In the early 60s, Mercury 7 astronaut Scott Carpenter had Breitling make a modified version of the Navitimer, changing the slide rule bezel and making the dial display 24 hours. His was damaged by water after reentry but Breitling sold the model as the Cosmonaute for a time. Breitling should make an Aerospace with a 24 hour dial

Watchmakers should, in general, stop bothering with exhibition casebacks unless they're doing something really cool with it. A power reserve indicator, for example. Most watches would be better just being thinner with a regular steel caseback.

Here's one I want. The Lorier Olympia is a 3 register automatic chronograph. It's powered by the NE88 from Time Module Inc, which is to say, it's the Seiko 8R48. Seiko Speedtimers with this movement measure in at a 42mm case and they're 14.7mm tall, which isn't bad. But the Olympia is 39mm and 13.7 mm tall (that is including 2mm of domed acrylic crystal), and is $1k instead of Seikos $2500. They had the watchmakers at TMI delete the date wheel and they probably did some other mods to size it down.

Edit: a watchmaker called Pitzmann out of Korea (??) has also used the NE88 to make a 41mm Chrono with date wheel, and it's 13.25mm tall. I don't care for the aesthetic of the Pitzmann III but it's still an achievement. More expensive than the Olympia but still $1k cheaper than the Seiko.

Ball Watch is one of the many American railroad watch brands that went Swiss after WWII, like Hamilton, and other American pocket watch brands didn't make it, like Illinois and Elgin. Waltham went Swiss but didn't survive the Quartz Crisis/Revolution, and Bulova ended up bought out by Citizen in Japan. The only thing that sets apart Ball to me, other than its American history, is the lume. They use tritium gas tubes for lume that last 10 years or so. Other than that they use ETA movements like a hundred other Swiss brands. There's nothing wrong with that. Webb Ball was the man who set watch and time standards for American railroads after a deadly train crash in 1891, where the investigation revealed that a conductors watch had stopped and was off by 4 minutes, leading to the train collision. American watchmakers became so good that Swiss watchmakers would bootleg them.

Soviet/Russian watchmaking is an interesting subject. State run watch factories would make watches for the military, the government and the regular jackoffs. They were never very sophisticated, but they worked. After the fall of the Soviet Union, many of the watch factories were privatized and stripped for parts. A few survive, and some were revived. Vostok (East) in Chistopol, and Raketa (Rocket) in Petersburg among them. You can also find watches with old New Old Stock Poljot 3133 movements. I find myself going back to look at 3133s, as they are Swiss movements (Valjoux 7734) that were modified by Soviet watchmakers in the 70s.

Talk about an improvement. Can you believe that Invicta used to make tasteful gold triple calendars when they could have been making wrist anchors made of fake gold and running on cheap quartz for the all important American nigger demographic? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!?!

This is like one of those before and after buccal fat removal photos. Just awful.

They took this from you, white man

The Type 20/21 chronograph was born from the post WWII French Air Force's need for a sturdy flyback chronograph. It was based on the German watchmaker Hanhart's flyback they made for the Luftwaffe during the war, and Hanhart even provided Breguet with watch movements as part of war reparations. Note how the 3 register Breguet in this series of pics has a large, 15 minute register instead of a regular sized 30 minute register. Supposedly this is because of the time it takes for a final pre flight check is 15 minutes (I'm not a pilot idk). Breguet and several other French watchmakers still make Type 20s and Type 21 watches.

Universal Geneve and Gallet are being relaunched by Breitling this year. I hope they bring these bangers back.

I generally don't care for diver watches. But I like chronographs, especially ones with central minute hands. In 1965 Breitling dropped the SuperOcean ref. 2005, the "Slow Motion". For timing dives, a highly visible centrally mounted minute hand, and that's it. There's a little lume dot at 6 o clock that tells you the chronograph function is actually running. Breitling could bring this back but they won't because they're bitches. They have the tech to make the pushers usable underwater too.

Oh neat, 24 hour dial watches, one of them a mono pusher chronograph. That's cool, Longines. Oh wait, they're fucking pocket watch sized, with a 47.5mm case diameter

"We have Breitling Aerospace at home"
Ok but hear me out on this one. Other than the obvious, the Breitling is a certified chronometer with thermo compensated high accuracy quartz and is accurate to +/-10 seconds a year, the Certina has a few things I like.
1. I don't care for the Aerospace bezel. Might change my mind if I put my hands on it
2. The Certina has pushers, not everything is operated via the crown. I've heard the crown is tricky sometimes.
What's likely though, if I copped the Certina for $260, is it would only make me want the aerospace more.

In 1969, three different companies (or groups of companies) dropped the world's first automatic chronographs. Seiko with their 6139 caliber, Zenith and the El Primero, and Heuer, Breitling, Hamilton-Büren, and Dépraz with the Calibre 11. The Heuer Monaco was a big square cased beast of a watch due to the size of the movement. However the Zenith El Primeros were 37-38mm depending on the model, and were running at 5hz, or 10 beats a second. Daisuke Jigen wore a Zenith like watch on the first episode of Lupin III, and Zenith made a special edition when they launched the A384 revival a few years back. If I had a grail watch the A384 might be it.

Just found out about this interesting one, the Aquastar Benthos 500. It has a centrally mounted chronograph minute hand, much like the Breitling ref. 2005. It has a single pusher, is an automatic, and the pusher can be activated underwater. If it wasn't a limited edition that I won't be able to buy in time, I'd say it's in direct competition with my interest in Sinn's Mission Timer 13 diver.