Five Things

[tribe125]

• Raketa gets through a lot of toothbrushes. They’re clamped to lathes and milling machines, and there are few technicians that don’t have one to hand. Nathalia says: “Toothbrushes are one of the most important consumable instruments of our factory: I buy them in boxfuls!” Yuri says: “I would not change my toothbrush for anything else!“
  
  
• According to a report from Watchfinder, the value of neglected watches in sock drawers is $60 billion - and that’s just in America. There must be more in other kinds of drawers, and old biscuit tins.
  
  
• Early motor cars didn’t have speedometers, so Léon Breitling patented a simple tachymeter that could measure a vehicle’s speed over a fixed distance. It was a great aid to motorists, and in 1905 the Swiss police were able to issue their first speeding ticket, thanks to the Breitling Vitesse.
  
  
• Agatha Christie was responsible for the revival of an historic watch company. Swiss entrepreneur Patrick Ulm was a fan of the novels that featured Belgian detective Hercules Poirot, so made a visit to author’s home in Devon, which is now a National Trust property. Amongst the items on display was a pocket watch made by Charles Girardier. Hercules Poirot was known for his pocket watch, so Ulm looked more closely than he might have done. The Girardier watch gave him “a conviction that horology can be art, like music or painting”. A few years later, Charles Girardier was the winner of The Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix.
  
  
• There’s a small piece of Christine Hutter in a Moritz Grossmann Flying Tourbillon. Christine Hutter is the founder and CEO of the company, and is also a trained watchmaker. When developing the Tourbillon, it was found the most gentle and reliable way of stopping the balance was with an elastic brush made of human hair. It doesn’t have to be Christine’s hair, and customised pieces can use the customer’s hair.

[tribe125]

• Maurice Lacroix didn’t come from nowhere. The company behind the company was Desco, which once owned Girard Perregaux, and had shares in Audemars Piguet. As a private label manufacturer, Desco made watches for luxury brands, and it was a distributor for Jaeger-LeCoultre in Asia. At one point, the CEO of Maurice Lacroix became the CEO of Audemars Piguet, but the family-owned company was soon talking of “differences in company strategy” and sacked him. Maurice Lacroix himself was a Desco board member with the best name.
  
  
• The blue version of the Tudor Black Bay 58 should really be called the Black Bay 69.
  
  
• There’s more than one reason for watch companies being secretive about where their gold comes from (like the poisoning of indigenous people with mercury), but one of the reasons is that some luxury buyers don’t like their gold to be recycled.
  
  
• Apart from lovely watch straps, Horween leather is used for footballs in the NFL and basketballs in the NBA. The cowhides come from Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Canada. The horsehides come from France, Quebec and Belgium, where people eat horses.
  
  
• Gérald Genta was so prolific that he designed the Bulgari Octo after his death. Bulgari didn’t buy Genta’s company for its designs, but for its workforce in Le Sentier, which included thirty-five technicians and seven master watchmakers. Lurking in the company inventory was the Genta Octo Bi-Retro, which became the Bulgari Octo. By Genta’s own reckoning, he produced 100,000 designs for watches, so you might expect him to come up with four or five that were very good.

[tribe125]

And that really is it.

[mlcor]

And that really is it.

[skywatch]

I propose that we elect @mlcor to carry the Torch of Things. But he'll have some very Thing-filled shoes to fill.

[mlcor]

In the immortal words of William Tecumseh Sherman, “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.”

[geoffbot]

I found one. May be a repeat of Alan's, I don't know.

Jean-Claude Biver, the former CEO of Hublot, is more than a creative, professional genius ( I didn't write the tripe - gb). Every year, Biver makes around five tons of premium cheese on his estate in the Swiss Alps. This is only produced for a few weeks in the summer to imbue the milk and cheese with a slight floral note, which makes Biver's cheese not only exclusive because of its limited production. Furthermore, he does not regard this unusual hobby as a secondary source of income. Apart from two charitable fundraising campaigns in 2014 and 2016, during which the businessman sold his cheese at the Kaempff-Kohler delicatessen, he distributes it to friends, family and restaurants.