These are crazy. They use mechanical movements like a conventional watch, but instead of having moving hands, the hours and minutes are indicated by a moving, numbered wheels below the dial, with, the time being read in the window. Their history goes back a long way, and I have seen variations of these from the 1920s, and maybe earlier. This particular Vulcain watch is a true 'jump hour' watch, in that the hour does not roam or move but waits until the hour turns over, then "jumps" with an audible click. In this picture, it will click to 4 o'clock, in 29 minutes. I like the seconds hand on this Vulcain, with the red tip. Many digital mechanical watches don't have seconds hands. Notice that every second is indexed on the dial. This is where it gets so nervy.
This Anker is even worse. The hour does not jump, but ambles along with the time. It's hard to read the time on these at a glance. Read here to find out why I find these absolutely dreadful to wear these watches.
One takes for granted how easy it is to tell time wiith a standard analog watch dial.
But this is just messed up! You really have to think about what the time is; as it's not intuitive (at least to me.) Maybe that's why I never liked LED or LCD digital watches. Anker is a German watch, and this one looks more like some guage reading on a scientific instrument panel, anything but a watch. The diamond red/white thing in the center is a seconds hand. The height of nerdwatch heaven.
I do like them, for what they represent, and wear them from time to time, but will admit that there just isn't the fluidity of looking at your watch, and finding out the time. They make you work for it. More pics below.
