There are so many different watches on the market that it is sometimes difficult for the amazing ones to get noticed. Even the most extraordinary watches with unbelievable features are almost completely unknown by many people. Some of these extraordinary watches include the kind of technology (and design) you would only have expected to see on Star Trek when you were a child.
From crazy futuristic designs, to the kind of features you can’t imagine anyone could have come up with – we have the most extraordinary watches ever invented in this article. So let’s look at 8 extraordinary watches which will make you go “WOW!”
Tiwe OLED Wrist Watch
Starting our run down of the extraordinary watches is the Tiwe OLED Wrist Watch. This is an incredible watch, which is incredibly original and different to any which you have seen before. This watch works by displaying a series of dots which float around the screen randomly. The dots float about until you shake or tap the screen, at which point the dots quickly assemble to display the time in analogue before floating about again.
The watch is a concept watch which is the brainchild of industrial designer Lv Zhogfang and unfortunately isn’t possible to buy it anywhere at present, but if it ever became available, I would be first in line to buy one!
Binary Watch
This is up their with a vibrating fork in terms of usefulness for most people (and, yes, the vibrating fork did actually appear in an electronics exhibition recently). If you can’t read binary then buying this watch will probably leave you spending hours of your day scratching your head trying to work out if it’s 2:30, 4:15 or simply midnight.
However, if you can read binary this is certainly one of the most extraordinary watches out there. Basically, if you hadn’t worked it out from the name, the binary watch tells you the time… in binary! Imagine the power you’d feel if you were the only person in the room with any device capable of telling the time and this is the device you hold. “What time is it, well… I could tell you, or I could hand you the watch and enjoy seeing you struggle to work it out yourself.”
Creating the watch has undoubtedly involved a lot of work – of course, it’s questionable how many people will actually be able to make much use of it. But for those who do, the release of this watch must be a dream come true.
Fossil O-Ring Watch
This original watch design sold by Fossil – an incredibly popular fashion watch brand – is designed by Phillipe Starck. If you’ve never heard of Phillipe Starck, he is a French designer who has designed, well, pretty much everything – from furniture to food and everything inbetween. When it comes to watches he has designed watches for numerous different manufacturers, all of them are original – but the Fossil watch is certainly up there as one of the most original watches ever designed.
The O-Ring works by having a ring shaped screen display with the number of the current hour appearing where it would on a normal watch. The minutes of the hour are displayed in segments which builds up, creating a complete ring at the end of the hour. The centre is completely see through and makes for a unique, original style which you won’t, find anywhere else.
Pebble Watch
The Pebble watch is not just an extraordinary watch because of the things it does, but also because of how it came to be in the first place. In terms of what is so extraordinary about the watch itself: it was incredibly innovative at the time – becoming one of the first smartwatches to link to Android & iOS devices and display messages. It also became one of the first smartwatches to embrace third party apps, like smartphones do – allowing it to open up to all sorts of additional functions.
But what is most extraordinary is the how the watch came to market in the first place. The idea of the Pebble watch was thought up by Eric Migicovsky, who came up with the idea and then started looking for investment. After struggling to raise all of the funds needed from investors, Migicovsky’s company, Pebble, took the unconventional route of stsarting a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in April 2012. Within 2 hours the $100,000 required had been raised – by the time the campaign closed $10,266,844 had been raised – eclipsing the previous Kickstarter record. Since it’s release the Pebble smartwatch has been a runaway success, with over 300,000 devices shipped within its first year and over 1 million by the end of the second year. However, had the original idea of starting a crowdfunding campaign never been considered – it would still be an idea in the mind of Eric Migicovsky and not a real product you can buy today.
Deep Space Tourbillon
The tourbillon is one of the most difficult complications to build and any watch which includes them is guaranteed to cost more than anyone can realistically afford. If you have never heard of a tourbillon before, according to Wikipedia “a tourbillon aims to counter the effects of gravity by mounting the escapement and balance wheel in a rotating cage, to negate the effect of gravity when the timepiece (thus the escapement) is stuck in a certain position.”
However, today any watch including a tourbillon does so as a demonstration of incredible watchmaking, rather than to provide the benefits it was originally created for. There is no doubt that a tourbillon at work is something to admire, which is why people are willing to shell out so much to own one.
The Deep Space Tourbillon was designed by Vianney Halter and has been created to look like the Deep Space Nine station from Star Trek. Of course the design is incredibly original and includes a triple axis tourbillon, which is incredibly hard to make. The watch sells for around $190,000 – meaning you would really have to be a hardcore Trekkie, or a huge fan of Halter’s work. You probably need to have just won the lottery, too.
One of the buyers of the watch explained on his blog why he purchased it:
“For me, Vianney is one of the true artists of horology. His work is always edgy without (to me) going over the line, and history has already established his Antiqua – which many found shocking at its introduction – as a modern classic. I see the Deep Space Tourbillon as a worthy extension of Vianney’s daring design aesthetic.”
There’s no doubt whatsoever it is one of the most extraordinary watches of all time and one which certainly makes you go “wow!”
OLED OSHWatch
Yes, that’s right, another OLED watch – but this one is certainly different to the Tiwe one, mainky because it is a DIY watch! The OSH means Open Source Hardware, which means that the design is made publicly available for anyone to have a go at making.
Is there any watch more extraordinary than one which you can knock up in your garage? OK, so admittedly, it isn’t something you could “knock up in your garage” all that easily – but it is still incredible that if you have the necessary electronics skills you really could make one at home. Jared Sanson had an OLED lying around and said “hey, this could be used to create my own watch” (note, he may not have actually said this).
Jared started putting the watch together in early 2013 and he posted pictures of him wearing a working watch in July 2014. Which is pretty impressive! Many of the features, including the clock (pretty important), were working at that point – after a lot of hard work on both the hardware and programming the software on the watch. So, if you have an OLED lying around somewhere and you’re a dab hand at electronics and programming, you could always create one of these yourself. If not, well… you could always just buy an Apple Watch instead!
Citizen Astrodea
Citizen have many extraordinary watches on the market, many which will certainly make you go “wow” over and over again (especially when you see your watch automatically set to the right time when you change time zones as you can in their award winning advertisement.) But none do quite as much as the Citizen Astrodea – especially for those who have a real interest in astronomy (Believe me, Galileo would have gone crazy for it!)
The Astrodea is perfect for the stargazers with 1,109 stars on the dial – acting as a very fancy star chart. The watch comes with a magnifying glass so you can check out all of the stars on the dial, but those who buy this watch won’t just want to look at the stars on the watch itself. One of the best features on the watch is the way the dial spins (incredibly slowly) letting you know what stars you can expect to see in the sky at night at different times of the year. Making it much more than just an incredibly original and beautiful design.
As someone who’s understanding of astronomy doesn’t really extend far beyond knowing who Galileo Galilei is, most of the features of this watch are beyond me. But it is impossible not to say “wow” when you see the way the watch looks and understand the care that has gone into creating something so useful for those who love astronomy.
Timex Thumbnail Watch
So, like the first watch in this list – this watch is still a concept design at the minute. But it will certainly be one of the most extraordinary watches ever created if it becomes reality and, if it does, I will be first in line for one.
The Timex Thumbnail Watch idea came about during The Future of Time design competition which Timex ran in conjunction with Core77. One of the runners up in the competition was a design for a disposable timepiece which can be worn on a users thumbnail – making it both useful for telling the time and a nice little fashion accessory. The device would be transparent and stay clear until the user glances at their thumb to activate the device, at which point it would display the time.
Whether the concept will ever turn into a real watch is impossible to know – but if it did, who wouldn’t enjoy trying one out at least once. It would certainly be fun to pretend we’re actually living in the futuristic world 70’s movies imagined we would be!
Conclusion
There are a lot of extraordinary watches out there – and I have included some of the most extraordinary existing watches, along with a few very extraordinary concepts. Whether this has convinced you to save up for a Deep Space Tourbillon, take up astronomy so that the Citizen Astrodea is useful to you – or to simply pester Timex to release the Thumbnail Watch, I’m sure you’ve seen something you didn’t know about before.
Oh, and if you’ve decided to put together your own variation of the OSHWatch – make sure to send me a picture of it (or you could just post me one of your created models… I’d love to make one but I don’t have a soldering iron… or any real electronics skills!)
