Tag: atomic watch

Earlier, I wrote about the innards of the Hoptroff No. 10 Atomic Pocket Watch; this post is about the dial and complications of the watch – the dark side of the moon**. Perhaps.

If you take a look at the photograph below, you might recognise the Space Travellers’ watch, which sold last year for £1,329,250. I’ve probably committed horological sacrilege by even comparing these two pocket watches, let alone over-laying them, but I think there are some very obvious likenesses between Dr Daniels’ 1982 meisterwerk and the Hoptroff No. 10. Obviously, they are both cased in gold and even share many of the same complications, but looking beyond the sidereal, past the moonphase, it’s the styling, the aesthetic that is so similar.

I popped in to see Richard Hoptroff, of Hoptroff London, a couple of weeks ago. A friend had kindly arranged an hour with Richard who was generous enough to put up with my slight geekiness, and utter awe at seeing the atomic made mechanical.

Richard hasn’t always made watches, although he did make / design a rather cool clock about a decade ago, and has some very interesting views on complications. Before getting into watchmaking, he was a physicist, and has lived in Paris, as well as the States. Last year, at the Daniels Auction, he bid and won on George’s Trafalgar watch and he even has a patent on a left-(or right-)handed quartz movement. In fact, until he started flying, Richard didn’t even own a watch. Now he’s producing some of the most interesting #smartwatches I’ve seen, as well as the most accurate.