MB&F REINVENTS THE DAYS OF FUTURE PAST Maximilian Busser is the First among Friends at Maximilian Busser & Friends, otherwise known as MB&F. He and the people that he gathers to him have given us four of their Horological Machines, the unconventional and free-fancy watches that turn the ideas of watchmaking on their head. He is free to roam where his imagination takes him. Many of his watches don’t even make sense… until you see them in person, in action. Once you see how they work, they become not only sensible but… almost inevitable.

When one conjures up Russian creations, we tend to bring up familiar names like Igor Sikorsky (Sikorsky helicopters), Mikhail Koshkin (chief designer of T-34 Russian tanks) and Alexei Tupolev (designer of the Tupolev Tu-144 and the Boran space shuttle). With watch enthusiasts, Poljot is a brand that comes to mind as the company was the earliest watchmaking company formed in the Soviet federation.The Russian watch industry during the Czar Russia was focused on the assembly of imported movements mainly from Germany and Switzerland,

Bremont salutes the P-51 Mustang with a limited edition chronograph. An actual reliquary, the timepiece incorporates parts fashioned from the aluminum skin of a WWII veteran with a history that puts it in sorties above embattled Manila. In 2011, the award winning British brand Bremont introduced the Limited Edition Mustang P-51 watch—a salute to this phenomenal American-built fighter plane of World War II.From Bremont’s pre-release press statement (for the complete text and specifications,

Last September, Editor-in-Chief Carl Cunanan flew north to dive deep into waters off Hong Kong, without any life support. Carl was invited to join a handful of alumnos to be instructed by freedive record holder and Oris brand ambassador Carlos Coste. The experience was both an ordeal and a revelation. Diving deep into darker waters and mounting pressure, Carl had to awaken his body's latent adaptations for hoarding finite air while being crushed at depth. Here is his story. Part 1: So Deep It's Dark

Christian Redl’s next challenge and the Edox Iceman II For a man, the irony of it will be excruciating, and for his timepiece, the extremes, mollifying. Extreme free diver Christian Redl who set the world record for diving under ice last year, now joins the Gokyo Project at Nepal’s Mount Everest National Park to challenge the glacial lakes of the Gokyo wetlands.On February 12, 2011, Redl dove 200 feet down into the frigid waters of Lake Weissensee in the Austrian Alps. The dive saw Redl descending at a rate of almost five feet per second and touching down after 42 seconds,

ORANGE, simply put is a color between red and yellow. But what has this got to do with diving or the DOXA SUB? It has been tested and proven that when you go diving, the color that is most visible underwater is the color orange. The DOXA SUB has built its reputation on this fact and the color orange.Few non-divers have heard of the watch company DOXA, but if ever a definitive history of the dive watch is written, one manufacturer will stand along side the likes of Rolex, Blancpain, and Omega as being a great dive watch. DOXA S.A. Is a small company from Bienne, Switzerland,

Sea-Gull of China may have a silver bullet, hitting the mark squarely with its line of classic hand-wound pocket watches.The resurgence of pocket watches is often dismissed as a novelty, only resurfacing for speculation, tickling for impulsive googling in the wee hours of the morning. With so many other things, metal and sharp-edged or polymer and easily scratched, competing for finite pocket space, any scenario where one heads out shopping for these grandpa gadgets usually peters out when reconciling practicality and price-points.But the idea remains,

Blancpain Villeret Traditional Chinese Calendar The year is 2012, auspicious year of the Water Dragon, occasion of the first Olympics after the one in Beijing, and the year when China overtook the United States as the world’s top haute horlogerie market. This year, Blancpain presents the Traditional Chinese Calendar from its Villeret collection: the first wristwatch, the Manufacture asserts, to ever feature a Chinese calendar. It is a painstakingly crafted statement, honouring an ancient culture, and recognizing modern China’s place in the present.On first blush,

Even the company name might sound unfamiliar to many who think themselves abreast of the modern watchmaking world. Urwerk. A Geneva company which speaks not in gears, trains, and hands--but in carousels, satellites, and transporters. One look at their wristwatches and--if you don’t already know them--you will definitely not forget them. Their pieces look like nothing else you’ve seen on a wrist. But that is exactly their point. The company Urwerk SA was launched just ten years ago by two brothers and a friend with one principal idea,

Early in 1942, just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. War Department acquired around 50 Milus Snow Star Instant Date watches for classified purposes. These watches are now being discovered in the sealed survival kits issued to American and Allied pilots during World War II. Were these kits thought to be essential gear for pilots as they sortied near islands in the Pacific where primitive headhunters still dwelled? Or,

In 1953, Rolex successfully tested a prototype watch called the Deep Sea Special strapped outside the bathyscape FNRS-2 to a depth of 3,150m or 10,336ft. Rolex proved its design mantra with an ultra-rigid Oyster case. By Basel 1954, they had raised the depth rating on all Submariners to 180m or 600ft, in conjunction with the release of the Submariner model 6204. On January 23, 1960, Rolex pushed the envelope further with the Rolex Piccard (model 7205) attached to the bathyscape Trieste that successfully dived to a depth of 10,916m or 35,800ft.

THE SOUL OF A NEW MANUFACTURE There is an interesting constant at Baselworld. No pun intended, as it’ll be made clear. There is something I have seen since the very first time I attended that wonderful, chaotic horological meeting place almost a decade ago, and in spite of all the change and relative chaos of this year’s event I saw it again.The days before Baselworld opens, all the brands are putting the final touches on their booths. Everything from million-dollar watches to priceless antiques to vintage cars to chairs and drinking water is brought in. In the middle of all that,