Each one wishes to wear a Swiss made watch on his or her arm and not many make it, but an electrical and electronics engineering student of KLS Gogte Institute of Technology thought of designing one himself for a SWISS watch maker.
Meet Parth Sabnis, 22 from KLS Gogte Institute of Technology who designed the smart PDG watch for Switzerland-based Luxius M’iWatch.
His design will be showcased at the GPHG Awards The Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix) which is an annual watch making competition hosted by the GPHG Foundation in Geneva on 10th of November. GPHG has become one of the most important prizes in the world of watches. One can compare it with the Academy Awards (“Oscars”) of the U.S. film industry.
Speaking to AAB, Parth said,
My design incorporates a blend of modern technology and age old watch making craftmanship. The objective was to create something more than usual ensemble of high-end watches.
Every undertaking has a few highlights, and while the project itself was a huge learning experience for me, I also managed to get some achievements on the way.
The biggest achievement of all is that this is the first time ever that a watch designed by an Indian will feature at the GPHG awards.
Parth is also the youngest designer to have their work featured at the competition. The entire project, right from the conception to execution was completed in 2 months.
Critical Specifications of the Watch
Case – Titanium
Bracelet Strap – Metal
Buckle – Folding Style
Waterproof up to 10 m
Thickness – 10mm
Movement – Manual-winding mechanical
Reference – PDG-GPHG 2016
Year – 2016
Collection – PDG Watches / Limited Edition to 100 exemplaires
Price – 75000 CHF ( Swiss Francs ) almost 48 lakh INR
The first watch case contains a full blown Swiss manual winding, mechanical tourbillon movement with a balance frequency of 28,800 a/h (4 Hz) and a power reserve of 48 hours, containing 21 jewels. The dial face is in anthracite nacre with émail finishing and a mozaic of lines is pointing to the center of the universe of time, where the hands in 18 carat white gold are attached, indicating the present time. A crown with a red ruby, reminding the center of the tourbillon, is situated on the left hand side of the mechanical watch case. The skeleton tourbillon movement contains an escapement symbolizing a little plankton fish, swimming in a little pond, representing Lake Leman, in the middle of a big oval ocean.
The second, interchangeable watch case integrates a connected smart watch movement, with a digital dial face, reminding the image of the mechanical tourbillon, with in the bottom part a notification screen, streaming real time world news messages.
The metal bracelet with a foldable buckle, contains in a mechanical movement and an anthracite dial with email finishing, reproducing the design codes of the round tourbillon dial, showing the hour in a second time zone. This automatic mechanical movement, is based in a watch case of 22 mm long, 9 mm high and 5 mm deep, and is therefore probably one of the smallest ever developed in Switzerland.