Glycines Airman model introduced in 1953 became the companies most well known watch. Glycines chief sales director Sam Glur, on a Thai Airways flight listened closely as the pilot he was flying with described his requirements of the ideal pilot’s watch. When Sam returned from his trip he mentioned his conversation to Glycines owner Charles Hertig Sr. and almost immediately development began, remarkably the whole process only took four months for the watch to be completed. It was rolled out in the American market first and was an instant hit, with its 24hr dial and unique hacking feature which stopped the seconds hand exactly on the 24hr marker. Early watches used the Felsa 692 calibre movements until 1960 when they were replaced by A. Schild movements. This particular example is a pre 1960 model and came in for a service and to sort a problem with the winding and handsetting. The owner also wanted the green lume changed on the hands for something less jarring.
Flieger
Archimedes Pilot
The Archimedes Pilot is a large Flieger type watch that is based on the wartime B-Uhr watches used by the Luftwaffe. It’s powered by a veritable workhorse of a movement, the ubiquitous ETA 2824-2, but I think the current range has switched to the Silletta 200.1 due to the restrictive ebauches (movements) and parts supply policy that Swatch group’s introduced. The daft thing is that ETA’s job, when it was part of ASUAG, was to provide the Swiss watch industry with ebauches which is why it seems so completely wrong for Swatch group to now be limiting supply of ebauches and parts as it affects the whole industry it was created to support!
Anyway, moan over now back to the watch 🙂
It came in due to a problem with the manual winding, it had been feeling a bit ‘graunchy’ for some time but it was now impossible to wind any power on at all, although it still wound through the auto wind mechanism without a problem.
Timefactors PRS-1 Speedbird
Todays featured watch comes from my favourite micro brand, this watch was the one that kicked it all off for Eddie Platts the proprietor of Timefactors. I own many of Eddies watches (seven at the last count) but I don’t have a PRS-1, however I’d love to! This was the first of his designs and was released in 2001 with a production run of only 300. It was called the PRS-1 and is powered by the ETA 2836-2, a 25 jewel 28,800bph automatic movement. The example below came in for a service and to investigate a slipping noise when manually winding.
The Watch Bloke 