If you can stand another #BigSeiko post, I’d like to talk about different categories of watches. Not all of them, because there are a bunch, but the different catagories in my own collection.
I have more dive watches than any other type, six in all. Divers are tool watches, meant to go underwater, with depth ratings, screw-down crowns, and rotating bezels w/minute marks for timing ascents. I don’t dive, and after jumping in the pool with a watch on and wrecking it I no longer wear mine anywhere near water, but I really like the look of a diver. My divers are a mix of Japanese and Chinese brands, but they all have automatic Japanese (Seiko) movements.
p.s. The Seiko at bottom center is an imposter, a faux diver … no screw-down crown, no depth rating (not even a “water resistant” label, front or back) … but it looks the part.
Chronographs make up the next most populous category in my collection. These are watches with elapsed time functions, with start/stop buttons for timing events and reset buttons to return timer hands to zero. Really fancy ones can track more than one event at a time; oddly it’s only my cheapest one, the Timex with the green strap, that can do that. As with the divers, I don’t use chronographs the way they’re meant to be used, but I love wearing them. The Timex has a quartz movement; the Pagani Design a hybrid mechanical/quartz movement; the others are mechanical.
There are four field watches in my collection, all of which happen to be Timexes with quartz movements. Field watches are generally military, or at least military-inspired, rugged and simple with easy-to-read displays, with dials showing both 12- and 24-hour time. I used to have a mechanical pilot watch, a hand-wound Benrus issued by the Air Force when I was selected for flight training. If I still had it I’d group it with these field watches.
My four dress watches. Dress watches are what you might wear to a job interview. They look good with business or formal attire. They’re generally thin, with simple, clean dials. The two on top are quartz; the two below are automatics. The Orient is the most elegant of my dressers; the square Casio Edifice with the fussy dial doesn’t quite fit the category … plus it’s too scratched up to wear to a job interview … but I don’t know how else to classify it.
My digitals are more analog than digital, but even if the digital portions are just tiny windows on otherwise analog displays, they’re digitals. Hey, I don’t make the rules. The Apple Watch, second from left, is primarily a tool watch (a watch worn to perform a specific function, in my case monitoring heart rate), but it’s also digital (with a buttload of extra functions).
There are only two travel watches in the collection, and that’s probably two too many … as much as I love wearing them, I can’t justify the second hour hand, which I set to Greenwich Mean Time, the time zone in which I once logged takeoff and landing times (speaking of which, you often hear travel watches called GMT watches). The Torgoen on the right has a Swiss quartz movement and is marketed to aviators; the Seiko on the left is mechanical … a real work of art. Both watches have 12- and 24-hour indices on the dials (plus the extra 24-hour scale on the Seiko’s bezel, which rotates to allow tracking a third time zone).
What’s in the future? I have my eye on a Timex with time, tide, and temperature functions, a definite tool watch. I’m also hoping to add a Seiko Alpinist, a outdoor/mountaineering watch with a compass function … I don’t know if there’s an adventure watch category, but that’s where I’d put it.
If you have a favorite watch, or catetory of watch, I’d love to read about it in the comments!