Times Ticking Watch Talk

Let’s look at the legendary timepiece that conquered the same inhospitable conditions as Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa partner. You can still wear that legacy today with a Smiths watch.

Long before Rolex made the self-winding watch famous, an English repairer named John Harwood solved a problem born in the trenches of World War I, creating a crownless watch that could wind itself through motion alone. This is the forgotten story of the invention that reshaped modern timekeeping.

Long before watch brands fought for attention online, they fought each other in courtrooms - risking everything to protect a single name on a dial. And the battles they fought more than a century ago still shape the watch industry we know today. So let’s step back into a forgotten chapter of horological history.

There’s a strange irony in the world of horology: some of the most legendary watches ever made didn’t come from a watchmaker’s boardroom but from the salty, pressurized depths of the ocean. The story of COMEX watches begins not in Switzerland, but in 1961 Marseille, France, where a young engineer named Henri Germain Delauze founded Compagnie Maritime d’Expertises—better known as COMEX. Delauze wasn’t chasing trends or prestige; he was chasing the ocean itself, determined to push humans deeper and longer beneath the waves than anyone thought possible. COMEX became the elite in commercial diving—specializing in saturation dives, undersea engineering, and missions so far beneath the surface that even steel bends under pressure.

The five watches aren’t museum relics or one-off art projects. They’re cutting-edge machines you can buy today, each pushing boundaries with materials that force us to rethink what a watch can be.

If you’ve never closely examined a vintage Bailey Banks and Biddle watch, you’ve missed one of American horology’s best-kept secrets. These watches are heirlooms, carefully crafted and rich with history. They’re the kind of piece that turns heads, not because of a logo, but because of the details only a true watch lover notices.

Nestled in a valley southeast of Dresden, the town of Glashütte doesn’t look like a place where revolutions happen. Surrounded by pine forests and Saxon serenity, it feels more like a forgotten watercolor than the birthplace of a global legacy. But for nearly two centuries, this quiet corner of Germany has done something extraordinary: it has measured, guarded, and shaped time itself.

Walk into a luxury watch boutique and you’ll be met with the usual suspects—flashy logos, famous faces, and brands that sell their story louder than their specs. But behind the noise, there’s a name that’s been quietly ticking for over a century. A brand that’s innovated without seeking headlines and endured without shouting for attention. That name is Edox.

When Hublot debuted in 1980, it didn’t whisper tradition—it challenged it head-on. Carlo Crocco, an Italian watchmaker with little interest in Swiss convention, introduced a luxury gold watch with a rubber strap. It was sleek, nautical, scented subtly with vanilla, and completely out of step with the stitched-leather orthodoxy of the time. At Baselworld, not a single retailer placed an order on the first day. Crocco didn’t flinch. His design wasn’t for the past—it was for the future. That same year, Hublot sold over $2 million in watches. The rules had changed; most people just hadn’t realized it yet.

In the watch world, most revivals feel like marketing—names dusted off, logos revived, stories stretched to fit modern campaigns. But every so often, there’s a resurrection so improbable, so meticulously earned, that it reads less like branding and more like fate. That’s the story of Czapek Genève, a brand that vanished for nearly 150 years, leaving behind only traces—a few pocket watches, a partnership that helped spark Patek Philippe, and a mystery that refused to die quietly.