Desert Horology Co.
Desert Horology Co.
Watch collecting, horological history, and honest buying advice
Desert Horology Co. is my watch side of the internet. I collect, research, and make short videos about mechanical watches: the engineering inside them, the history behind them, and how to buy well without overpaying.
Start with the most-watched videos below, then follow along on Instagram for the newest ones.
Most watched first
Most watched
One clock that started running 90 years ago still hasn’t stopped, and it’s never been manually…
This is the only watch that comes with its own built-in rescue team
Everyone else built a door for the helium
The three most famous sports watches, fierce rivals no less, all share the same beating heart
The smallest watch movement ever made is about the size of a match stick
The threshold to start dipping your toe into luxury timepieces starts just below $5k per piece
Another awesome microbrand, and certainly one of the most unique, @xericwatches
There’s a wide world of watches once you start exploring beyond major brands and get into…
Watch collecting can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be
One watchmaker defied his bosses, bricked the tooling into a wall, and saved the greatest…
James Bond has quite the history with Omega, but it all started with a costume designer who did…
Casio and the Casiotron
A British watchmaker spent 20 years pitching a better escapement
Heuer is one of those watch companies that got put through the wringer in the quartz crisis
It’s 1983. Enter: The Swatch
@audemarspiguet pulled a Michelle Obama: when the market went low, they went high
Tudor stopped selling watches entirely in America for a decade
@swatch Group’s biggest innovation was diversifying brands under one parent umbrella
Before anyone could build a precise watch, someone had to measure a micron
The world’s most complicated handmade watch has 24 complications — and it was built without a…
The Beginning
My top 5 favorite modern @omega references
Établissage
From classified military gear to Hollywood wrists
The @casiowatches_official F-91W is the bestselling watch of all time, not taking into account…
@iwcwatches used the classic luxury playbook to navigate the quartz crisis
OMEGA took a big swing with its Project Alaska series of watches
The Accutron
Blancpain is the perfect proof point for one of the strategies that brands used to survive the…
The @breitling Top Time that Sean Connery wore in Thunderball, complete with Geiger counter case…
Series
The Quartz Crisis
A multi-part series on the 1970s and 80s upheaval that nearly ended Swiss mechanical watchmaking, told one episode at a time.
Part 01 The Beginning
Part 04 Établissage
Part 07 The Accutron
Part 09 Casio and the Casiotron