BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
Longines’ Master collection is all about dressy appeal, and a chronograph piece is a classy affair indeed. That’s why Longines has reintroduced its monopusher chronograph in two stainless steel variants to begin. With cases measuring 41mm x 12.6mm (with 30m of water resistance), these pieces sit at the higher-sized end of the complex dress watch size range, but they’re not oversized.
A monopusher chronograph is an elegant thing indeed, using only one pusher to control all of the functions of a chronograph. On a dual-pusher chronograph (the kind we see most often these days), you can start and stop the chronograph as much as you like, as one pusher controls that function; meanwhile, the other pusher resets it. On a monopusher chronograph, one pusher controls it all, and so pressing the pusher cycles the chronograph through a sequence: running > stopped > reset to zero. The fact that the pusher is in the crown is an added bonus.
It would be easy to say that that’s less practical than a dual-pusher chronograph, and in some applications it might be. But that’s not really the case here, as this watch has a “pulsometer” on it. Before modern digital equipment, doctors would sometimes use a pulsometer watch to work out a patient’s heart rate.
They’d find the patient’s pulse, start the chronograph and count to 30 heartbeats, once they did that, they stopped the chronograph, and wherever the seconds hand pointed showed the patient’s pulse. The bi-compax dial layout and the barleycorn guilloché are extras that happen to look great.
Two versions are available, one with a silver opaline dial (ref.L2.960.4.78.2) and one with a frosted blue dial (ref.L2.960.4.93.2). The silver version comes on a brown leather strap and the blue on an anthracite leather strap, both with a folding clasp made from stainless steel.
Powering all this is the calibre L799.5, and that’s visible through a sapphire caseback. The L799.5 is based on the ETA calibre A08.L11, which is a self-winding calibre, although the automatic winding mechanism has been removed for the purpose of the L799.5. It’s a column-wheel chronograph with a 4Hz beat rate, 28 jewels and a 68-hour power reserve.
The new Master Collection Chrono Monopusher watches are attractive and classy, and they’re also not limited editions, which is a bonus. The price for both models is $3,900/€3,800 each.
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