A picture I took of a 1992 Patek Philippe catalogue Let's get the potentially controversial part of this out of the way: Ellipse is a misnomer when it comes to the Patek Philippe references 3788, 3930 and related versions. More specifically, the watch case in these designs is not rendered in the geometrical version of an ellipse that is frequently taught in high school. I'm honestly a little embarrassed to have only recently come to this conclusion, but geometry was never my strong suit. I won't take all the blame. In most discussions of the Ellipse (the watch), inevitably the "golden ratio" comes up. I think I was distracted by that, because the golden ratio is a pretty interesting topic. Nevertheless, I'd like to set the record straight, or at least straighter, with this post.
An ellipse is basically an oblong shape. The Ellipse in Washington, DC, a grass area in President's Park. Compared to a canonical ellipse, the Patek Ellipse has sides that are too straight leading to "corners" that arch too quickly. Real ellipses are also defined by an equation, like:
A graph of this equation is below. The graph of the ellipse equation. As I'll show in just a bit, the case profile of the Ellipse watch is also defined by an equation, but it is meaningfully different from an actual ellipse. The Cartier Bagnoire is much closer to an ellipse than the Patek Ellipse.
I came to this realization after flipping through the pages of a 1992 Patek catalogue I received as a holiday gift. Another picture of a page from the 1992 Patek catalogue. There, I saw a designer's drawing of the Ellipse watch, which I share here. I'd never seen this drawing before. It features a crosshair at the center surrounded by four overlapping circles. I later learned that these four overlapping circles are called a quatrefoil, a shape that is important in a number of religions. Some claim that in Christianity it represents the four gospel authors in the Bible. The design also appears in mosques. Van Cleef and Arpels famously adopted a quatrefoil in their Alhambra bracelet.
I spent a bit of time trying to figure out how a combination of the quatrefoil and the golden ratio could result in the case design we find in the Ellipse. Example of a cloverleaf highway design in Michigan, US. That effort, by and large, went nowhere. I will note that the quatrefoil drawing presented in the 1992 Patek catalogue does lend credence to the claim on John Riordan's Collectibility that one possible designer of the Patek Ellipse was inspired by the interwoven "cloverleaf" offramp pattern frequently featured on American highways.
Interestingly, it is entirely possible that Patek's Ellipse designer was inspired by Hein's fountain, rather than the golden ratio. The timing is consistent. Hein's design was presented to Stockholm planners in 1960. The Patek Ellipse debuted in 1968.
In the image presented here, you can see that the gaph of the above equation matches a photo of the Patek Ellipse almost perfectly. A graph of the equation defining the shape of Patek's Ellipse (L) and the graphed equation overlaying a Patek Ellipse (R).You can also see that the actual equation for the Ellipse watch is meaningfully different from the ellipse equation I presented earlier. Interestingly, we now know exactly where the golden ratio fits into the design of the Patek Ellipse. If you look in the exponent of the equation just above, it rounds to 2.62. This is one plus a rounded value of the golden ration (1.62).
I applaud the effort by watch manufacturers to minimize their contributions to climate change. Globally, we've made some progress towards "bending the curve" of greenhouse gas emissions, which is the good news. This figure from climateactiontracker.org shows that, even under an optimistic scenario, some increase in global temperatures is unavoidable. The bad news is that we clearly need to do a whole lot more to get to a point where we halt the growing cost of environmental degradation. As the graph I've presented here shows, existing policies are not enough to ensure a healthy planet for our children, their children, and all future generations. As Elizabeth Doer's outstanding coverage on Quill and Pad shows, the watch industry is discussing the challenges ahead and developing contributions to the fight against climate change. These include the use of recycled and recovered materials in manufacturing as well as requiring transparency in how raw materials are
Today, I learned a new term from an Instagram post by @ebaywatches. That term is "closet currency." No, this doesn't refer to someone stacking bills in some dark corner of their wardrobe. Instead, closet currency is the value that is stored in items that you put in your closet. At least, that's what I think it means. I arrived at this conclusion since eBay's post featured YouTuber Jose Zeniga describing the monetary value of different luxury watches. Zeniga also described a "luxury exchange" that eBay set up in NYC. In essence, you could take something out of your closet, go to the exchange, get an appraisal value, and then use your item and its appraisal to purchase another item that was available on the exchange. The formal definition of money is anything that is generally accepted as payment. In essense, eBay set up a NYC micro-economy in which almost any closet item could be used as money. Money is actually a pretty complex topic. It took a lo
Just before the US Thanksgiving holiday, I received a direct message on Instagram from the account @secondhand.secondhands. Al Worden's official NASA portrait from 1971. He's wearing the watch in question on his left wrist. They were looking for help identifying a watch on the wrist of an astronaut in a photo from 1971. The astronaut in question is Al Worden, pictured here. Worden was the command module pilot for Apollo 15. He orbited the moon 74 times during that mission. To this day, he travelled farther from Earth than any other person. Worden was a 1955 West Point graduate but he commissioned in the US Air Force (the Air Force Academy was not yet commissioning graduates so USMA and USNA graduates were able to commission in the Air Force). Before NASA, Worden flew the F-86D Sabre and the F-102 Delta Dagger. He then earned a Master's degree in aerospace and instrumentation engineering just before enrolling in a test pilot school in the UK. I've included a scree
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