The iconic Bauhaus platform clock design by Hans Hilfiker migrates from wrist to waistcoat
It was arguably the arrival of high-speed intercontinental train travel that accelerated the development of precision pocket watchmaking, once nations – villages, even – agreed on a ‘standard time’, before even more locomotives crashed into each other on skew-wiff timetables.
Mondaine has historically paid tribute to its fellow countryman’s own iconic solution to keeping passengers on time as well as conductors, with the wristborn version of the clock furnishing every platform of Switzerland’s famously prompt federal railway, or ‘SBB’, or – even more specifically, SBB CFF FFS: Schweizerische Bundesbahnen, SBB; Chemins de fer fédéraux suisses, CFF; Ferrovie federali svizzere, FFS.
The ‘Classic’ design of the dial that inspires Mondaine’s new 200-piece limited-edition Special Edition Pocket Watch dates to 1944, when Zurich-born engineer Hans Hilfiker created the Official Swiss Railways Station Clock.
His groundbreaking ‘Bauhaus’ exercise in unmistakeable simplicity with its minimalist white background, black geometric markers, and the unmistakable red seconds hand became a national icon and a symbol of precision.
What’s not so well known, train nerds? The SBB platform clock makes humble concession for the occasional wobble in precision on the part of Swiss train drivers: look carefully and on the minute every minute, the sweep seconds hand pauses for two seconds… before jumping to restart its sweep from the ‘2 minute’ mark, to give the driver a little more leeway.
$455; mondaine.com