Niche Swiss brand Nord Zeitmaschine’s Quickindicator watch has a double-eccentric minute hand, and makes three complete circuits of the dial in one hour, starting from the top at 60 and then moving inwards. It’s as if time were running along a Formula 1 racetrack. The scene on the dial is enlivened by the very three dimensional construction and the attached numbers that almost seem to be floating in space.
The track is marked with dots at one-minute intervals. Any doubts that may arise when the minute hand is at a crossing-place – the track crosses eight times in an hour – are resolved by the direction in which the minute hand is pointing, with color codes on the different tracks at these points. The watch case measures 44.3 mm in diameter, and is 15.6 mm high. The watch is water resistant to 100 meters and has an ETA 2824 movement with additional modules by Nord including a power reserve of 42 hours.
The minute hand of the model Quickindicator makes 3 revolutions per hour and travels in 60 minutes over a minute track of 205mm length, means the hand (top) travels with a speed of 205mm/hour. Because of this, Quickindicator is the name of the watch. The Quickindicator has possibly the fastest minute hand in any mechanical wristwatch. Traveling on three overlapping ovoid-minute tracks, the minute hands have two axes of rotation, one of the hands itself, and the other the rotating platform the hand is mounted on.
The watch case is made of stainless steel and the case back is sapphire crystal secured with 10 screws. The watch is available in four versions including a white rhodium and black-gold with watch hands and arrows in blue amongst others. Each watch is available in limited edition of 97 pieces and the price starts at $13,855.
Nord (north) is a geographical reference to the north of Switzerland, which is where the founder of the brand Daniel Nebel was born in 1971 and where he has been making his timepieces since 1998, under the brand name NORD Zeitmaschine. In 1995, after many years working in the fields of prototype machine construction and tool building, he started to study and create wristwatches in parallel with his regular job. A high degree of mechanical precision now allows Daniel Nebel to create complex luxury watches, from its construction to the manufacture and assembling of the components, independently in his own workshop.
