Ulysse Nardin has long charted the universe with timekeeping devices.
Graham this past year added its own ode to the orrery.
One is almost embarrassed even mentioning the connection between time and the stars or planets. Charting the movements of celestial objects was humanity’s sole means of denoting the changes of the seasons and the course of a single day until clever heads created units of a narrower measure than sunrises and sunsets … and the mechanisms that could communicate them.
Thirty years ago, starting in 1983, Dr. Ludwig Oechslin paid homage to the role of heavenly bodies and now-seemingly-archaic astronomical and astrological methods of time-telling with Ulysse Nardin’s “Trilogy of Time,” the elements of which have inspired a brand-new wrist-worn timepiece: Moonstruck.
Oechslin’s remarkable series of watches, later reissued in a limited edition of 100 complete sets, commenced with the Astrolabium Galileo Galilei, depicting sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset, dawn and dusk, moon phases, eclipses of sun and moon, the month and the day of the week, as well as local and solar time, the orbits and eclipses of the sun and the moon and the positions of several major stars.
In 1988, the Planetarium Copernicus followed, which displayed the astronomical positions of the planets in relation to the Sun and the Earth. A perpetual calendar indicated the months and the sign of the zodiac.
Oechslin’s series was completed by the Tellurium Johannes Kepler in 1992, its mechanism showing a rotating Earth in its true geographical shape, as seen from above the North Pole. Fiendishly clever is a flexible spring that bends from the Tropic of Capricorn to reveal the part of the Earth lit by the Sun, indicating the time and place of sunrise and sunset. Other features include a perpetual calendar, a tiny moon rotating around the Earth, and a “dragon” hand indicating solar and lunar eclipses.
Moonstruck
With Moonstruck, Oechslin and Ulysse Nardin have returned to the cosmos. What they have created is an ultra-sophisticated and complex watch for those captivated by the phases of the Moon and the moon’s influence on the Earth. And while a number of clever alternatives to a simple rotating moon phase disc have appeared, among them the three-dimensional ball used by De Bethune, this watch celebrates the lunar complication by making it – for many – the watch’s dominant function.
As the watch’s raison d’être is the system of Sun, Earth, and Moon, the dial is dominated by a hand-painted depiction of this planet on mother-of-pearl, with the North Pole at its center.
Around it, on separate discs, are the Sun and the Moon. They combine to create a “scientifically accurate depiction of the moon phase and the global influence of lunar and solar gravitation, which results in tidal movements.”
To achieve this, Oechslin and his team split the moon’s rotation across two discs that combine into a single display. The design goal was to simulate the rotation of the Moon around the Earth, in conjunction with the “apparent” movement of the Sun around the globe.
The Sun
On its own disc, the Sun rotates once every twenty-four hours, which allows the current moon phase to be determined in relation to any location on Earth. Moreover, the combined information also informs the owner of the global dynamics of tides. As these depend on the gravitational effects of Moon and Sun, they’re shown in relation to specific coastlines or oceans. According to Ulysse Nardin, “The Moonstruck is the first timepiece to display not only the gravitational influences of the Moon but of the Sun as well.”
Practicality has not been forgotten. Ulysse Nardin long ago mastered a rapid-adjustment within its GMT models, a feature still used today on many of its watches and one the company pioneered. The traveler will appreciate the quick-setting mechanisms for adjusting the calendar and hour hand. The latter is set forward and backward to a desired time zone by pressing the +/- pushers located at 8 and 10 o’clock.
Limited to 500 examples each in 46mm red gold or platinum cases, the Moonstruck features an in-house movement, the self-winding Caliber UN-106 with a silicium escapement and silicium hairspring. With Moonstruck’s mastery of the lunar calendar, its appeal to farmers, seafarers, werewolves and women is undeniable.
Commemorating the Orrery
Graham, too, is celebrating yet another archaic device that also informed elements of Ulysse Nardin’s Trilogy of Time. The Graham Tourbillon Orrery 1713-2013 marks 300 years of a device that will be familiar to anyone who went to grade school before the computer took over the classroom.
An orrery is a fascinating, often dusty and antique device straight out of Rube Goldberg that sat on the science teacher’s desk, with a crank that sent the small spheres spinning. It was as instant a way of understanding the rotation of the planets as any device seen before.
For the pedants among you, yes, there is a debate about whether or not the first orrery saw the light of day in 1704 or 1713, but undeniable is George Graham’s contribution to its invention, as well as the naming of the device thanks to its presentation to Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery.
Limited to twenty examples, Graham’s Orrery uses a manually wound, 35-jewel Calibre G1800 movement made especially for the company by that undeniable maestro, Christophe Claret.
The Orrery, reduced in size for this application, displays the paths of the Moon, Earth, Mars and the Sun, based on a 300-year calendar. Its three scales, from the outside to the center, display hours and minutes, Gregorian calendar, and twelve astrological signs. The Sun is represented by a pink gold hand-engraved tourbillon bridge with two “Phoenix heads,” celebrating the decoration used by George Graham.
Two crowns control the planets, manual winding, time setting, Moon correction, and Mars correction. On the back of the 48mm pink gold case, a year counter enables the observer to identify correction for the planets, with the formula of Moon: 7 years, Earth: 1156 years, and Mars: 25 years. Thanks to its mechanical solar system model with 100 years calendar, including two additional graduations of 100 years for 300 years in total, Graham can state that the wrist Orrery “is functional for the next 300 years.”
Telling, they add, “We will leave future generations to create the third Orrery in 2313.”
