The Bite Magazine - Spring 2019 - Issue 24

Images courtesy of NOMOS Glashütte bite watches watchmakers also count among the very best of their kind. Hav- ing made timepieces for over 170 years, since 1845, it is said to be a tradition that is hard to find any- where else in the world. NOMOS watches have many unique char- acteristics and are always of the very best quality. History here shows that since the 15th century, the people in Glashütte lived on mining. When the silver and copper ore in the ground began to run out, the communities there became des- perate. In 1845, the Saxon King Friedrich August II dispatched the master watchmaker Ferdi- nand Adolph Lange with the task of bringing a new era toGlashütte: to teach the people there how to make watches, and to establish a watch-making industry in the im- age of the Swiss; with engineers, toolmakers, manufacturers of dials, hands, and cases; with pro- duction based on the division of labour. Although the two World Wars and the GDR (German Demo- cratic Republic) period dealt huge blows to Glashütte and its indus- try, the knowledge and expertise of watch-making remained and grew stronger, thus it became synonymous with the best watch- es in the world and today is more renowned than ever before. In March 2014, NOMOS unveiled a new sensational creation with the heart of a watch’s calibre, en- gineered and built by them. In watch-making, it is known as the escapement but at NOMOS it is called the swing system. Founded by Roland Schwertner in 1990, NOMOS Glashütte is said to be the largest manufacturer of mechanical timepieces in Germa- ny. The watches and calibres are exclusively developed and pro- duced in the production hall in Glashütte’s Schlottwitz district. And almost everything else is made by hand such as the milling plates, bridges and wheels, bluing screws, bevelling edges and fine- ly regulating calibres. Only when high-tech is more precise than the handicraft and dependent on a thousandth of a millimetre will NOMOS Glashütte use machines. Using the guidelines of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation), NOMOS de- signers like to keep the dials clean and the cases slender. Ex- amples of this include the date ring which is mounted on rubies and set around the movement, making it a seamless addition to the calibre and keeping the watch both elegant and flat. Another watch-making skill is the cres- cent-shaped power reserve indi- cator which signals when a watch needs to be rewound. This mech- anism comes with just a few extra components and has also been patented. In 2005, their first in-house built automatic movement was cre- ated, making them one of the small leagues of watchmakers to make their own calibres. Then a To Be Amongst the Watches