The Year in Horology: What to watch for in 2016

Will the advent of the smartwatch mean the death of the traditional mechanical watch? It’s a question many are now asking, as leading luxury brands such as TAG Heuer and Breitling embrace new technology, adding smart and connected watches to their product lines.

But classic timepieces have faced down threats from new innovative designs in the past. As with quartz and digital watches, an increasing number of consumers will likely add a smartwatch to their accoutrements this year. Though as with previous upgrades, the majority of these buyers will see them as more of an addition rather than a replacement for the classical wristwatch.

In “The Watch Book,” a new horological encyclopedia released by German luxury publisher teNeues, wristwatch expert and historian Gisbert Brunner agrees. “Chronometric luxury and long-lasting value cannot be found among these newfangled inventions,” Brunner writes.

Indeed, 2016 is shaping up to be a banner year for traditional mechanical watch enthusiasts. In addition to Brunner’s book, the market for both modern and vintage mechanical watches is growing apace, with buoyant auction prices and increased value for collector items complementing the sales of new, and in some cases, more affordable designs.

The Rolex Submariner —

The "Sub," as it's affectionately called, single-handedly defined the attributes of not only the mechanical diver's watch, but also the modern sports watch. With its uncluttered dial, simple but rugged design, and surprising versatility and good looks, after it debuted in 1953 it was worn by everyone from Sean Connery (as James Bond) to commando and combat divers.

To this day it's still worn by anyone who wants to think of himself as an old-school tough guy -- or just wants an old-school tough watch.

Jack Forster is the managing editor for Hodinkee.com, one of the world's most influential websites for watch enthusiasts.

The Cartier Tank —

Along with the Submariner, the Cartier Tank has the distinction of being one of the most, if not the most, imitated watches in the world. Yet the Tank, for most of its history, was actually quite rare and exclusive. Introduced in 1918 and supposedly inspired by the silhouette of a World War I tank when seen from above, it was for many years made in very small numbers -- often fewer than a hundred a year -- and in 1919, the first year of full production, Cartier made a grand total of six. It's more easily available today, and over the decades there have been dozens of variations made, but the basic Tank continues to be one of the most desired, and most influential, timepieces in the world.

The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak —

The Royal Oak was everything a luxury watch was not supposed to be when it was released in 1972. This was a frightening year for watchmaking -- in 1969, the first quartz watch ever released to the general public was sold (by Seiko, in Japan) and quartz watches were already threatening a centuries-old way of life in Switzerland.

It wasn't the time for radical innovation, but that's exactly what the Royal Oak was. It was the world's very first luxury watch in stainless steel, with an integrated bracelet that flowed seamlessly from the signature eight-sided case, and in which steel was treated with decorative flourishes generally reserved for gold or platinum.

Controversially, it was priced as a luxury watch as well -- but the success of the design rebuked all nay-sayers and to this day, the Royal Oak is both remembered as a ground-breaking innovation, and coveted as a present-day design treasure.

The Ulysse Nardin Freak —

Fifteen years ago, a watch came out that turned watch design on its head in a way no one had dreamed possible: The Ulysse Nardin Freak.

The Freak was aptly named and it was, by the generally staid standards of watchmaking (and watch lovers), an almost shocking watch: A large and almost completely novel type of carrousel tourbillon wristwatch in which the movement itself rotated to tell the time. It had no conventional case or hands, and to top everything else off, it had a new type of escapement as well. (The escapement is that part of the watch that actually tells time, and to put this achievement in perspective, virtually every watch made in the last century has used the same escapement, which in turn is based on a design from the mid-1700s.)

The Freak ushered in a new era of high-test, high-design, high-risk watchmaking, and though there have been many imitators of, and would-be successors to, the Freak, it still stands alone in the sheer audacity with which it took the watchmaking world by storm.

The Swatch —

Over the centuries, the general trend in watchmaking has always been to make watches less expensively, more reliably, and in larger numbers. The existence of modern luxury watchmaking in Switzerland, ironically, owes much to the invention of one of the most inexpensive, reliable, and mass produced watches of all time: the Swatch.

Affordable, brightly colored, instantly likeable and collectible, the Swatch when it was released in 1983 for the first time brought a desperately needed financial shot in the arm to the dwindling Swiss watch industry --and proved that watches, far from being something rapidly approaching obsolescence, were something for which the world still hungered.

The Seiko Astron —

The year was 1969. The season was Christmas. The city was Tokyo. The company was Seiko. And the watch was the Astron -- nothing more nor less than the very first quartz wristwatch anyone in the world had managed to release to the general public.

The Astron wasn't so much a cause of change as it was a manifestation of it -- in Switzerland, a consortium of mechanical watch manufacturers had already made a quartz wristwatch prototype as well -- but the Astron showed that it was possible to go from prototype to production for the first time, and goaded every watch brand in the world into realizing just how rapidly their world was about to change.

Breguet No. 169 -- The First Tourbillon —

The tourbillon is, of all the great high complications, probably the one that has seen the most innovations rung on it in recent years; it is a grand theme whose variations have become truly symphonic in scope.

There is scarcely an haute horlogerie manufacturer worthy of the name who does not consider it obligatory, if not essential, to have a tourbillon wristwatch in its collection. But the first notes in this centuries old horological theme were rung at the end of the 18th century, when the tourbillon's inventor -- Abraham Breguet, a Swiss-French watchmaker living in exile in Geneva, having fled Paris during the Revolution -- placed the first tourbillon in a pocket watch that he would present to the son of his friend, the famed English chronometer maker John Arnold, in 1808. That watch is now in the British Museum, but it set in motion a chain of imitation, innovation and improvement that is one of the most significant in the history of horology.

The Zenith El Primero Chronograph —

This is something of a controversial choice. Here's why: the El Primero was so named, because it was in the view of the company that made it, the first of its kind -- specifically, the very first self-winding chronograph wristwatch. It came out in 1969, but that year there were actually two other self-winding chronograph watches released -- one made by a Swiss consortium that included Breitling, Heuer, and others; and one made by Seiko.

Historians have been arguing about which was first since 1969 itself, but what's not open to argument is that the El Primero was the first (to get a bit technical) full rotor, high-beat chronograph with a self-winding movement. The winding rotor was the full diameter of the movement (the Breitling/Heuer consortium's was a micro-rotor movement) and the El Primero was capable of measuring time intervals as short as 1/10 of a second -- a first for a mechanical wristwatch.

The best part? Both the '69 Seiko movement and the Breitling/Heuer consortium's movement have long since gone out of production -- but the El Primero is still being made by Zenith today.

The Omega DeVille Co-axial —

Imagine that all cars used the same kind of engine. Now imagine that engine had been invented in England in the 1750s. That's where we are, mostly, with watchmaking today -- every mechanical watch in existence has a device in it that is responsible for actually keeping time, called the escapement; and in virtually every mechanical watch in existence, it's a type of escapement called the lever escapement.

The exception: Omega, which makes extensive use of an escapement known as the co-axial, and which was invented by the famous English watchmaker Dr. George Daniels.

In breaking the stranglehold of the lever escapement on watchmaking with the release of the first co-axial wristwatch, in 1999, Omega showed a new generation of watch enthusiasts, and watchmakers, that tradition needn't be a straitjacket -- even in the most apparently immutable part of all.

The Casio G-Shock —

It's not a watch whose name you'll find on the lips of a diehard mechanical watch enthusiast, but it's a ground-breaking watch -- and a game-changer -- all the same.

The G-Shock was originally invented by a frustrated Casio engineer named Kikuo Ibe, who, upset at the fragility of existing mechanical and quartz watches, decided to make a watch capable of resisting real abuse. Their goal was that it should be able to survive a ten meter drop, have 10 bar (100 meter) water resistance, and have a ten year battery life.

It took Ibe and his tiny project team three years, and the construction of over 200 prototypes, to succeed, but succeed they did (famously, the G-Shock is the only watch known to have been prototype tested by being dropped from a fourth floor men's bathroom window.)

Today there are a myriad of ultra-tough rubber and/or synthetic clad out-door sports watches, but the great-granddaddy of them all was the original G-Shock DW-5000 of 1983, and wherever men and women go to adventure, to explore, to go into battle, or to test themselves in extreme sports, chances are if they're wearing a watch, it'll be a G-Shock.

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This has also paved the way for independent brands to enter the market, with some like Detroit-based Shinola, New York-based Autodromo and Antwerp-based Ressence eschewing the conventional wisdom that a watchmaker must be based in Switzerland to be taken seriously.

Several newcomers will also be exhibiting for the first time at SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie), the first major international watch event of the year, held January 18-22 in Geneva.

On the auction front, Antiquorum and Bonhams will lead 2016 with February sales of important modern and vintage timepieces in Hong Kong and London respectively. Sotheby’s follows suit on March 8 in London.

Scroll through the gallery above to see top watches and trends to expect in 2016.