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Didja take a look at that website about the solarplane? All kinds of mumbo about "pushing the envelope", and by the language, it's pretty clear that anything resembling construction is a *long* way off.

Curta Mechanical Calculator
Moon Watch
IBM Model M Keyboard
K&E Decilon Slide Rule
HP-41 Programmable Calculator
Varian A-60 NMR
Electron Microscope

I like the design of this watch. I looked for a long time to find a watch that was modestly priced, and not the standard 20-something standard-issue "got my first well-paying job" watch that everyone else has. So I got a Seiko Arctura. I would like a watch like this Tissot, but it would be much more attractive for me if it dumped the MSN feature, and added Bluetooth, so it could sync with my calendar, automatically set alarms, display the caller-id from my cell phone, etc...

Repeat after me Omega Speedmaster. You must own this watch. It is a work of art and I can almost guarentee that you will receive more comments about this watch than watch PDA/calculator/TV/telephone etc... O, you wanted a "geek" watch... well is this geeky enough for you? That is right, the Omega Speedmaster was the first watch worm on the moon. In addition it was present during the Apollo-Soyuz rendervouz and has since been the watch of choice for the Russian space agency. I could go on, but I think this information will suffice.

A mechanical watch works in every position. Gravity is of no importance. It is all about inertia, not gravity. Gravity is only of use for pendulum driven clocks. Did you see a reference to gravity in de formula?

The balance wheel is a wheel on a axis and a spring (like a spring in a clockwork) between the axis and a fixed point. The wheel rotates and the spring is wound until the wheel stops, it reverses it's rotation direction and de spring unwinds until the spring becomes 'overstretched', slowing the wheel an reversing direction again.

By the way, in the great times of moon exploration there weren't any digital watches available. They just used mechanical watches and given the tests the watches had to endure I doubt very much whether a digital watch would stand a change.

Nyh

OTOH, the Apollo astronauts used Hasselblad cameras to take those priceless pictures on the moon. They were also issued special wristwatches. I don't remember who made them. Anybody? Omega, the model was the Speedmaster.

Umm, perhaps you'll tell the Swiss.

Mechanical watches are made by dozens of companies today, including Swiss Rolex, Omega, IWC and dozens of others, even Swatch. Even Seiko makes mechanicals (although mostly for the Asian market). The Chinese make a bunch of cheap movements and the Russian company Poljot makes an interesting line of affordable watches. Accuracy ranges from +/- 1 second per day on high-end Swiss watches to +/- 20 seconds per day on the Russians. In general anything under +/- 6 seconds per day is considered good. However, there can be a great deal of variation from watch to watch. Rolex, Omega and other mass market companies do little or no hand work in their mass market lines. When you get to a company link JLC, and others, every watch gets some hand fit and finish. However, none of them can be wound only once per month. Most have about a 40 hour power reserve. A few have an 8 day reserve (notably an IWC, and an Eberhard. Of course just about every company offers an automatic watch that is wound by the movement of the wrist through out the day. Those watches should "never" need winding if worn every day or two. Everything you ever wanted to know about mechanical watches can be found at Timezone. Be forewarned, most of these guys think of watches under about $5,000 as "mid priced".

NASA did not send astronauts to the moon with Breitlings.

The offical issue watch was an Omega Speedmaster. There is some indication that non-offical Hamiltons may have also gone to the moon. Vintage Speedmasters cost about $2,000. A new one, with essentially the same look, but a newer movement is bit less. These watches are hand wound chronographs. The current NASA issue is either a G-Shock or an Omega Speedmaster X-33. Both use a quartz movement. Official NASA photos show astronauts wearing both.

That watch looks like it was made by IBM. An RS/6000 is a nice looking box, but it makes an ugly wristwatch! I'd much rather that my watches were designed by Omega.