Marine chronometers were cutting edge in their day, but timekeeping has progressed to the point where cheap quartz watches and atomic clock–regulated smartphone clocks are far, far more accurate. Why does it matter?Īside from having to readjust your watch less often, there’s not much of an argument to be made, practically speaking. Though the trials ceased with the dawn of the quartz watch in the early ’70s, in 1973 the COSC was formed and has since become the leading force in chronometer certification of consumer mechanical watches (at least in Switzerland). Most of these were one-off watches made for the sake of competition, though Girard-Perregaux and Seiko sold some (not many) of their Observatory Chronometer watches to the public. Here, watchmakers submitted watches that were put through weeks of rigorous accuracy testing at European observatories like Neuchatel. Though his first clock wasn’t successful, after decades of work it would eventually be perfected.īy the mid-twentieth century, after marine chronometers were largely being displaced by radio navigation systems, the tradition of super accurate timepieces continued with the Observatory Trials. In 1730, clockmaker John Harrison had developed his first “marine chronometer” - a super accurate ship clock that could be used to calculate longitude through celestial navigation. Therefore, anyone who could devise a method of calculating a ship’s precise longitude would be given a monetary award. In 1714, Great Britain passed the Longitude Act to solve a problem: Namely, that sailers had a difficult time calculating their precise longitude when out in open water (without land in sight). Some brands, like Rolex and Omega, do their own, more stringent, certification programs in addition to COSC testing. While quartz watches can also be certified as chronometers, the term most often refers to certified mechanical watches that are accurate to within just a few seconds per day (as an example, COSC-certified chronometers must accurate to within -4/+6 seconds a day). The most prominent example of that today is the Official Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute (COSC), which is responsible for testing Swiss-made chronometers only the COSC can deem a Swiss watch worthy of “chronometer” status, though other countries have their own chronometer testing outlets, like the Glashütte Observatory in Germany. Not to be confused with a chronograph, a chronometer is a watch that has been tested and certified to be incredibly accurate by some sort of governing body. Welcome, then, to Horology in a Hurry, a semi-regular column where we’ll break down these terms at length one at a time to give you a better understanding of how watches work. The watch world is full of highly technical, often highly French terms that any normal person, reasonably, doesn’t know.
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