By Harlan Chapman-Green
There have been some pretty major announcements coming in from Basel in Switzerland, such as the new colourful Patek Philippe Aquanaut, the stainless steel ‘Pepsi’ GMT Master II from Rolex, and, of course, Omega’s re-introduction of the wave dial for the Seamaster 300 collection. A little while ago I wrote about some of the new Zenith watches, but apparently, that wasn’t the end of it. Zenith has gone all high-tech with one of its new watches presented here, the Defy Zero G.
So, what is the Zero G? I’d say it’s a normal enough watch adapted to hold some sort of clockwork super weapon looking thing. Of course, it’s not anything like that. What it is is a clever idea for mitigating the effects of gravity. Unlike a tourbillon which only counteracts gravity on the plain it is placed upon, the ‘Gravity Control Module’ (by far one of the best names for a thing placed inside a watch) aims to, well, keep gravity under control by ensuring the balance is always in one position, horizontal.
It’s a fantastically simple concept, but making it is a whole different ball game altogether, especially when you consider that this is a very tiny and delicate set of gears which must somehow be able to transform elastic energy into kinetic energy all while doing that in any orientation. Zenith isn’t completely in over its head, though, they’ve used this unique complication before in the Christophe Colomb watches. Remember them? They had a big bubble over the anti gravity generator thingy, yeah, this one doesn’t have that. The size has been reduced dramatically down to fit in the watch, not to mention that there’s 139 components in there, as if it weren’t tricky enough already.
This watch is being released in a couple of different metals, one, of course, is rose gold (which seems to be very popular with watchmakers so far), the other is titanium. They’re both also available on either a leather strap or a bracelet corresponding to the case metal and are both 44mm in diameter. I like the big exposed band going around the crown, it adds a little character to the watch, not that there wasn’t enough already. For more info, visit Zenith online.
