Here is the livestream. It began at 7am PST, this morning. I hope our Senators can treat her with respect. Read the rest

Tucked inside this $1.5 million watch by Greubel Forsey is a tiny ship sculpture by Willard Wigan who is the master at artworks you can't appreciate without high-powered optics. Read the rest

You can tell by the pixels: The Russian Orthodox Church is accused of Photoshopping a photo on their website of Patriarch Kirill I to "disappear" a $30,000 watch. The church leader has previously said that the watch does not exist. Read the rest

Watchismo's badass new multicolored Keypad watches are the followup to the equally badass (and be-dipswitched) Click Watches. Animated blinkenlights on each of the chunky keypad buttons tell the time in a fashion that is delightfully impractical.

Click Keypad Read the rest

Watchismo's acquired distribution rights for Click Watches, mouth-wateringly dorky watches that you set with dip-switches and mechanical dial-selectors.

These new watches are reaching back into the glory days of electronics for their inaugural Dip Switch and Turn Switch timepiece collections. If you look at the circuit boards of any 80's arcade game or electronic device, you'd find these switches. Designed to be used on a printed circuit board along with other electronic components and are commonly used to customize the behavior of an electronic device for specific situations.

Click Watches have ingeniously re-appropriated these 'retro-tronics' into an entirely new way to show digital watch functions. Each switch activates a different function of the watch as seen in the diagram below. Functions ranging from bar graph metered time display, 12 hour and 24 hour digital time display, month, date, day of week and backlight. Stainless steel casing 42mm x 35mm.

Click Watches - The Coolest Watches from Watchismo.com Read the rest

After a season of intensive, public experimentation and iteration, Thinigverse user Syvwlch has completed and uploaded a design for a working, 3D-printable clock that can be output from a cupcake Makerbot printer (these being DIY, open source 3D printers that can output things about the size of a cupcake or smaller).

Syvwlch's work on a printable clock has been one of the most exciting ongoing projects on Thingiverse. He's just upload what might be a final version of his work. This version includes the escapement, pendulum, gears for the seconds, minutes, and hours, and a set of nested concentric gears to provide the corresponding second, minute, and hour movement. And, let's not forget he's made this entire clock parametric in OpenSCAD - in case you need to print up a grandfather clock or a teeny-tiny watch.

Syvwlch's Printable Clock - ready for printing! Read the rest

If you enjoyed yesterday's post about Dkart71's motorcycles made from watch parts, you're sure to enjoy Brazilian artist Blancosur's similar pieces.

Motos feitas de peças de relógios/Small motorcycles-watch parts Read the rest

DeviantArt's Dkart71 makes beautiful, detailed motorcycles out of watch parts.

Motorcycles out of watch parts

(via Neatorama)

This concept design for a Cheshire Cat pocket watch tells the time by the disappearing bits of the mad kitty.

The hours are affixed around the outside of the case in normal clockwise fashion. The cat himself is segmented into 5 minute intervals, the grin, appearing first, is 5 minutes, his head is the 10 minute mark, and each stripe is five minutes. The singular minutes are four dots affixed just below and between the 12 and 1 hour markers.

`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'

Cheshire Cat Pocket Watch Design

(Thanks, Paul!) Read the rest

It's the kind of watch that Nigel Tufnel would doubtless describe as none-more-black. $595 from Watchismo -- part of their larger Tsovet collection.

TSOVET AT76 All Black

This $11 watch is the simplest and most utilitarian timepiece I have ever worn. It is easy to read, has an adequate (not blinding) illumination, is small, light and comfortable but also tough, and has a battery that will last up to 8 years (with many other reviewers noting that it lasts even longer).

The F91W is a distillation of a digital watch. It has three features: tells date and time, has an alarm clock, and works as a stop watch (only up to an hour before it turns over). The functions are easy to use, and aren't distracting.

I originally purchased this watch to use while running, but found that I liked it so much that I now wear it all the time. It has replaced my larger, more expensive Citizen Eco-Drive which is now reserved for dressier occasions. After swimming and showering while wearing the watch I trust its "water resistance" and am impressed with its durability. It's also cheap enough that I don't worry about it breaking or getting stolen.

If you are looking for a simple, capable digital watch that will last for years, this is the one to get.

-- Oliver Hulland

Casio F91W Digital Watch $11

Comment on this at Cool Tools. And don't forget to submit a tool to the Cool Tools Holiday Contest! Read the rest

Manufacture Royale's Opera $1.2 million tourbillon watch accordions open to create a resonating chamber for its little repeaters -- the minute hand is in C#, the hour is in A: "The watch case itself is 50mm wide done in 18k rose and gray gold. It has three sapphire crystals and 60 pieces in its construction. Everything about this watch is crazy. It is weird and wonderful. Ugly and beautiful. A novelty for true collectors, only 12 of these watches will be made - making way for other future Manufacture Royal watches. I really do appreciate the audacity of the men behind this watch and brand. There is a hefty amount of silliness here. They make little attempt to hide the fact that this is one eternally ostentatious toy. The watch comes in a veneered wooden box that is said to be a reproduction of the Bastille Opera House in Paris. In case you didn't detect it yet, the French are behind this timepiece."

Manufacture Royale Opera Time-Piece Watch

(Thanks, Ariel!)

The latest gloriously impractical Kisai watch from TokyoFlash is the Traffic, a watch that displays the time as an animated traffic map -- the $170 LED-watch recharges with USB.

Kisai Traffic

The TokyoFlash folks have a new crazy-ass watch out, the Broke, which tells time by displaying an animation of a shattered piece of stained glass. The bright screen must be pretty battery-intensive because they've added USB recharging, which is pretty nifty.

Reading the time couldn't be easier. Touch the button and a shattering animation will light up the display. The outer ring of blocks represent hours in the same position as hours on a clock face. The inner ring of blocks represents five minute intervals in the same position as minutes on a clock face. Four single minutes are shown in the center.

Kisai Broke USB charging LED watch

Yvan Arpa's coprolite watch is a US$11,290 timepiece with a face made from fossil dinosaur turds and a band made from black cane-toad skin (normally poisonous, rendered inert through processing).

The thing is, coprolites just aren't that valuable. Dinosaurs left behind a lot of crap. This site sells coprolite at $8 per pound (it makes a wicked gift!).

Swiss luxury watch made of fossilized dinosaur feces, toad skin costs $11,290 (Photo)

(Thanks, Jonathan!)

Watch designer Thomas Prescher has worked out how to make every hair on my neck stand up in eerie synchrony with this Flying Double-Axis Tourbillion, a transparent, self-winding watch with integrated calendar that I will never, ever be able to afford. All the gubbins are tucked away in the sides of the watch, leaving just the instrumentation parts on display, in a kind of flippant "screw-you-I-am-miniature-FEAR" gesture to every other watch's workings. Watches like this are what I dream about when I am dreaming about watches.

Man, I can't wait until I can print one of these on my desktop.

Thomas Prescher's Mysterious Automatic Double Axis Tourbillon

Mitch at Watchismo writes in with news of the new honkin'-huge Diesel Super Bad Ass watches: "These monstrous timepieces epitomize this series with many functions in one big old timepiece. A chronograph, a second timezone and a compass all piled into this 55.5mm long block of metal!"

$250 isn't insane for a really nice watch, and this is, indeed, a really nice watch. If I hadn't just filled my second watch-box (to the horror of my wife), I'd be seriously tempted.

DZ1318 Bad Ass Gunmetal Compass -Diesel

(Thanks, Mitch!)