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Jack Forster Just Published His 1,000th Story On HODINKEE

Published on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Our editor-in-chief shares his favorite memories and stories from six years at the helm.

Synopsis

In this special episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent celebrates a major milestone with Hodinkee's Editor-in-Chief Jack Forster, who has just published his 1,000th story on the site after six years with the company. The conversation traces Jack's journey into watches, beginning in the early-to-mid 1990s when mechanical watchmaking was a niche interest relegated to the back of magazine racks alongside doll collecting publications. Jack recounts his first experience restoring a 125-year-old Waltham pocket watch and how that sparked his lifelong fascination with horology.

The episode explores Jack's most memorable interviews, including conversations with Nicolas G. Hayek, who almost single-handedly saved the Swiss watch industry, and independent watchmaker Philippe Dufour, representing opposite ends of the horological spectrum—industrial pragmatism versus artisanal perfectionism. Jack reflects on his evolving relationship with Switzerland, coming to understand the deep historical roots of Swiss watchmaking dating back to the Huguenot refugees who fled France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The heart of the episode is Jack's countdown of his five favorite Hodinkee stories: debunking the myth that nuclear EMPs would destroy quartz watches; exploring Patek Philippe's Caliber 89 and the "Easter problem" in perpetual calendars; his deeply personal piece on the Rolex Day-Date as the ultimate status watch; his massively popular value proposition story on the $75 Seiko 5; and his quintessentially quirky investigation into who invented the spring bar. Throughout, the conversation reveals Jack's unique ability to blend technical expertise with personal narrative, making complex horological concepts accessible while never losing sight of the emotional and cultural significance of watches.

Transcript

Speaker
Jack Forster I mean the truth is, when I started writing about watches in the late 90s, it it took years to become a watch expert. You can do it in six months now. Like if you're really serious, you can do it in six months. If that
Stephen Pulvirent . Hey everybody, I'm your host Stephen Polverant and this is Hodinky Radio. This week we've had a huge milestone in the history of Hodinky, and that's that our editor-in-chief, Mr. Jack Forrester, posted his 1000th story to hodinky.com. Um, as somebody who's been with Hodinky uh for a very long time, that is almost unfathomable to me. Jack just celebrated his six-year anniversary with the company just a couple weeks ago, and I thought it'd be fun to have him on to go through all of that vintage Jack Forester goodness. So we're gonna do a little bit of talking about how Jack got to Hodinki, his career, how he got interested in watches, and then Jack's gonna walk us through some of his favorite moments. So that'll be anything from reporting trips in Geneva to interviews with his favorite watchmakers, and then we're gonna count down his five favorite Hodinky stories that he's written over the last six years. It's an amazing insight into some of the behind-the-scenes stuff as well as what I think are some true benchmark hodinky stories. So without further ado, here's Mr. Jack Forrester. Let's do it
Jack Forster . If I am the Christopher Columbus of Hodiku who gets credit for reaching the new world slash one thousand stories first. You're actually Leaf Erickson who was there five hundred years earlier and doesn't actually get cred
Stephen Pulvirent it. I like I like that for having discovered the new world. I'll take being the Leaf Ericsson of Hodinky. I'll I'll take that. That's that's a good that's a good one. I think let's keep the focus on you and your odometer turnover here. A thousand stories is a lot of stories. And before we get into the details, it's too many, really. It's too many. Let's be honest. You think it's too many? That's too many stories
Jack Forster . I I mean a thousand stories about watches. One thousand stories about watches
Stephen Pulvirent . Okay. The thing I love about this is like I'm I'm sure you get the same thing, but like when I tell strangers that this is what I do for a living, the first question I get asked is there's there's enough happening with watches for you to write about it as a full-time job? And I'm like, there's there's enough happening in watches for many people to write about this as a full-time job for many, many years. Does it continue to surprise you that like this continues to be fascinating and exciting and that there continues to be new stuff to write about
Jack Forster ? Oh my gosh. Well uh that's a fantastic question. And uh yeah it uh it shocks me to this very day because when I first got interested in watches which was uh, you know back, in the like early to mid-1990s, first of all, there was no watch internet. Uh there were the magazines. Right. And the watch magazines were on the bottom back racks in the newsstands next to the doll collecting and model railroading magazines, that's I mean, that's where we were. Like nobody cared about watches. Uh you know, there was uh the Time Museum in Chicago, uh there were people like, you know, Seth Atwood who were just uh you know like terminally stubborn in their love of watches. And there were a few people around the world who'd kind of like, you know, kept the home fires burning for fine mechanical horology, but, you know, it was certainly nothing like it is today. And uh the f the the fact that there are so many more people now than there were in 2000 who think watches are interesting sort of blows me away, but they have kind of become the Birkenbags of uh our time, haven't they
Stephen Pulvirent ? Yeah, they have it. It's it's funny. I mean, I've only been doing this, I guess what, like nine, nine years now, I guess, nine, ten years now, full time. And and before that had a sort of passing interest in watches, but nothing, nothing serious. And in the decade-ish I've been involved, the level of interest in general education has gone through the roof. And I think it's actually made our jobs both more fun because we get to speak to bigger audiences and different sorts of people. We sure do. But also more challenging. So challenging how? I think challenging in that there's more people to hold us accountable and more people to keep us honest. And we we have to go deeper and we have to take things a step further and we have to think a little harder because the audience we're speaking to now knows way more than we did, you know, five, 10 years ago. And like the general level of education is just so much higher.
Jack Forster I mean, the truth is, when I started writing about watches in the late nineties, it it took years to become a watch expert. You can do it in six months now. Yeah. If you're really serious, you
Stephen Pulvirent can do it in six months. If that yeah. I mean, when you first got interested in watches, what what was it that kind of ensnared you? Because I I think a thousand stories later we can we can say you are verifiably, I mean, there are numbers to prove it, that you are obsessed. And and I wonder in those early days, what was it that kind of like what was the tip of that hook that kind of got you got you into the game?
Jack Forster I mean, you know, and and thank you for asking that, Steven. I mean, like honestly, between uh, you know, you and me, it was just uh I wondered how these ridiculous little machines worked. You know, they're not all that big. The first watch that I ever worked on, you know, and restored was a a a Waltham, which I still have. It's 125 years old. It doesn't even have a second subdial, but there was something about taking it apart and putting it back together and seeing the balance start to beat. Yeah. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein. I was like, it's alive. It's alive. And it's a watch, so it's not going to strangle my wife on our wedding night. Yeah, it was it it was an astonishing experience. I mean to take a machine that's a hundred and twenty-five years old and is uh inert and apparently uh you know just like dead. It's never gonna work again. To be able to take that and make it uh, you know, actually start to keep time again to work again was incredible. You know, and I got it to where it was keeping time to within 10 seconds a day, which for a hundred and twenty-five-year-old pocket watch is not b
Stephen Pulvirent ad. Yeah, I I agree. I mean there's there's beauty, I think, in the the science and the engineering itself, but I I know another thing that deeply fascinates you and that that fascinates me as well is the artistic side of watchmaking as well. And it's almost like if we want to continue your your little like uh your your metaphor or analogy here, right? It would be like if you asked Einstein to do physics proofs in calligraphy, right? Like you're asking somebody That's a really great analogy. Yeah, right. Like you're you're and I I I just thought of it now because of what you were saying, but it's like we're asking people to solve extremely complex physics and engineering problems, but to do so like with a flourish, which is like not typically how we ask people to do science. And I wonder what you think about that? Well, y you
Jack Forster know, uh th there are very few uh places in the world nowadays, there are very few um, you know, kind of like realms of human activity where there's a combination of extreme high precision and expectation of high precision and also uh just sort of like aesthetics. Um I mean you see it you uh y y you you you used to see it in gosh, like some medical instruments, for instance, from like the mid-1800s to the late 1900s, where they were designed to serve a certain purpose, but they were also as well-made and as aesthetically pleasing to look at as they as they possibly could be, but like watches are really unique in that respect. I mean, this we think of it as a combination of aesthetics and mechanics, but the truth is for most of the history of watchmaking, that dichotomy did not exist in the minds of people who were making watches I I don't think they were trying to make anything pretty. I don't think they were trying to make anything beautiful. I think the beauty that you see in things like marine chronometers from the 1800s, you know, for example, it's a natural consequence of respect for the material and uh for the craft necessary to produce accurate tim
Stephen Pulvirent ekeepers in those days. Yeah. I mean it's interesting that you go to marine chronometers. I mean you you and I have had some conversations over the last couple days kind of leading up to this. And I know that a big moment for you over your last thousand stories was getting to see the H5 at the Royal Observatory. And you, know, for you, that that must have been like a pilgrimage, right? Like I can think of few things and few places that seem more like perfect homes for Jack Forester than standing in front of the H5 at the Royal Observatory. I
Jack Forster mean, you're you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And to frame it in religious terms is not like inaccurate. Yeah. You know, uh I'm I'm not Muslim, but uh I've for a watch enthusiast, this is the equivalent of going on the Hajj, you know, and seeing the Kaaba for the first time. For a Christian, it's the equivalent of going to going to Lourdes. You know, I mean uh you see this thing. The first real practical marine clock that kept time better better than a modern quartz watch, kept time better than the modern quartz watch, on a journey from England to Jamaica in the seventeen hundreds, and it was also just, you know, decorated to within an inch of its life? Like why would you do that? Like John Har I I would love to ask John Harrison, if he were alive, I'd say to him, you know, why did you have to put all of this incredibly flawlessly executed, you know, foliate scroll work all over this thing. Was it uh I mean some people think it was because he wanted to confuse people visually so they couldn't actually see what was going on technically, but I kind of think he just wanted it to look nice. Ye
Stephen Pulvirent ah. I I wish I could pull like an Oprah moment right now and be like, well, Jack, lucky for you, waiting in the wings, we have John Harrison. But like we have John Harrison. He's been dead for what, like two hundred and fifty years. So like I think that's gonna be a little a little to
Jack Forster ugh. Also, quite honestly, he would have been like the worst interview possible. Like he hated everybody. I think he hated himself almost more than anyone else. And like if you read his writings, his writings have more fo
Stephen Pulvirent otnotes in them than anything else. Yeah. I'm curious, you know, since you can't talk to John Harrison. It's not for lack of trying. Not for lack of trying, true. Uh there may or may not have been some seances at Hodinky HQ. That's a whole other episode. But uh in terms of interviews you've actually been able to do, who who stand out as highlights? Like who are people you either always wanted to talk to or never expected to get a chance to talk to, who uh you you got to interview and write stories about? I me
Jack Forster an the two biggest holy smokes I can't believe I'm talking to this person moments for me were probably Nicholas G. Hayek, who was, you know, I mean, if there's any one person who is responsible for the fact that mechanical horology still exists. It might be him. And he certainly didn't do it alone. There were plenty of other people who helped to make the mechanical renaissance happen. But you know, um Papa Hayek was brought in to sell off the bits and pieces of the switch watch industry so that the banks could make back as much as they possibly could on a bankruptcy declaration, and instead, he created Swatch. He created the Swatch Group and he made collecting watches a thing. And the great thing about interviewing Papa Hayek was uh he always said exactly what was on his mind, and you know it's unfortunate. I can't print or repeat the most hilariously entertaining things that he said, but he said a lot of hilariously entertaining things. Certainly he did not have a high opinion of Swiss bankers. I'm not I'm not surprised. And who was the other one? You said there was a second one
Stephen Pulvirent . Oh you were there for this one. Philippe
Jack Forster Dufour. Ah yeah yeah. It's super super easy if you read about watches to be uh cynical about the whole idea that there's like, you know th this is the joke we have, right, Stephen, that there are like Swiss elves uh working by candlelight. And uh, you know, they bake the cookies in a hollow tree, and uh the Keebler elves are on one side and the Swiss Swiss elves are on the other. But like you go into Philippe Dufour's workshop and like there's the prototype for the duality. And here's like the prototype for the minute repeater that he did for you know Odmar Piquet and and there's like twenty million tools that you only might need once in a fifty-year career of making watches or making cases. But when you need that tool, you'll need that tool. And Philippe's got all of them. And uh he's uh he's such a lively person and uh speaks with such genuine love and honest contempt combined for the Swiss watch industry. That was that was that was pretty fantastic. So the so those are the those are those are the two guys. There was the intolerant perfectionist industrialist who really thought that the Swiss never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Yep. And uh, you know, then there's Philippe Dufour who was just like, yeah, I I've been trying to make beautiful things for people who don't appreciate horological beauty for the last thirty years. I'm still at it, and the truth is the work more than makes up for the stupidity of the people I have to work with
Stephen Pulvirent . Yeah, it's it's funny that you pick those two guys. I mean they're they're Titans in very different ways, but I think they they in some ways encapsulate the watch industry as as you and I get to experience it, right? Like they're the kind of bookends and the the the two poles, I guess, around which everything else sort of orbits in terms of perspective approach. Yeah, I mean uh you know Papa Hayek
Jack Forster was uh or Mr. Chairman, as uh as we as we all used to call him, as as Joe Thompson used to call him. You know, he understood that in order for the Swiss watch industry to exist, there has to okay, there has to be an industrial base, there has to be a company like Niverox that can make you know assortments and balance springs for anybody who wants them. Certainly Don Corleone can charge a price for such things. But there has to be an industrial base if there's going to be a Swiss watch industry at all. And then there's on the other end, people like you know, Mr. Dufour and uh Rex Ep Rexepi, uh you know, Crivia, uh, you know, these are people f who really hue to the old school vision of luxury watchmaking, which is that it costs whatever it costs and it takes as long as it takes. And hey, you want an actual handmade watch? I mean Roger Smith just stopped taking orders. Right? Like you want an actual handmade watch? You're gonna have to wait.
Stephen Pulvirent Yeah. Well I I I want to make sure we get we're we're gonna get in a minute to your five personal favorite stories that you've written. But but before we do that, I've got a couple more kind of like quick, quick little questions I wanna ask you. Sure. You've said before that Switzerland is a place that it it took you a little while to kind of learn to to love and learn to enjoy. And I wonder if we if we just look at the last, you know, six years of of your time at Hodinky, the last thousand stories, what is something you discovered about Switzerland as a place? It can be Geneva, it can be elsewhere that you you didn't know before, but that that you like or that you get some sort of pleasure or enjoyment out of
Jack Forster . I mean the thing that I didn't understand about Switzerland for years when I first started traveling there was this is a very, very ancient country. It is at a very ancient crossroads between very ancient civilizations. And you know, the Swiss watch industry really got kick started when John Calvin turned Geneva into the uh Protestant Rome. And uh the Edict of Nantes was revoked, and lots of really, really smart people and technically smart people fled from France into Switzerland. They, by the way, they were not necessarily warmly welcomed either. They were kind of treated as uh, you know, possible interlopers, but they had skills like watchmaking and uh jewelry making. And just like sort of understanding what swi what Switzerland really is as a country and why watchmaking set down such deep roots there. It took me a long, long time to sort of start to appreciate that because Swiss watchmaking, like it's cliché. You just assume, you know, it's one of those clichés like German engineering, right? Like, oh, okay, the Germans are good at engineering. And you know, you sort of stop there. Oh, like watches are made in Switzerland. You sort of stop there. But there's there's a reason why people talk about Swiss watchmaking and with very few exceptions, they don't talk about watchmaking from other countries. Okay, we talk about Japanese watchmaking thanks to Citizen and Seiko. We talk about German watchmaking thanks to Lange, Jungens, and a few other companies. But like l mechanical watchmaking is a Swiss play, and understanding w why that happened historically and how it affected and reflected the fabric of the evolution of Swiss society was something it took me a long time to, you know I didn't first of all I didn't I didn't even realize that it was an open question. And once I did it took me uh even longer to you know to figure out. But it it's a it's not a big country, it's this landlocked little, you know, place in the center of Europe that you kind of have to go through, but like maybe you don't want to if you're on your way to invading somebody else because there's too many mountains and uh lots of sturdy young Swiss lads who will uh you know knock you out as soon as look at you. So maybe go through Belgium instead of Switzerland if you're in an invading frame of mind. But it's like it's a it's a it's a quirky little country and it doesn't have the immediate sort of like seductive flash of Italy or France. Yeah. Or Belgium? Yeah, maybe. We'll give them that one. I don't know. But you know, it's it's a it's a it's a strange little country. And the fact that watchingmak grew up there uh the way that it did is uh a a s very, very stran
Stephen Pulvirent ge historical artifact. Yeah. It's it's deeply fascinating. And you you and I have had many, many conversations about about that subject, but um I I wanna know people think of you and by people I mean like myself and our other colleagues included. People think of you as as the sort of like err resource for all things watchmaking history, right? Like when I have a question, you are my first port of call, you know? And I think most of our colleagues feel the same way. And I think uh most people listening to this probably feel the same way. And so I I wanted to know what was a story you wrote where while you were writing it you learned the most, where you maybe figured out like, oh, I I don't know nearly as much about this as I thought I did, or the things you thought you knew maybe turned out not to be true or not to be the whole story
Jack Forster . So I have two answers to that question. The first is the first time I uh had to write a story where I really wanted to understand how a minute repeater works and how a minute repeater works is not intuitive. There's a million little parts. So here's here's a funny thing. In the minute repeater, there is a thing called a surprise piece. And generally speaking, in watchmaking, components are named for what they do. But the surprise piece is not named for what it does, which is uh enable striking to happen accurately at the end of a fifteen minute interval. The surprise piece is called the surprise piece because when it's activated, it jumps out from behind another component. Surprise. And uh it's it's uh this is the sort of thing that makes watchmaking both fascinating and just, you know, insanely frustrating to study because I I spent three weeks of research, you know, but this is back in the early two thousands. I was like, why the fuck is this called a surprise piece? Like is it surprising in its action? Is it surprising that it does what it does? And it's like literally because when it is activated, it looks like uh somebody jumping out of a cake at a at a birthday party. Lovely. Surprise. So yeah, so there's that. The other thing that was really challenging for me to learn was I think it was one of the earlier stories I did for Hodiggy was about the Longin's hour angle watch. Oh yeah, the the Lindbergh watch. The Lindbergh watch. I thought to myself, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna learn about this one and uh figure out how it works. And it turns out that how it works was part of a complicated system of aerial navigation based on celestial observations that was created by Charles Lindbergh after he flew across the Atlantic because he got lucky and he knew he got lucky. So the first time he flew across the Atlantic, he was navigating by dead reckoning. And uh as he approached the coast of England, he literally buzzed a fishing boat off the coast of Ireland and asked which way is Paris? Um which is you, know not, the robust way of most robust way of navigating. So he wanted something more reliable. And uh air navigation in those days was kind of in its infancy. And so like the whole process of figuring out where you are when you're traveling at hundreds of miles an hour and it's pitch dark and you have no visual landmarks. And what but what you you know what you do have are star charts and ephemerides and a sextant. You can look at where the stars are relative to what you know they should look like at a particular time for a particular position and and you can kind of figure out where you are. And the whole thing was complicated. I mean, my brain hurt at the end of writing that story. You know. But this is one of the wonderful opportunities that writing about watches, I think, offers us. Like I I don't remember all of the details now. And if you put me in an airplane at midnight over the Atlantic Ocean with that watch and charts in a sextant, I would probably just push the stick forward and dive into the water as hard as I could because there's no way I'd be able to like, you know, find land using tools that I had once understood. But for for a little while, you're in the head of the person who designed this thing, and you were in the head of the person who was out there at 10,000 feet in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the stars to tell them where they're going. And uh it was a lot of work to write that story. I'm I'm still pretty convinced it wasn't as lucid as it could have been, but uh to feel like you're there, to feel like it's like nineteen thirty two or whatever, nineteen twenty eight. And like, you know, there you are. You're looking up at the stars and and by God they're gonna tell you where you are. That was an amazing feeling. That was an amazing feeling. That's incredible. And I've forgotten
Stephen Pulvirent the whole thing, of course. We couldn't quite put you in that situation, but you did get to take the stick of of a plane.
Jack Forster Oh gosh, yeah. That was a that was another one of my I think favorite experiences. I I've flown hundreds of hours probably of time in aircraft, but only on simulators. And I'm a huge, huge aircraft buff. But we did a uh uh we did a story with Brightling a little while ago, and they have a partnership with uh Cirrus and, Cirrus at that time had just started selling their first uh single-engined jet aircraft, private aircraft. So the thing about Cirrus is they're probably if you're if you're a private pilot, they're the safest planes ever because they literally put a parachute in every one of their airplanes. Like if anything goes wrong, there's a giant red lever you can pull, and a parachute will come out not out of your back. You don't have to jump out of the airplane. God forbid uh sir should be incon Sirometam should be inconvenienced, but like a giant parachute pops out of the back of the airplane and you will drift comfortably to Earth. And uh I think they have something like ninety deployments of this parachute to their credit. So anyway, I thought to myself, we're gonna do this story about a Brightling pilot's watch. Let's check in with Brightling and see if they can actually get us into an airplane. Might be a fun thing to do. So they get us into an airplane. It's a Cirrus Vision jet, beautiful airplane, V-shaped tail, uh single jet engine. And uh we uh take off, fly down the Hudson River to the Statue of Liberty, do a couple of loops around the Statue of Liberty, and Team Video is in the back, a couple of buddies, and uh we're heading back to the airport and uh the pilot says to me, Hey, um, you've done some time in simulators, you want to take the stick? And I felt uh first of all I felt like super flattered. I was like, well, I've got this one. And uh uh what I said to him was yeah do I? So uh he hands this well hands the stick over to me. He takes his hands off the joystick. I put my hand on the joystick and he says, okay, we're gonna we're gonna do a left turn. So I start doing a like a very slow, lazy left turn. Like I think the rate of change was like two degrees per like 30 seconds or something. And uh all of the chatter from the back from my uh friends and team video suddenly falls silent and I realized, oh, they're worried. They think I'm going to kill them. They think that in my arrogance and apparently irrational belief that I know how to fly an airplane based on doing some things on computers, uh that I can actually turn this thing. And I like I turned it okay. I have to say, I look back at the terrified expressions on their faces and So yeah, I that was a ton of fun. Like I actually flew a jet. And what that means is I took ten minutes to turn left ninety degrees, but I did technically fly a jet
Stephen Pulvirent . That's pretty awesome, Jack. I I have not flown a jet and I will say I'm jealous. That sounds that sounds awesome. Yeah, th I I mean the fun
Jack Forster ny thing is you could do it. Like there w there really was nothing to it. Uh th this is one of those airplanes where you have to like work really hard at it to kill yourself. As planes should be be. You know, I
Stephen Pulvirent 'll. I'm afraid that I was gonna do that. Let's let's get into the the last thing I want to do here, which is uh we're gonna count down your personal five favorite Hodinky stories. I've got I've got one I'm going to add to the end uh that's my personal favorite that didn't make the list, but uh you've you've got five really great stories here. So let's start with with number five. This was tough, man. Like a thousand out of a thousand stories. Out of a thousand stories. But these are the ones that kinda like stuck out for me. So all right, so you you gave me this list of five stories. So I'm gonna I'm gonna count down your list here from five to one and I want you to explain to me why each of these stories stands out to you and why it made your list. Because a thousand stories is a lot of stories. To get it down to five is is no joke
Jack Forster . Yeah, I mean I was uh honestly my whole process of selection you know for these was from a Zenmind, beginner's mind. First thought, best thought. Like just pick the ones that stick out for you the second you start thinking about it and don't think about it too much. Great. Love that
Stephen Pulvirent . All right. So number five. Just because it turns out an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear bomb probably won't fry your quartz watch. Yes, yes.
Jack Forster This is this was something. This was one of those things for 25 years. 25 years. I have been reading uh comments uh first on Usenet newsgroups and then on you know watch forums. Oh well, you know, the one thing that you have to bear in mind is if you want a watch that's gonna serve you after the inevitable coming apocalypse, you need a mechanical watch because quartz watch, the electromagnetic pulse from the nuclear warheads, they're gonna be flying all over the place. They're gonna quote fry your quartz watch. Turns out it's not true. Turns out it's not true. It's one of those questions that I didn't even think to ask uh until well, until I wrote the story, and I was like, Oh, so I mean an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon is a real thing, but it turns out that uh it's it it not only is not going to fry your watch, it's probably not going to fry the electronic systems of uh automobiles either. So if you want to escape to the mountains after the coming apocalypse, chances are you could Nice
Stephen Pulvirent . Okay. We're gonna have to figure out a way to get from here to Switzerland though, because honestly, if I'm hiding out from an apocalypse, like somewhere up in the valley, like not not the worst place to hide. That's for sure. That's for sure. All right. Let's go to number four here. In depth, your Patek Philippe Caliber 89 now needs a service, a look at Horology's Easter problem. I will admit, Jack, I had never heard the phrase Easter problem until you started working on this story, but I'm glad that that's now in my in my lexic
Jack Forster on. So uh this this is one of the most fascinating problems in mechanical horology. So we have calendar watches, right? Which will show you the correct date except for months that are thirty days long instead of thirty-one days long, in which case you have to reset the date manually at the end of the month. And then we have annual calendars, which will show you the correct date except on a leap year when you have to manually set ahead the time from February the twenty eighth because there's a February twenty ninth. And then we have perpetual calendars, uh an honored and exalted complication which you don't theoretically you will not have to manually reset the time until the end of a one hundred year perpetual calendar cycle. But like so all of these things follow predictable cycles, four year cycle, hundred year cycle. There's a four hundred year cycle in the Gregorian calendar as well. And the interesting thing about the date of Easter is that it's it's a fair it's quite a complex calculation. It does follow a cycle, but the full cycle of Easter dates takes over five million years to complete itself. And one of the things that I figured out doing the story was that if you wanted to use a traditional perpetual calendar program disc for a pocket watch that shows the correct date of Easter. It would need to be 17 kilometers across. Super practical. People in the comments will love that. It's a cool problem. There are a few clocks that can ki that have a what's called a computus in them that calculates the correct date of Easter. There's a Oh, th you know what? The uh the giant astronomical clock in Strasbourg. But it's only good up until the year n nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine and then then what
Stephen Pulvirent Well, yeah, I I love the story. I think it it takes a watch, you know, the caliber eighty nine that kind of like I think a lot of watch enthusiasts like know this watch exists and they know the name caliber eighty nine, but like I don't think most people could draw you like a vague sketch of what this watch looks like, even like real diehards, myself included. And so I found this fascinating, A, because it made me learn more about a watch that like like I feel I should know more about. And like I said, it introduced this whole new thing into my lexicon of of timekeeping problems that I I just had no idea existed. Let's go to number three. This is one that I I was hoping would make the list. I'm very happy it did make the list. And it might be for me like the quintessential Jack Forrester wristwatch story, which is in-depth, conspicuously consumed, the Rolex day date in 36 millimeters and 40 millimeters compared. And for a story with a relatively straightforward headline, uh, there's there's a lot of emotion in this story. This is not a sort of like technical side-by-side, whatever. Like all that stuff is in there. But this is really a story about why this particular watch, the 36mm yellow gold daydate and its modern slightly larger companion, like may have the greatest emotional hold on you of any wristwatch
Jack Forster . The thirty-six millimeter yellow gold daydate champagne dial with Roman numerals is always going to be for me the ultimate wristwatch. It's the ultimate flex wristwatch as far as I'm concerned, uh much more so than a 15202, uh much more so than a 5711. And for me personally, it was sort s ofort of a it's a a demonstration of how uh well of the extent to which tastes get established early, because I saw this watch on uh the wrist of an uncle of mine who was a diplomat at the UN uh when I was a kid. And uh I remember noticing it and I remember thinking as I said in the story, wow, this is a watch that says that a man is a power in this world. And uh ever since then I've wanted one. Still don't have one, but um, you know, uh we might be just one IPO away. And you know, to a certain extent, it's really the only watch I want to wear anymore. It's really the only watch I want to own anymore that I don't own. Just because just because be just of what it means to me personally, like I would certainly never argue that it's the most technically interesting watch ever. And I I have plenty of friends who when I bring up the fact that this is the exit watch for me, they're sort of horrified. They're like, you are supposed to be the arbiter of taste and elegance and, we expected you to pick something like really kind of obscure and uh you know off the beaten trip. I'm like, I want a gold Rolex.
Stephen Pulvirent Sorry. Honestly, Jack, I I gotta be real with you. I also feel like the only watch I don't own that I like really deeply want right now is a gold Rolex. There there really is just something that says like you've you've made it. Like you look at a gold Rolex on your wrist and you say, I I did good, you know
Jack Forster ? Yeah, and you know like unlike the fifty seven eleven and the fifteen two oh two, like at this point in like the world of watch connoisseurship, it's like if that's your exit watch, it's a watch that is your exit watch for your own reasons and it doesn't have anything to do with like flexing with anybody else
Stephen Pulvirent . Yeah. I totally agree. I think I think the second story, so story number two on your list, is kind of like the exact uh the watch is kind of the exact opposite of a yellow gold daydate. But at the same time, like the way you write about this watch and the sort of like love and affection you have for it, I would highly recommend people read these two stories back to back. If you haven't, links will be in the show notes. Because I think you will notice the jackness of them, um, kind of seeing them next to each other. And that's uh story number two is the value proposition, a $75 watch that looks like a million bucks. And the deck on this story is behold the worst kept secret and watched them, the Seiko 5. And I I love that. I I just love everything about it. I think every real watch enthusiast has owned a Seiko 5 at some point. I own, I think, like three of them right now, maybe four of them right now. I was in your office like last week. I know I know you own like three, four, five, or maybe more of them right now. Tell us, tell us about this story. So the very first
Jack Forster mech the f the very first good mechanical watch that I uh ever owned was an Omega Speedmaster. But before that, I just wanted a solid mechanical watch. And you know, again, this is back, you know, late, late nineteen nineties, I was in graduate school, and you know, like buying a can of beans was a major financial decision. Like no exaggeration. But you know, there were these watches from Seiko that had mechanical movements and they actually seemed to be genuinely well respected by you know the more I found out about them there were there were people uh praising the Seiko fives who were also buying Longa and were also buying paddock. They were just like, hey these are cool. And uh that the the watch that I wrote about was 75 bucks when I wrote about it. It's actually this it's the single highest performing story on Hodinki in the last six years. And um I think for a reason, like don't we all want to watch that looks fantastic? That was built by a company that's just trying to deliver value? And like if they're making a 0.5% margin on it, they're fine with that. Like that world is gone. That world is really gone. And um it's not coming back and I miss it every single day. But the fact that there was a time when you could get really a fantastic mechanical watch from a real company with a real history for 75 bucks was uh it was terrific. It's nice looking watch, also. I mean, you know, like not to get over. It's a great great looking watch. I mean, the truth is there are other options out there, like not that much more expensive, but like you know, like getting into mechanical horology's gotten a little bit more expensive or a lot more expensive depending on what you're looking at. But you know, a seventy five dollar watch that looks like a million bucks. It's as true now as it was then and uh I'm it it pleases me no end to see how many people actually saw that story and made that watch their entry into uh into fine watchmaking. Yeah.
Stephen Pulvirent I I agree. And I I I I think, you know, I'll I'll kind of like uh toot the horn here for you, but like I I think the strength of that story, right, is that people associate your writing, I think to some degree with things that are elevated, with things that are complicated, with things that are elusive and rare and you know, in many cases very expensive. And I think you in particular coming out and saying like you can get a piece of watchmaking that is like really genuinely interesting and enjoyable for 75 bucks that like nobody can look their nose down at you for the wearing this $75 watch. And in fact, you can like hold your head high, is a powerful thing and a good thing. And I think it it speaks to kind of what we've all been trying to do with this hobby as long as we've been in it, which is make it more accessible and more enjoyable. And to get people excited about it so that we don't end up as the, you know, magazines next to the doll collecting magazines again. I think that's the that's the future none of us want. So uh yeah, I I'm I'm really glad
Jack Forster this one made your list. Yeah. I mean I I still own my version of that watch or well my I I own that watch and uh you know, I remember wearing it to um watch meet and greets in the late nineties and early two thousands. Oh, what are you wearing? Uh and I I I would show it to them and they'd be like, that's a seventy-five dollar watch. Holy shit. That's
Stephen Pulvirent a lot of watch. Yeah. All right, let's do number one and then I'm gonna throw out a couple honorable mentions uh before we before we wrap up, just to give people more stuff to dig into in the show notes. Number one, I hope this comes as no surprise to anyone who's been following Hodinky for any sustained period of time. This story hails from January 5th, twenty sixteen, and it is historical perspectives the surprisingly not totally boring search for who invented the spring bar. The truth is out there, or maybe not. Jack, does anybody at Hodinky talk to you about any story you've written more than this story? Uh no.
Jack Forster And uh um this was you know relatively early days. There were like maybe six of us in the office, and I remember I remember Ben walking over to my desk the day the story ran and uh I remember him saying to me so we're really gonna publish this you know it's it's a we a it's a it's a weird story for sure about a weird subject, but at the same time, if there there is nothing more ubiquitous than the Spring Bar. We've all struggled with them. We've all tried to uh you know, we we've all uh inebriatedly tried to change a wom
Stephen Pulvirent How many puncture wounds have you given yourself on your fingers changing spring bars?
Jack Forster I'm actually surprised that there's not like a a database somewhere of people who've stabbed themselves in the eyeball with uh you know with a spring bar tool because like it's a r oh seems like it would be a really easy thing to do. Yeah. And they're flimsy, you know, like if you look at a spring bar by itself, you know, outside the context of like the bracelet or the strap, and you think to yourself, my $75, $750, $7,000, $500, $75,000 watch, like $750,000 watch. They're all held on by this same like kind of janky little telescoping tube with a couple of cheap wire springs inside? How do I feel about that? And then after that realization, you say to yourself, well, seems to work. And then the third realization after that is who came up with this? So that's kind of what I got interested in. And uh if there's ever any story that is going to give me uh the watch idiot sav
Stephen Pulvirent ant seal of approval, it's uh it's this one. Yeah. I was not at Hodinki at the time. This was the the inter-Seven period of of Hodinki. I still followed the site. I still read it every day. And I remember this was like the week before Sihh. Like this was like two or three days before we all flew over to Geneva. And uh I just remember like pulling up the site this day and thinking to myself, okay, Jack's Jack's doing it. Like he's not messing around here. You know, like Jack, Jack is gone. Jack is settled in, he is comfortable, and like you and I have known each other a long time. I was like, Jack is Jack is doing this. Like this is Jack's Hodinky now. He's he's he's pushing things. But but like uh you know like straight talk, was there a part of you that was also like ooh, wow. Where's he going with this? I wasn't like, uh, this is a bad idea. I just looked at it and was like, okay, buckle up. Like things are things are getting weird now. And uh I'm I'm all about it. I love this story again. Like, if you have not read this story and if you think you're gonna read something boring because it's about spring bars, you're wrong. Just go read it. Like, it's not gonna take you that long. It's not this story, it's not 10,000 words. Go read the story, it's it's really good. All right, Jack, I'm gonna give you some honorable mentions here. Stories that I thought might have made your list that didn't. I'm going to keep it to three, one of which I'm kind of cheating because it's multiple parts. We'll get that one out of the way. And that's uh your three-part series, a game of tones about minute repeaters. You mentioned earlier minute repeaters, and I will always associate minute repeaters with you as a complication. Like I don't think I fully understood how a minute repeater worked until you explained it to me. And these stories for anyone interested in like modern, complicated high-end watchmaking, I think these are are must reads. And there's there's a trio of them and we'll link all three of them up in in the notes. Thank you, Stephen. That's a that's a huge compliment. I me
Jack Forster an the uh the only thing that I regret about writing uh that group of stories is that you can only use the headline a game of tones once.
Stephen Pulvirent Agreed. I I agree with you. That is a bummer. The other complication that that I think you kind of convinced me on is the turbion. And I'm on the record being a like non-turbion guy many times. Well and and
Jack Forster like to be completely reasonable, you're you're you're not wrong. I mean it's not like the turbion is value added in terms of chronometry anymore and probably hasn't been for a
Stephen Pulvirent hundred years. So right. And that gets us to this story, which is does the turbion have any real benefits in a wristwatch? And I love that you're the deck on the story is for a clear cut answer, we went to Roger Smith, which like I love that your solution to solving a like genuine horological problem is to just call Roger. Like, hey, Roger, we we got a question here, like
Jack Forster explain watch making. And Roger's like, Okay, cool. I know, but that's like calling Alan Ducast and saying, Hey, a la listen, I can't figure out what I should have for breakfast. But so
Stephen Pulvirent he I mean he was very nice about it. Yeah, he was extremely nice and and you know, related to that, like everybody should read the Turbillon story. Everybody should also go watch Jack and Roger talking watches, uh, which we'll link up as well. The last one I want to mention, and one this one is mostly just for personal reasons, is uh you wrote uh in in twenty sixteen an in-depth comparison of a Rolex Mill Gauss and an Omega fifteen thousand Gauss. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you brought that one up. That was a f that was such a fun story. Wow. Well, I forgot that one. You you subjected these two anti magnetic watches to a four thousand Gauss neodymium magnet. And the story itself is great. And it's like a genuinely scientific exploration of these watches that are quote unquote like scientific watches, but that most people just wear a mill gouse because it like has a cool green crystal and like nobody cares. But the thing I love about this is then that Neodymia Magnet resided in our office for a long time, high up on a shelf in a like protective styrofoam case, and occasionally would come out. And anytime the magnet came out, we would have to be like, okay, we have to get anything watchmaking related as far as possible away from Jack's desk or everything's gonna end up ruined. Like we're gonna have to send everything to a watchmaker. Uh and eventually I think
Jack Forster you you had to take the magnet home, right? Uh actually I brought it back uh to the office and I I mean it's I I would I would like to say that I hid it under your desk, but I actually haven't. Yeah, it's like I mean it's a it's a rare earth magnet the size of a hockey puck, which requires a hundred and fifty pounds of force to pull off the door of the refrigerator in the office. And I think that um publishing that story was the beginning of an irreversible downhill slide in my relationship with both Rolex and Omega. But come on, like yeah how often do you get a chance to do that? You know, like you you take a magnet that powerful and you say okay, like this this is what you guys say about your watches. Is it really true? And uh I not only did I have a ton of fun of that with that story, but it actually made me realize, oh wow. Um okay, I guess they know what they're doing. Yeah
Stephen Pulvirent . Yeah. I mean that that's the kicker, right? Is like, oh yeah, like they they put up, which is is co
Jack Forster ol. Yeah. I mean neither what neither watch so much has blinked. I mean um you know it's it was really really incredible
Stephen Pulvirent . And and that's a strong ass magnet. Uh yeah yeah that magnet's no joke. There's some cool pictures in the story for uh for people who are curious. Well, you know what, Jack I? I think that's a pretty good place to stop. I think you and I could sit and do this honestly for like hours, just go over old stories and chat about the funny shit that happened behind the scenes. But uh We g
Jack Forster otta do your uh thousand story story next, man, because I think you may might actually have done more stories for the site than me
Stephen Pulvirent . We'll we'll we'll see. It'll it'll come up soon and we'll roll the odometer over. I do just want to say, Jack, you you may not notice, or you may have not noticed, but while we were recording this, story 1000 went live. Your story about the Tiso Power Matic ADPRX is officially story number 1000. Congratulations, my friend. I hope we're back here doing 20,00 stories, 25,00 stories, uh sometime soon. Let's do it. I'm up for 2K. All right, let's do it. Race race to 2K. I'll race you. I think I think my wife would object to me racing you to 2,000 stories, but uh you know anyway thanks a million steven this was this was a ton of fun this was awesome and i would say anybody who has a favorite jackforester story which i'm sure anybody who reads the site for for a while will and does go hit us up in the comments on the site. Let us know what your story is. I'm sure Jack will be in the comments responding and uh look forward to hearing what everybody's been reading. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Steven. Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Jack. Take care.