My criteria for the appearance of a practical and elegant analog watch
I have been interested in watches for many years, and have bought watches for the sake of functionality or particular features that they offered, such as self-winding, or solar powered, or radio-controlled, or a built-in digital stopwatch, etc.
Then one day, it dawned on me that what I actually did with my watch was to give it a quick glance to check the time - so why not focus on making that a pleasant experience?! It was time for a change from an engineer's or gadgeteer's approach to purchasing a watch!
That was the first time I approached a watch purchase by first and foremost giving attention to the watch's appearance! So I set about to consciously consider the many details about a watch's appearance and figure out what I wanted to look for.
The list of criteria below is what I came up with.
Skipping ahead briefly - once I had my list and had done a fair amount of surfing on-line, I did find a model that ticked all my checkboxes, and that had a price that wasn't cheap, but it wasn't unmanagable either - so I had a winner, which I'm still wearing as I'm typing this :)
Here's what I decided to look for...
a) Luminous hands and dial
For practicality and ease of viewing in a dark environment, I would opt for hands and dial markings that glow in the dark.
b) Contrast between the hands and the dial
For readability, I'd suggest either dark hands over a light dial or light hands over a dark dial. Since glow-in-the-dark paint is near white in color, a dark dial would provide the best contrast.
c) Color scheme
We need a light color and a dark color (so far) for the hands and dial respectively. One of my favorite color combinations is blue and gold, so gold-tone metalic hands over a dark blue dial would look great.
d) Minute marks
To facilitate setting the minute hand accurately, 60 minute marks should be evenly spaced around the edge of the dial (also helpful when reading the time).
e) Hour markers vs. numbers
I like the simplicity of plain hour markers, since I've long since memorized the hour number at each position!
f) Second hand
My preference is to include a second hand (for practicality)
g) Lengths of the hands
I like the second hand and minute hand to be just long enough to reach the inner end of the minute marks. This way it's easy to see both the hand and the minute marks, and see how they align.
I like the hour hand to be short enough that it doesn't quite reach the hour markers. This helps the hour hand look short and be easily distinguished from the minute hand.
h) Tapered hour and minute hands that come to a point.
For me, having these hands be tapered and coming to a point feels consistent with indicating the time precisely. I'm not sure if that's objectively true, but it's what I like!
i) Color of additional writing on the dial (e.g. for brand name, model name, or special features)
I would suggest white writing on the blue dial for this information, which helps distinguish this from the gold-tone color scheme used for indicating the time.
j) Domed crystal vs. flat crystal
My preference is for a domed crystal because a flat crystal greatly exaggerates the movement of reflections caused by even small movements of your wrist.
Putting this all together, here's a photo of the model I found:
High Frequency Oscillator
As it turns out, this watch does do more than just look good! On the dial is written "262 kHz", which indicates the use of a high-frequency quartz oscillator. (32 kHz would be a common frequency in an ordinary quartz watch.) If an oscillator's frequency is off by a certain number of Hz, that error will be a smaller fraction of the oscillator's operating frequency if the operating frequency is high, resulting in increased accuracy of the timekeeping.
When new, this watch needed several months to accumulate 1 second of error! This was much better than I expected. Now (at the time of this writing), about 5 years later the watch gains about 2 seconds in 1 month, so the oscillator has drifted slightly. I don't know what the guaranteed tolerance is, but I think it's still quite accurate.
Sweep Second Hand
An unusual feature of this watch is than the second hand moves continuously rather than making a jump once each second. I think this is to pay homage to the original Accutron model which used the miniscule movements of a small tuning fork to drive a gear that moved the second hand with a smooth continuous motion. It was a brilliant invention in its day, and a big improvement in accuracy compared to ordinary mechanical watches.
The Accutron II's second hand is, for all practical purposes, silent. That said, note that if I place the watch directly on my ear and listen carefully when there's no traffic nearby, I can very faintly hear a rapid series of ticks. The second hand actually takes 16 very small steps to move through 1 second on the dial, so those tiny steps come rapidly, one after another, so as to appear to be a continuous movement.