The Fourth Wheel, Issue 62

The twelve most significant watches in the world, according to all of us (but mostly me)

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that this week, sends its best wishes and heartfelt sympathy to everyone affected by the freak tornado that hit La Chaux de Fonds this week. One person was killed, around forty injured, and several buildings severely damaged. Chief among them was the Sellita factory, pictures and video of which have been doing the rounds on forums and Instagram since Tuesday. It seems like the watch factory was closed for its summer break, which is a mercy. Hopefully no-one else was hurt and the businesses affected can get back into operation as soon as possible.

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Two weeks ago, on Mr Porter, we published a story of mine titled The Twelve Most Significant Watches Of All Time. Several of you picked up on it, which was nice to see. It was a bit of a step outside of our lane for Mr Porter, something I have wanted to do for a while, and from the reaction I think we might step out of our lane a bit more often.

You will probably also remember that several weeks before that, I shared a link to a poll, asking you to pick your 12 most significant watches from a longlist of 50. This was part of my background research into the Mr Porter story, and it was illuminating. As soon as I saw the results of the poll come together, I knew I’d have to do what I’m doing here. Something I haven’t really done before: a behind-the-scenes, chef’s-table, director’s-commentary insight into what I was thinking when I put a story together.

Illustration by Jaume Vilardell for Mr Porter

Before we get to it, I need to note that of course this kind of list came dangling with caveats. The headline, as is the way of such things, oversimplifies it a touch: it only relates to wristwatches, and I decided to exclude smartwatches. At the risk of opening another can of worms entirely, I feel that the smartwatch, although it is worn on the wrist, is a qualitatively different kind of device altogether. Timekeeping is just one of its abilities, perhaps not even the primary one, and in a ‘proper’ watch, whether you use your phone to tell the time or not, timekeeping is still its raison d'etre. Anyway, there’s no doubt the Apple Watch would belong on any list of significant developments in the watch world, I just didn’t want to lose a spot on my list to something that for me holds none of the appeal or permanence of a real watch.¹

My list of twelve went like this:

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak

Cartier Tank Louis Cartier

Harwood Automatic by Fortis

IWC “Dirty Dozen” Mk X²

Omega Speedmaster Professional

Patek Philippe Calatrava ref. 96

Richard Mille RM001

Rolex Cosmograph Daytona

Rolex Submariner

Seiko Astron 35SQ

Swatch GB100

Ulysse Nardin Freak

I’m not going to explain my logic for choosing each one here - that’s literally what the article did, so by all means please read it there. I’d like to explain how I arrived at this list. Some watches were pretty obvious write-ins the minute I thought about the feature. The Tank, the Speedmaster, the Royal Oak and the Submariner all walked right in without much debate. After that, it got complicated.