The unique space watch SpaceTime Blade will show the time in miles

Urwerk, a company known for its extraordinary wristwatches, has introduced a new model called SpaceTime Blade. It is a huge glass column with vintage gas-discharge indicators inside. The designers were tasked with making something monumental, in the spirit of vintage living room decorations, but with a direct link to space.

They took as a basis the idea of Gustave Sandoz, who in the 18th century proposed to measure time with the help of distance. For example, a spaceship starts from the Earth and will never return to it, and in the blackness of outer space it is difficult to find a reference to something. There are no days or years, so only how far the ship has traveled from its current starting point is measurable. In some ways, it’s like measuring distance in light-years – the time it takes light to travel the distance between two points.

All the bronze parts in the SpaceTime Blade watch are made using a model casting technique that dates back to ancient Greece. The Nixie bulbs, once the most popular indicators to form the first digital displays, are also hand-assembled, each with 88 parts. In total, there are 1,446 original components in the watch, most of them handmade.

The watch is set up via remote control. You can set the display of the current time to 1/100th of a second, or the full date. The alternative “space” mode will show the time in the form of the number of kilometers that the Earth has made while rotating on its axis, plus the number of kilometers traveled in orbit around the Sun. The starting point is the moment the watch is launched.

The cost of SpaceTime Blade is $61 thousand, a series of only 33 pieces will be produced.