At Rudells we are very proud of our wide portfolio of watch brands. We stock many brands from Tissot and Gucci to Patek Philippe and Rolex with everything in between. As you look through our brands one thing becomes apparent, there is one thing that all the brands have in common….the chronograph function.
The word chronograph comes from the Greek words Chronos meaning time and Graphein meaning writing. The feature of a chronograph works very much like a stopwatch, by pressing one button to start the timer, it will then record time and display it on three sub-dials on the face. Most watches will record seconds, minutes and either hours or half hour intervals. Some brands, like Tag for example, are keen to make their chronographs even more accurate and can record the time to 1/10th of a second.
As you can imagine, there is a lot of skill involved and hundreds of tiny components to create an operational and accurate chronograph movement. It is a skill that dates back to 1821, when the first chronograph was invented by a Frenchman called Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec. Rieussec was the personal watchmaker of The French King Louis XVIII. The King was a lover of horse racing and wanted a method of recording not only the time of the first horse finishing the race but of all the horses, and so Rieussec invented the chronograph. It was not however situated on the dial of a watch like they are today, instead he created a box which housed two discs that rotated and measure seconds and fractions of a second, and this was known as the ‘Time Writer’. By pressing a button a small ink mark is expelled by a central stamp and instantly records the time on the discs. This was a huge leap forward in the relationship between man and time.
It is surely only fitting that someone should pay tribute to this development which revolutionized the art of timekeeping and so Mont Blanc released their Rieussec Home Time timepiece. Mont Blanc spent 7 years on development, creating a chronograph, which like the Rieussec chronograph, displayed the time on rotating discs and used a mono push button to operate the start, stop and reset functions exactly the way Rieussec created his. As well as this unique chronograph the watch is equipped with an in house Mont Blanc movement that boasts a 72 hour power reserve. Other features include a date and a day/night indicator both displayed in apertures on the dial.
This sensational watch captures the true spirit of this revolution in timekeeping. The Time Writer box is probably preserved in a museum of horology these days however the Mont Blanc Rieussec Hometime watch can be found at Rudells with a variety of pieces available in stainless steel, white, yellow and rose gold as well as limited edition pieces in platinum. A unique timepiece inspired by time itself.