another angle - for example the recent g-shock “the moon” GM-2100MG-1A.

Moon materials

Finally moon related materials that have been used in watches. Romain Jerome included moon dust on the dial of their Moon Dust DNA watch which also included use of fragments of material from Apollo XI, Soyuz and the International Space Station.