Wrestling in den Medien » Tag Heuer Carrera Replica Watch

Here's a fact that might surprise you (hell, it surprised me) - as of right now, I own more Carreras (modern and vintage) than I do Daytonas (modern and vintage). So when I saw this particular story come across the line as one we'd be working on, I thought to myself, "wait a minute, I LOVE the Carrera, and I want to write that! " And so here we are. Me just talking about watches I love, like back in the day.
The Heuer Profesión occupies an interesting place in the modern watch-collecting world. It is not often considered among the most desirable contemporary chronographs (with some exceptions, ahem), but stack this next to any of its iconic peers (Speedmaster, Daytona, etc . ), and it'll hold its own. In fact , I'd encourage you to look at the H02 caliber in great detail - it's really rather impressive. But on the vintage side of things, the Carrera is simply beloved by people whom I respect a ton. I'm talking very serious collectors of vintage timepieces, and despite the best efforts of marketing departments around the world, the actual Carrera is the vintage Heuer that I think stands up the best against both vintage Speedmasters and Daytonas.
In this Reference Points, we'll be looking at all Carreras in what I would describe as the classic era, which is to say before the acquisition of Heuer carrera by TAG in the mid-1980s, with a few mentions of the special pieces that have come along since, and a few pieces that immediately preceded the actual Carrera family. Let's get into it.
First things first, it's important to understand the landscape from which the Trayectoria (and the particular pre-Carrera) was born. And to understand that, one must have a full grasp of not only all the relationships between Heuer gran carrera and motorsport that came before but all the connections between timing as well as motorsport prior to 1960.

I'll state the obvious that really isn't that obvious to those of us born after a certain period: Motorsport racing goes back to the early 1900s. Digital time-telling does not. Electronic timekeeping did not come about until 1970 or so. That means motorsport racing is approximately 110 years old, but digital timekeeping is only about 50 years old. Get what I am saying here? More than half of all racing history was timed on mechanical watches and also clocks, and of course, that isn't limited to automobile race - if we're talking horse sporting or other such foils of the historic ruling class, modern, split-second timekeeping via microprocessors accounts for an even smaller fraction associated with its era.

To put that another way, mechanised watchmaking along with clockmaking are inherently tied to, well, almost all achievements pre-1960s out of necessity - not like today when nerds such as me throw on a physical chronograph in order to time how long it takes to drive from one country cafe to another. But even before the introduction of typically the pre-Carrera in the mid-1950s, Heuer played a pivotal role in chronographs and competition timekeeping.

To be clear, Heuer failed to invent often the chronograph -- that title belonged to Nicholas Rieussec for ages, until Louis Moinet made a discovery that changed that tale. Though one could argue it was a watchmaker named Adolphe Nicole who really set the stage for all elapsed timekeeping on watches in addition to clocks.

However Heuer was indeed early to the game of chronography. In 1908, Heuer released its Sphygmometer pocket chronograph, patented in 1908, allowing the physician to determine the patient's pulse rate, after counting heartbeats for only 20 seconds. Shortly thereafter, within 1911, Heuer carrera introduced its "Time regarding Trip" dash-mounted chronograph for automobiles plus airplanes. And by 1914, the exact Heuer catalog showed the first wrist chronographs, which the idea described as "unique on the market. " And indeed, not just were timepiece unique inside 1914, but the wristwatch itself was barely a thing at that time. Indeed Heuer gran carrera was not alone in the making of wristwatches in the pre-WWI era, however suffice it to say, few were doing much at scale back then, in particular with wristwatches and even chronographs.
In 1916, Heuer began it is work in the field of high-precision timing with the Mikrograph, Semikrograph, together with Microsplit : able to track 1/5th, 1/50th, and eventually 1/100th of a second, along with the creation of their first split-seconds pocket wrist watches, aimed not merely at sport timing yet military and industrial use. Incidentally, I have very fond memories involving TAG Heuer's incredible foray into high-frequency timing around ten years ago, culminating within the incredible Mikrotimer (you can see it in action here, dating back to 2011), which I don't think receives as much mention for its ambition as it should today. It was capable of timing up to 1/1000th of a second! They also created the Micrograph in a few cases (including this unique Monaco execution), and the Mikrotourbillon, which combined this incredible high-speed choreography with rapid you guessed it instructions a tourbillon (actually, two tourbillons, one of the timekeeping, among the 1/100th of the second chronograph). It was the crazy thing. Anyway, another story for another day, literally.

By 1933, Heuer introduced one of it has the most famous names, the very Autavia, (AUTomotive and AVIAtion), but it was not a wristwatch as it is these days. The dash timers could be either in a single timer or a double timer set along with one showing the time, the other a stopwatch, and could be mounted anywhere a sportsman liked, inside the cockpit of your plane, or the dashboard of any car. Two years later, since it became quite clear the world had been headed with regard to war, Heuer's Flieger, or pilot's wathe, was released with a black dial, luminescent markers, and large radium hands.
An important change occurred in 1940, when Heuer carrera, for the first time decided to put a brand name on each product. Up until that point, while Heuer manufactured each piece, it was the main retailer's or even distributor's name that would adorn the dial. This was standard in the industry at the time, but it marked a big shift in the historical past of the brand, and one that certainly paid off because of it.

The ensuing decade saw Heuer produce some pretty neat things outside the space of chronograph watches but no less dedicated to enthusiasts and professionals. I'm talking about legendary oddballs like the Solunar, which allowed hunters, fishermen, and sailors to derive important information through tracking the phases of the moon, as well as the time of high as well as low tides and the Mareographe, which coupled the aforementioned Solunar with a three-register chronograph. It was the most water-resistant watch Heuer gran carrera would make, not to mention, it was famously called the Seafarer when retailed by New York retailer Abercrombie & Fitch. Around the same period, Heuer produced the actual Twin-Time which was an early dual-time wristwatch and also - bringing it back to racing aid the Auto-Graph, which permitted the wearer to track speed (which is, of course , simply a calculation of distance over time).

And that brings us to 1955, when we start to see what we now call the "Pre-Carreras" enter the directory. But before we do that, let's set the particular stage for what the industry has been back then, and what the other guys were as much as.