Ben Clymer

Historically speaking, digital time telling didn't exist before 1969, full stop.

When they were going to the moon, it wasn't like they could buy a Cassie or use an iPhone.

They needed a mechanical watch to strap on the outside of the flight suit.

When you were racing Le Mans or the Mille Miglia in the 1950s, again, there was no such thing as digital time keeping, so you wore a watch.

do that.

The functionality of it is obvious, but I think it's worth repeating here because a lot of people don't remember that 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, there was no option.

You were wearing a watch and it was a mechanical watch to do everything in your life.

And so the idea of me looking at my Rolex now and then comparing it to my MacBook here, there was no option to do that.

I set this watch once with probably an hourly bell on the TV or the radio.

And that was it.

And then you would just assume that this would be accurate for basically in perpetuity.

And then beyond that, going back to the earliest, earliest watches, the Marie Antoinette days, and she was one of the first or the first supporters of what we call hot horology, I'll say with an American accent, which is high end, really beyond basic time telling devices.

And what I mean by that is you can buy a mechanical watch and Hodinkee sells mechanical watch for about $150.

So that's probably a Timex or it might be a Swatch System 51, which are not battery powered.

These are mechanical watches.

Those are machine assembled.

They're basically disposable.

You throw them out when they're broken.

You don't fix them.

There's no what we call finishing or finissage, which is effectively aesthetic flourishes that differentiate those type of watches from, say, Rolex or Omega, which I would classify as mass market luxury, but the most long-lasting of anything out there.