The Nikon Museum in Tokyo issued this handsome wristwatch commemorating the 60th anniversary of the revolutionary Nikon F camera. Apparently the company only made 100 of the watches for sale in their museum gift shop for around US$180. From PetaPixel:
The understated silver watch face is complimented by a black leather band and features an “actual-size shutter-speed dial as featured in the Nikon F” as its centerpiece. The back of the watch has the Nikon F logo emblazoned into the stainless steel.
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Van Cleef & Arpels' Midnight Planétarium timepiece features a mechanical orrery integrated in the watch face. It is only US$214,000. From the company:
The movement of each planet is true to its genuine length of orbit: it will take Saturn over 29 years to make a complete circuit of the dial, Jupiter will take almost 12 years, Mars 687 days, Earth 365 days, Venus 224 days and Mercury 88 days...
44 mm pink gold case; pink gold bezel; aventurine dial, pink gold sun and shooting star, serpentine Mercury, chloromelanite Venus, turquoise Earth, red jasper Mars, blue agate Jupiter, sugilite Saturn. Pink gold crown with sapphire case back. Matte black alligator strap with pink gold folding clasp. Self-winding mechanical movement (Stern Manufacture), equipped with a Christiaan Van der Klaauw module developed exclusively for Van Cleef & Arpels, 48 hour power reserve. Numbered edition
Midnight Planétarium Watch (via @pickover)
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The ladies' fashion novelty became popular among British soldiers during the Boer War, recounts Uri Friedmen, a practice that spread during World War I. Read the rest
Looking for a gift for the NASA Mars rover flight controller in your life who has everything? Executive Jewelers makes watches that display Martian time, and watches with dual displays so you know what time it is on Mars *and* Earth, at a glance. (via @milesobrien) Read the rest
This short film was produced by the film unit of the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the 1950s, and explains the principles behind the first accurate atomic clock, which was designed by Louis Essen and built at the National Physical Laboratory in 1955. The NPL's YouTube channel has other videos of interest to science geeks. (thanks, obadiahlemon) Read the rest
