Urwerk’s Drops a Masterpiece Fit for Dr. Strangelove

She’s got more turbines and satellites than the ISS.

It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but the engineers and designers at Urwerk are downright wild Swiss watchmakers. The complications—clock mechanicals—they produce are orbiting satellites regulated by dual turbines visible through glass portals in the watch’s back. That sounds like rocket science (we don’t really get it either), so suffice it to say: Urwerk’s mechanicals are about as advanced and iconoclastic as they come.

Those novel innards allow for a different kind of watch face: one in which a floating hand displaying the hour moves vertically down a line marked from zero to sixty minutes. To the left is a “Control Board” indicating day/night and an “oil change” (service) indicator; a small sub-dial marks seconds. As a nice contrast to all the metallic techo-wizardly under the skin, Urwerk offers a beautiful, low-gloss Macassar Ebony face.  That’s how we like things: stylish woodwork in front, dual turbines in back. [$80,000; urwerk.com]