1. Fascinating. If only a watch could have a capsule with all future time compressed into it and a small hole to let it out at a constant speed with a water wheel style mechanism driving the hands. A bit too Pratchet. Quartz, a few seconds a month. are they temp compensated I wonder. Seiko made a self wind quartz watch, I had a swinging weight self winder I lost in Manchester 35 years ago. Time keeps on ticking ticking into the future.

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2. Hi Fran, a couple of quick corrections. The original Accutron movement was the caliber 214, and there was no second motor in that or any of the subsequent tuning fork versions. The movement itself was timed and driven by a tuning fork, which was driven by a pair of coils with a feedback loop, and a single transistor. The tuning fork actually moves the hands by indexing a tiny pawl across a gear with 300 teeth. The fork, running at 300Hz, would turn that gear (called a wheel in watchmaking) once per second. The movement of the minute and hour hands is all gear reduction from there, as in a traditional watch. There are a handful of videos on YouTube showing how it all works, well worth the watch. That 300 tooth gear is so fragile, that watchmaker's tweezers will destroy it instantly. Yet somehow it manages to index 300*60*60*24*365, or 9.46 billion times a year. I have one that's almost 60 years old and still running.

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3. I am a lover of watches and have some beautiful mechanical timepieces. My love of watches stems from my father who was a watchmaker all of his life. I remember sitting transfixed watching him stripping down watches and repairing/servicing them. I wasn’t allowed to ask questions while he worked but he encouraged me to write down any questions I had so I could ask him later. The prices he charged to service things like Rolex etc were so low!!! The prices I pay to have my watches serviced are a fortune and I have to save up to have them done. There is just something about mechanical timepieces that I absolutely love. Your pocket watch is beautiful (whatever happened to the USA watch industry?). I have a silver Longines pocket watch that was purchased, used by my grandparents for my fathers 21st birthday which was in 1941. The watch dates from 1923 and I even have a copy of the page from the Longines manufacturing log that states the date it was built and even the retailer it was sold to. It was originally sold in Germany but somehow ended up in the UK by 1941. One wonders what happened to make it appear in the UK in the early part of World War 2.

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4. I think the Accutron Spaceview is more usable day to day than you make out. It supposedly goes into that sleep mode where the second hand stops if it's completely still. Unless you're dead, you won't be completely still for five minutes. If you put it down for five minutes or more – at night for instance – it will go into that sleep mode. Once you put it on, your regular arm movement will "wake it up." The motion they describe is to manually wake the watch if you need to know the time to the second immediately.

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5. Fran I picked up a Grand mariner diving watch that was an auto winder and had a clear back, might have been the Russian and it had a stem sealing cap ( no chain ) clear back showing the internal mechanisms, all mechanical. I was blown away at its ability to keep time, simply unbelievable, it kept time like a quartz watch, with tbe new clutch design it could not over wind, this was a problem with autowinders, but not with this beastie, I was very happy with it. Invicta (Swiss movement.) the japan movement I know nothing about…
   I did chose the sapphire crystal. It was built by a guy that had a very large watch business in Minneapolis, he spent time adjusted it And it was great,

   you have the skill I think you should build your own, and I think it should be with Micro nixi, and of course having it a frequency counter and a sort of multi meter might be kind of cute, the leads can be part of the band along with the power supply, yes it would be a big watch, But probably unbeatably cool

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6. My current "daily driver" is a Casio 5110. It's an electronic analog watch with not one, but two LCD windows. It is solar-powered and seems to need very little light to stay charged. It has a 6-band radio receiver that gets time updates from government sources such as NIST. Here in California it gets the time from Colorado. Hawaii is too far away and over the horizon, but I'm not usually there more than a month and the watch keeps time very well (+/-15 seconds/month claimed). It can be set manually, if necessary. Also it's easy to toggle between two time zones. It has a stainless case and band (no plastic) and all the functions you'd expect from a digital watch. It's not gaudy or excessively large. After several years, no scratches on the crystal. It's a technological tour-de-force and of much higher quality than I expected from Casio. Best $200 I ever spent!

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7. Who needs a second hand? Our 36-inch clock's minute hand stopped moving. After manyears, the hand's mass torque apparently stripped the plastic movement wheel (gear). Nowe tell everyone it is our unique hour clock . We read time by the hour hand's position. It goes with our "weeklock" whichas one hand on the day of the week. Like a typical quartz movement, iticks once a second. Buthe movementurns the hand 1 revolution in 168 hours. Would love to see its gear train.

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8. Good choice, I'm a big fan of Tissot and Bulova. but what if I told you you could also own a watch with an Apollo connection! I collect affordable watches, I don't own a genuine Accutron although I would love to. The cost is way above my limit. If you are interested, Bulova sells a line called the precisionist. Most of the new ones are garish and I can't see you wearing one but some of the the older ones were sold under the Accutron II label, these tend to some style and a few are absolutely beautiful for tool watches. You may already know this but typical quartz watches run at 32 kHz. Bulova's precionist line runs at 262 kHz. The precisionist line is very accurate, and one, the Lunar Pilot, is actually a reissue of a watch worn on the moon by David Scott after his Omega malfunctioned. The list price is around $750 but they can be found for about half that used or grey market. I love mine. David Scott's actual watch sold for $1.6 Million on auction.

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9. The only thing that can go wrong with a rugged watch like that is the seals, and usually only if whoever replaces the battery doesn't install them correctly. Speaking of which, it was a cold morning on the way to work today and I noticed the glass was fogged on my watch, on the inside! I guess I must've damaged the crown seal when I wound it forward for daylight saving time. But the worst thing is earlier this year my mate decided to quit working Saturdays with his father who's a watchmaker, to spend more time with his family, so I don't get free watch services anymore!

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10. Oh, and also: if it says 100 m water resistance it doesn't mean it's safe to dive with to 100 m, it just means it's tested to that level in the lab. In reality it's "Wearable around sinks and activities such as swimming, sports, poolside diving, and snorkeling. Jet skiing and scuba diving are still not allowed.". Look up "watch water resistance table" for more info.

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11. I have two pocket watches from my grandfather, which had in turn come from his grandfather. Not sure what they specifically are — they're safely stowed so nothing careless happens to them — but their timeframe would be late 19th to early 20th century, and I remember the build quality is amazing. My grandfather often talked about getting them rebuilt, but never got around to it. After seeing this, I may finally have to do it. Thanks for the inspiration Fran!

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