Without these cookies, services you have asked for, like transactional pages and secure login accounts, would not be possible. These cookies are essential to provide you with services available through this Platform and to use some of its features, such as access to secure areas. Our Platform uses various types of cookies, each of which has a specific function. Held together with just one screw, hermetically sealed for life and requiring no servicing, this is the Sistem51 Watch Spec | Swatch Sistem51 But you might not, and if that’s you, you’ll get it, you’ll understand what it’s about. It all comes back to the question, ‘What if?’ What if quartz never existed? What if watches were made entirely by machine? You may think that going to the moon, to Mars, is a waste of time and money, and you may think the Sistem51 is, too. If quartz technology had never existed, this would be the watch we’d all be wearing, and that’s the point of it. Oh, and it also has a monster 90-hour power reserve. So the movement is set by machine during production and that’s that it stays accurate because nothing can affect it. That means this watch can’t be serviced and doesn’t need to be serviced. Not printed at all: it’s made entirely by machine from just fifty-one partsĪnd that message doesn’t stop with the production method the movement within the Sistem51 is made from an antimagnetic alloy of copper, nickel and zinc called ARCAP, allowing it to be hermetically sealed within the watch for life. In letters barely a millimetre high: AUTOMATIC. The Sistem51 takes us back in time, removes our rose-tinted spectacles and reminds us what watchmaking was all about. Post-crisis, however, and mechanical watchmaking became a luxury. Pre-crisis, mechanical watches were the most affordable timekeeper available, built to satisfy a large audience. This is a brave nod to the original because it highlights some interesting changes in the Swiss watch industry before and after the quartz crisis. Not a single hand touches it until its component parts are fully assembled and spat out the other end as a complete watch. You see, the Sistem51 is entirely machine-built. You’ll see it marked on the dial in a small, reserved font that does little justice to the incredible technology that goes into making it. In honour of the original, the Sistem51 watch uses just fifty-one components, but this time it’s mechanical, not quartz, and an automatic no less. Sistem51 isn’t just a movement, or a watch-it’s an entire production line. To celebrate turning thirty, Swatch wanted to do something that had never been done before without compromising its ethos of fun, affordable innovation, and so the Sistem51 was born. Like the Copernican revolution (to which the dial design nods), the Sistem51 is a revolution in watchmakingĬonstructed from just fifty-one parts, the Swatch watch almost single-handedly saved Swiss watchmaking, leaving Swatch-ironically-at the top of the luxury watch food chain where it remains to this day. But Nicholas Hayek, a Swiss entrepreneur, had an idea: a cheap, colourful Swiss timepiece that served as a second watch. Cheap quartz movements from the Far East had decimated the market, leaving old-fashioned mechanical watchmaking destined to retire to the pages of history. In 1983, the Swiss watch industry was in tatters. These are the people who ask, ‘What if?’ These are the people the Sistem51 is for.Ĭan Swatch duplicate the monumental success it triggered in the early 1980s? Probably not, but it's worth a try For others, who look up to the heavens and gaze at its awe-inspiring vastness, the journey into the unknown is what makes them feel alive. Why explore, why innovate? We have everything we’d ever need right here. For some, the exploration of our planet and beyond is an unnecessary luxury, a result of idle (and wealthy) thumbs.
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