What the Heck is a Tachymeter For? That Scale of Numbers Engraved Around Some Chronograph Watch Bezels.

April 5, 2021

#422

Gentle reader,

I first wrote about my small collections of chronograph watches in March of 2012. You may read that article here:

The Robb Collections: The Watches

There is a LONG explanation about tachymeters in Wikipedia here:  Tachymeter (watch) - Wikipedia

The gist of it, they simplify with this line: "A tachymeter is simply a means of converting elapsed time (in seconds per unit) to rate (in units per hour)."

Anyone familiar with the measurement of time and speed in automotive (and boat) Drag Racing knows there are two measurements: How Long it takes the car(s) or boats to travel from a dead stop at the starting line to it passing the finish line is the ELAPSED time in seconds. The second measurement is the speed the car is traveling as it passes the finish line. Two photoelectric beams shine across the drag strip, one X number of feet before and a second one the same number of feet after the finish line. How many seconds it takes to trip both beams of light is calculated to determine the speed. A YouTube video linked below is a graphic demonstration.

New Nitro Altered World Record: 4.92 at 304.53 mph by Richard Hartman - YouTube 

But THIS article is not about drag racing, it is about TACHYMETERS.  And no, they are not used to gauge how BADLY someone is dressed.

This lovely yellow watch was made by ADEE KAYE and it  most clearly shows the TACHYMETER scale. However, THIS watch is not one which someone can actually USE the scale with since the seconds had is part of TIME telling.

The SECONDS hand of a true tachymeter watch MUST be the elapsed seconds hand for the chronograph (stopwatch). Thus, it must be stationary unless one is TIMING something. As you can see the second hand with it's red arrow tip below is.

This stunning C.T.I. chronograph, a copy of a Breitling watch, the only hands used by the watch are the hours and minutes hands. The seconds hand and all three smaller (subdials) do not move until the top button (called "pushers") is pressed. Then the seconds hand and all three subdial hands begin moving. One of them is 1/100th of a second and it whirls very quickly then stops at 12 o'clock on it's dial. The other's are 1/10th of a second, then minutes and hours. When the top presser is pushed, all four hands stop and the 1/100th hand also swings around and stops to show how many hundredths of a second were elapsed. Pretty cool, right?

However, that watch does NOT have a tachymeter. The bezel (metal ring that surrounds the watch face) rotates and as you can see, 60 is not at twelve o'clock, as it should be. Rotating bezels are often on DIVE watches and much more clearly visible so divers can keep track of how long they have been down and not run out of air.

Now this ADEE KAYE watch has the fixed seconds hand, BUT it lacks the tachymeter scale! Also one of the pusher buttons was separated from the watch. :-( 

This lovely two-tone Citizen watch has BOTH the scale and the fixed seconds hand. I am now wondering why I got rid of it.

I have never counted just how many watches I have owned in total, but it is around forty. I limit myself to just seven at a time now. 

But, almost ALL of them have been CHRONOGRAPH watches. Which are a wristwatch (usually) which ALSO has a stopwatch built into the one watch movement. 

Nancy had bought me a Swiss Legend watch which has a yellow face and yellow silicone band. It's big and heavy which seems to be the thing these days. I like it and decided to find a chronograph from the same company. ABOVE, is what I found, used for $50 on eBay. That is the seller's photo which I rotated and cropped for this article. I picked out one of the watches I already owned and sold it on eBay.

AS you can see, it has it all: Fixed second hand, tachymeter scale and subdials. I am retired, and sometimes I DO wonder what day it is, so the bottom "day" subdial does come in handy.

In Hong Kong, China, one can find COUNTLESS "luxury" watches for BARGAIN prices! The problem is almost all of them are FAKES. 

Before ROLEX put pressure on eBay to prevent sellers from hocking their wares of counterfeit Rolex watches, I was able to buy these.

The red/blue one is a fake Submariner diving watch, but I would not get it wet! 

I call them "Fauxlex" watches. It is a word I coined. Faux is French for fake. It is pronounced "foe". Put together it is pronounced "Foe-lex" which rhymes with Rolex.

All the others are Daytona chronograph watches. The trouble is, while they do have automatic or self-winding movements like the original, THEIR movements are CALENDAR movements. The subdials show the day, date, and month. The black face/strap watch has the correct markings for that type movement, the rest look exactly like the real thing. Pressing the pushers does nothing unless one pulls out the crown and presses them repeatedly to "zero" them at the 12 o'clock position. ALL of them are long gone from the collection.

Someone who read my previous article contacted me to tell me he had a fake HEUER Monza chronograph (as well as the fake Submariner) which he wanted to offer to me. I bit because the price was right. It actually is a chronograph, but the back of the watch does not match the front. 

TAG bought HEUER or the other way around, and the back is clearly marked: TAG HEUER.

What Rolex objects to aside from their watches blatantly being copied is not just the design of their watches, at least in the case of the Daytona models, it is the USE of their NAME as well as their designs.

The Daytona design patent ran out years ago and many watch companies started making their own watches with the same look. Here are some I have owned:

                                       ADEE KAYE's version.

Apogaum's version which uses the self-winding Chinese calendar movement.

Italian named, but Japanese movement within the Enrico Coveri version which has added a red face and a date window.

This is the black "Fauxlex" Daytona. I included it so you could see the markings on the subdials. Note that they pressed the bezel on crooked. "60" is supposed to be at 12 o'clock.

A pair of INVICTA Speedway watches. I still have the stainless steel watch, but sold the gold one. It came with the alligator band as well as an all gold (plated) metal band. I have since purchased a two-tone Invicta Speedway which resembles this Faulex: 

Again, I picked out a watch from the collection to sell to allow room for it. 

A little history on the Rolex Daytona watches. Every January, at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona, Florida, USA, is held the "Rolex 24 at Daytona" endurance sports car race. It is twenty-four hours long and starts out the new season of IMSA's premiere races. It USED to be part of what is now called the "WEC" or World Endurance Championship. The second race was the 12 Hours of Sebring, also in Florida in March. Then the racers went to Europe for the rest of the season's races. The PREMIERE event is the 24 Hour of Le Mans in France, in June. Races are held in several countries throughout the season.

This photo is from the parade lap (right before the green flag drops to start the race) of the 1968 Daytona 24 Hours race. Two Ford GT40 cars lead with four Porsche 908 behind, four Ferrari (I don't remember their models) and the white/black car had a JET turbine engine in it! It did not finish the race. MOST cars did not finish endurance races back then. 

ANYWAY, the winners (two or more drivers shared driving duty) received solid gold Rolex Daytona watches, second place, two-tone gold and stainless and third place all-stainless steel Daytona watches. 

BUT, this article is SUPPOSED to be about TACHYMETERS so, here it is.

A tachymeter is to be used when a vehicle is already moving at SPEED. This Swiss watch (Swatch) has the requisite fixed seconds hand and a tachymeter scale. Since almost ALL cars (except land-speed record cars) cannot go more than 200 miles an hour, or 321.868 kilometers an hour, we can ignore any numbers higher on the scale.

The driver, or preferably a passenger, presses the top button AS they are passing a marked/fixed point, such as a mile or kilometer maker, while the car is at top speed. The watch wearer again presses the top button as the vehicle passes the second marked/fixed point, such as a mile or kilometer marker.

Then, they look to where the second hand STOPPED and read the scale to figure out how fast they were going.

This scale is much more complete than the Swatch so one could calculate by the distance between the numbers. NOTE how they get farther apart as the speed numbers get slower. So, if it stopped at 12, the vehicle was going 60 miles or kilometers per hour.

How useful are tachymeters and for that matter, chronograph watches? To me, not very. ALL cars sold HAVE speedometers to tell the driver how fast they are going. And, I don't speed nor race real cars (only simulated ones) and the ONLY thing I've ever TIMED with one of my watches was how long it took to get our FOOD after we ordered it in a restaurant! 

But, I love their looks and IF I wanted to time something, I have the technology to do so. Between you and me, a DIGITAL watch would be much more accurate and goes down to 1/1000th of a second. But digital, BAH! Oh, and I deliberately do not have a smart phone. Useful they are, but I see SO many people who seem to CONSTANTLY be looking down at their phones and NOT at their surroundings. I do not want to be like that. 

I also drive a WAGON, not an SUV or crossover or minivan or pickup truck. I LIKE being different. 

My 2005 Volvo V50 T5 Sport is extremely rare since it has the six-speed manual transmission.

Oh no! The socket plug is upside down! Well the car was new to us then and I corrected that. 

To give you an example of it's size, here it is next to VW's (then) smallest SUV, the Tiguan. 

To show it's prowess, I added these Prancing Moose emblems. Every new Volvo goes through the high-speed moose avoidance test. I'm not making this up. And these emblems are a dig at Ferrari owners.

Thank you for taking the time to read my humble blog. Please take a moment to click or tap the FOLLOW button which is located by the ADEE KAYE watches version of the Rolex Daytona chronograph photo. That way, you will receive notifications of new articles as they come out. Also, feel free to leave a comment below or on Facebook.

Scott

April 5, 2021

#422