His Royal Highness Prince Albert II, who takes a very serious interest in the protection of the environment, has promoted the use of electric vehicles in Monaco for many years. In particular, he invited his government to introduce a premium covering up to 30% of the purchase price of such vehicles and to establish partnerships with carmakers as part of a zero-emission mobility project.

On Saturday 26 March 2010, he welcomed the Odyssey of Pioneers in the Courtyard of the Prince’s Palace before taking the wheel of the TAG Heuer Tesla Roadster in order to put its engineering to the test in the streets of the Principality.

Jean-Christophe Babin, President and CEO of TAG Heuer, said how honoured he was to be received by H.R.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco, who had allowed the zero-emission car to be driven along the legendary Monaco Grand Prix circuit. He declared that the occasion added a prestigious dimension to the World Tour and proved that the Odyssey was a project that united all those who feel  involved in the future of our planet.

TAG Heuer and Tesla Motors, in order to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Swiss watch manufacturer, have taken up a crazy challenge : the first world tour by an electric vehicle, the “Odyssey of Pioneers”. Tesla Motors manufactures and markets the most innovative and boldest of cars on the market today. TAG Heuer is the avant-garde brand of Swiss watchmaking that marries technology with design, with a history of close associations with motor racing. That TAG Heuer and Tesla Motors should join together in this enterprise was therefore absolutely natural.
Tesla created a unique GT model in the TAG Heuer colours that is 100% electric.

More about TAG Heuer on Watchonista here!

Ah… Valentine’s Day ! What a special day for lovers. Ever since approximately the 12th century, Saint Valentine’s Day has been the annual period for celebrating love… Nowadays it is synonymous with romantic dinners, sweet notes, promises of eternal love exchanged around a glass of Champagne…

And of course, let’s not forget THE gift ! What can be more representative of eternal, timeless love than a watch ? Knowing the very symbolic importance of time for lovers, many watchmakers have been creating special Valentine’s Day editions of their timepieces. Blancpain, Tissot, Nina Ricci and Swatch are but a few examples of brands who have seized the spirit of this unique period and crystallized it into wristwatches.

So this upcoming Valentine’s Day, will you be offering a timekeeper to that special someone you wish to keep for all of time, or will you be lucky enough to receive one ? Feel free to share your answers with the community on the Watchonista forum.

As the snow heavily falling in the US, the results of the Swiss Watch industry…

General decline – modest end-of-year recovery: Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry

The strong growth recorded previously by Swiss watch exports was interrupted in 2009. For the year as a whole, the result totalled 13.2 billion francs.

This level is 3.8 billion francs below that registered in 2008, corresponding to an annual decline of 22.3%. The sector was hit by a general fall in demand linked to the world economic crisis and suffered on all of its markets and in all segments.

Signals perceived on the markets indicate that 2010 should see a turnaround for Swiss watch exports. It will however be modest and will only really be felt in the second half of the year, when the annualised variation will return to positive rates.

Wristwatches comprised the major part of exports. They saw their value fall by 22.3% compared to 2008, at 12.3 billion francs. Their volume meanwhile fell to 21.7 million units in one year, a decline of 17.0%. As a result, Swiss watch manufacturers exported 4.4 million fewer timepieces in 2009.

If your alarm clock could walk and talk, what would it say? I can only thank God it’s just an inert object, because I’m pretty sure mine would take off and leave me to deal with my incurable inability to wake up. But of course, I would never had even contemplated the prospect of anything like this happening if it wasn’t for this original piece of animation.

This clip tells the story of an alarm clock and its owner… and the turmoil of their relationship. Eventually (at 7:18), feeling undervalued and fed up, the clock packs up its bag and leaves. The characters are made of plasticine to produce this original stop motion animation (or claymotion, as it is known).

Sandra Romy, the creative hand behind the work, claims it to be autobiographical: “It’s a bit of a self-portrait: impossible to get up in the morning! What inspired me is the fact that alarm clocks generally make a lot of noise and go from a static position to suddenly jumping into life,” she says.

Another interesting idea is that the clock acts like a loyal pet to its owner and is quite playful with him. In the end, the clock proves more reliable than the man!

Time travel is science fiction, right? Think again. Ronald Mallett is the man who’s making it a reality. He came up with an invention capable of altering the space-time dimension through the power generated by laser light.

I think his story is a beautiful one. As a kid, his dad died and he was so sad that he just couldn’t accept he’d never see him again. So he made a promise to himself: that one day, he’ll invent a machine to go back in time so he could see his father again.

Of course, we’ve heard stories like that. My brother was going to be an astronaut and rule the world from above the stars; I had mind set on being able to fly (and I don’t mean planes). But this kid grew up to be a physicist and never gave up his dream. Result? The world’s first ever time machine.

Now, before you start making your plans for your next holiday to the 23rd century, just a word of caution. First, the machine only goes back in time. Second, it can only go back as far as when the machine will be first switched on… which won’t be for another 10 years. And once it’s on, Lord knows what we could see.

Welcome to the future!

The clepsydra is probably a good word to know for a water clock if you’re concerned about growing a table-quiz talent. It comes from the Greek, and if you see similarities with the word kleptomania, you’d be right! “Kleptein” means to steal and “hydro” means water.

To steal water! Yeah, of course, you steal water from a jar and it tells you the time. Er… makes sense, right? Well, why it’s called like that remains a mystery to me, but it’s not likely they’d ask anything like that at a quiz anyway.

The water clock is recognized as one of the earliest way of measuring time, but it is unknown where and when it first appeared. Civilizations throughout the world used it and contributed to improvements of this instrument. Egypt, Babylon, India, China, the Roman Empire, Ancient Greece, Korea, Japan… But it is the Islamic world that came up with the most fanciful techniques, adding complex gearing systems with water wheels and programmability. Impressive when you consider the basic clepsydra consists a holed bowl with marks around it.

Today, we still come up with versions of the water clock, although this may be more about display than telling the time. Funnily enough, with our technology, one of the last clepsydra built for a public space (in 1991) encountered unusual “technical” problems, despite our technological advance!

The odd thing about time is that it’s so intricately linked with our experience of the world and yet we can’t feel it or sense it. Our lives largely revolve around time, especially in the modern western world. Yet, it is not time itself that regulates our routine; rather, it is our attempts to make sense of it.

Neuroscientists have showed that the human (and rodent) mind copes better with timekeeping when there’s a reward looming. Regularity allows us to plan ahead how we need to deploy our energy to make sure we won’t run out of juice before we reach our objective.

Take rats for example – prime candidates for all kinds of experimentation. The scientists have found that, when rewarded on a regular basis, their motivation and focus on learning would increase the closer they would be to receiving their treat. We humans behave in much the same way, apparently.

Time alone is evasive. So evasive in fact that, if we don’t pay attention to it, it keeps on running without any impact on our appreciation of what we call “now”. But add to it an objective and time becomes a road to get you from A to B. And your compass to make sure you don’t get lost on the way? Yep, a watch!

Today is a big day for the world of watch making. The Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) kicks off at Geneva’s convention centre Palexpo and will last until Friday.

The event is one of the world’s most prestigious, with a rigorous entry system whereby exhibitors are selected by a special committee and guests can participate by named invitation only. So pardon me if I may, but I just have to take this opportunity to show off: there’s four of us in Watchonista going at the SIHH – ha! Beat that?

Now, this is the 20^th edition of the SIHH and the organizing body, the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie, has selected 19 participating brands this year, recognizing them as key players in the industry who “strive uphold the culture, innovation and professions that are the foundations for technical and precious fine watch making.”

First established “to promote fine watches and to offer a privileged setting for an elite clientele”, the number of exhibitors at the salon has grown steadily every year since 1991, when the number of companies represented was 5 (Baume & Mercier, Cartier, Piaget, Gérald Genta, Daniel Roth).

Also known as the sand clock or sand timer, the hourglass measures time based on the passing of a certain volume of sand through a bulbed cylinder. Its most basic form consists of two glass bulbs connected by a narrow tube where the sand flows at a steady pace.

Back in the day, it was common for the hourglass to measure.. well, funnily enough, an hour, like its name indicates. Today we might associate it with more quirky, if nerve-wracking, events: the voluntary public humiliation of one’s “special” drawing skills at Pictionary, or the panic of a failed guess over a game of Taboo.

The first tangible record of the hourglass can be found on the walls Sienna’s Palazzo Pubblico in the Room of Peace. There, Lorenzetti’s 14-century frescos depict an “Allegory of Good Government”. But there are speculations that it was in use as early as the third century in Alexandria.

In modern times, we still seem to be fascinated by this object. Beside using it as a 3-minute egg timer, some countries have had fun coming up with exaggerated models. The Timewheel in Budapest is the world’s largest sandglass and runs for one year, while Hamburg has come up with the smallest such instrument measuring a whole 5 seconds! Ah that’s useful…

Got the January blues yet? After all the festivities it’s tough settling back into the rut, waking up in the darkness of winter and setting off for work in the cold.

It doesn’t help to have indulged in a series of days where eating was the only matter of honor, followed by the “occasional” boozing at the local bistro. And all this tedious effort was usually rewarded by a lie-in in the morning, long enough for the sore head to recede just in time for a copious lunch.

But tsk tsk… Away with the memories of this cheerful past – it’s been over a week (sigh)… long gone – and let us get used to running our internal clocks back to (sigh again) a “normal” rhythm. I know I’m not the only one to moan about it and this is certainly a proper time to find all kinds of information on how to beat this seasonal trauma. To the rescue, the longing of a future in the Caribbean’s perhaps? Go on, do it! You know you want to: get started on organizing that summer holiday.