Independents

jporos
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Two goals achieved…

Earlier this spring, I was informed by the president of my university that he had accepted the recommendations of five outside reviewers, two committees, my director, my dean, and the provost to promote me to full professor. After 20 years at my university, this is a satisfying place to be. As you in academia know, full professor is the final promotion as a teacher and researcher in a university.

 To mark this event, I knew I wanted to acquire a special watch. And for me, there could only be one.

 The MIH watch.

 The MIH watch, as many of you know, is the child of Ludwig Oeschlin and Paul Gerber, two superstars of horology. Cased in design by Christian Gafner, the complications include an annual calendar implemented with only nine moving parts and a mono pusher chronograph. Since there is already much written about the design and engineering of the MIH, I’d like to talk instead about the experience of ownership; what is it like to wear this watch on a daily basis.

Wearing

The MIH is not a small watch. 42 mm in diameter, the small bezel adds to the impression of size. The height is formidable as well, which I measure at 14.86 millimeters. This makes the MIH tough to get under some of my long sleeved shirts. However, the use of titanium and the very short lugs make the watch comfortable to wear.

The other parts of the watch are large as well, but add to ease of use and comfort. The 8mm crown with strong indentions is easy to grip and turn. The 22mm wide natural rubber strap adds to the wearing comfort. The titanium pin buckle is large and straightforward to use.

 The MIH watch has 100m of water resistance, but I have not had the chance to test it out yet.

Legibility

Not much beats this watch in terms of legibility; it is a wrist clock. The simple, large dial makes reading hours, minutes and seconds easy. The day, month and date wheels are incredibly legible at 3.5 millimeters tall. The AM/PM indication of one red dot for AM, two for PM, is just as easy to read.  To top it off, the hour and minute hands are completely coated in Superluminova and the five minute markers are in Superluminova as well. The only ambiguity might arise because the minute hand does not reach the seconds track, but just the five minute markers.

Operation

The MIH watch has two complications: an annual calendar and a mono pusher chronograph. Let’s look at the annual calendar first…

 The annual calendar complication can display the correct day of the week, month of the year and date for 11 months of the year; the only month where correction is required is February. The MIH watch also has am AM/PM indicator which is very useful for setting the watch.

The changing of the date and day indicators starts at 10:30 PM and completes by 1:00 AM the next day. In the day/date change, the date starts changing at 10:30 and completes the change by midnight, while the day change starts at midnight and completes around 1:00 AM. For months with 31 days ,the following is what happens:

At the end of months with 30 days, the change of day, month and date is a 24 hour affair. Again, it starts at 10:30 PM with the month and date shifting.

By 11:30 PM, it looks like both the month and day will move.

But, by midnight, only the date has moved by a day

The day changes over to the next day by 1:00 AM as usual

By 6:00 AM the following day, the day is correct, the AM/PM indicator is correct, and the month and date have started to move again.

Finally, by 10:30 AM the next day, all of the indicators are correct.

The change is not disconcerting to me at all because you can always see what the disks are doing. Nonetheless, if you are looking for instantaneous change, this is not the watch for you.

The time, day, date and month are all adjustable from the crown, both backwards and forwards.

The Chronograph

The mono pusher chronograph is simple to operate. On the pusher at the two o’clock, one push starts, one push stops, and the third returns the chronograph second hand to the ‘0’ The pusher feels like any other ETA 7750 chronograph pusher except the return to ‘0’ is a little ‘crunchy’.

Do I ever use the minute counter? Sometimes, just for fun. Most of the time I just use the central seconds to time espresso shots.

MIH and my collecting in the future

I have realized over these long years of collecting, that I am a collector of ‘independents’. I have only two watches that are not from ‘independent’ makers. Also, I am collecting watches that exemplify great industrial design above all. The MIH is an apotheosis, great industrial design combined with a unique movement from two great watchmakers and a designer on an independent mission. I think I will follow this road and see where it goes…

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