Never one to get too comfortable in their own lane, Urwerk has revealed something entirely new this week that eschews their well established DNA. The watch is the UR-10 SpaceMeter, and it’s the first watch from the brand to feature a traditional set of hands tracking the time. Built within a relatively familiar framework, the UR-10 SpaceMeter gets a somewhat traditional dial plate, and centrally mounted hour and minute hand, but from there, things quickly take a left turn back into the conceptual territory the brand thrives in. The remaining sub-dials measure “the distances our planet travels across the time-space continuum”.
This isn’t the first foray into the celestial realm for the brand. The UR-100 had a SpaceTime variation that tracked the launch and landing sequences of the space shuttle, inspired by the prototype Enterprise, which currently resides in NYC’s Intrepid museum. Urwerk also has a knack for measuring unconventional lengths of time with uncanny precision with the likes of the AMC and the UR-1001, which is capable of tracking the passing millennia. With the UR-10 SpaceMeter, things are a little different. This one tracks our planet’s travel around the sun.
The most straightforward part of this watch is the traditional hour and minute hand tracking time around the dial’s perimeter, nothing out of the ordinary there. There are three sub-dials, however, where things get a little different. Let’s begin with the sub-dial at the two o’clock position. This dial measures every ten kilometers the Earth travels in its daily rotation, in increments of 500 meters. The rotational speed of the earth, measured at the equator, is 1674.36 km/h, meaning the hand in this dial will make a full lap, measuring 10km, in roughly 22 seconds.
The sub-dial directly underneath measures the distance the earth travels in its orbit around the sun, advancing in 20km steps. The earth’s orbit is elliptical, and it takes 365.256 days (a sidereal year) to complete, at an average speed of 107,208.00 km/h (~30km/sec). If my math is correct, that means it should take the hand in this dial roughly 33 seconds to complete a full lap representing 1000 kilometers.
Finally, the sub-dial at nine o’clock “combines both trajectories, thus inscribing every 1,000 kilometers of rotation and 64,000 kilometers of solar orbit on two synchronized scales.” This means you can see the movement in sync, on a single scale. This hand will take a bit over 35 minutes to complete a full lap. There’s some pretty cool math going on here to achieve these scales, and certainly unlike any other solar indications that exist. While they may not serve an immediately practical purpose, they do provide an at-a-glance sense of your movement through the universe in real time, which is pretty cool if you ask me.
But wait, there’s more. Turning the watch over will reveal indications of both Rotation (read clockwise) and Revolution (read anti-clockwise) with a peripheral hand tracking a 24 hour period. At the center of this you’ll get a view of the dual flow turbine regulating the speed of the oscillating weight to wind the watch.
All of this is set within a 45mm wide titanium case that carries a familiar shape to the UR-100 collection. Here, excluding the domed crystal, the thickness is just over 7mm, and with the crown at the top of the case, this should wear brilliantly on the wrist. This watch comes mounted to an integrated titanium bracelet, and there are two dial variations on offer, in either dark (black) or steel (light), and yes, the lume game is on point as you’d expect from the brand.
Conceptually, the SpaceMeter feels very much on brand for Urwerk, while the execution presents some real surprises. I can’t help but wonder how they might have tackled these complications in a wandering hour fashion, but I think it makes a lot of sense as is, placing the focal point on the relationship between ourselves, and (in my best impression of Dr. Matt O’Dowd) space time.
The price of the UR-10 SpaceMeter is set at $94,000. Urwerk