Can You Read The Cosmic Time?
Did you know that the laws of astronomy make the Earth and all the other planets turn in a counterclockwise direction around the Sun? This limited edition of 300 watches produced by the Raketa Watch Factory (St. Petersburg) offers a new evolution of time-reading – where time moves in harmony with the natural counterclockwise movement in our solar system: a special automatic movement makes all the hands move in a reverse direction around the dial! You can also notice the moon, at the tip of the second hand, turning counterclockwise around the Earth exactly like it does in reality.
Who said that the conventional clockwise direction is necessarily the correct one? Are you ready to move on to the new generation of watches that tick to the beat of the Universe? Are you ready to be ahead of your time?
Why did someone decide that hands must move clockwise on a dial?
The most common answer is apparently that the movement of the hands simply reflects the clockwise movement of the sun in the sky and of the shadow on the ground, that early people saw when reading time on sundials in the northern hemisphere (in the southern hemisphere, they would go in the opposite direction). The reason why this important decision was taken by people in the northern hemisphere is simply because this is where 90% of the world population has always lived, including early watchmakers who developed clocks.
Why this decision was wrong and why is it time to evolve:
The first flaw with the above decision is that the sun itself doesn’t actually move from left to right: it’s an illusion – we move around the sun! The second problem is that if you take a much higher point of view – somewhere in space far above the Sun’s northern hempisphere, from where the solar system is usually represented – you will see that all the planets rotate anticlockwise around the sun! You will also see that the Earth and all the other planets (except of Venus and Uranus) also spin around their axis in a counterclockwise direction.
Consequently, keeping as a reference the same point of view as early watchmakers – which is the northern hemisphere – the movement of time should really reflect the natural counterclockwise movement in our solar system and not the illusionary clockwise movement of the sun around the earth. In an age where we all try to live in harmony with nature, wouldn’t it be so much better to have a watch where time travels in accordance with the laws of astronomy?
Raketa decided that it was time for a new evolution of time reading that is ahead of its time. Indeed, as mankind slowly starts to colonize the solar system, our future interstellar civilization would logically have a preference for a watch whose rotation will reflect the counterclockwise rotation of the planets that they will see from their spaceships when visiting their relatives in other planets across the solar system.
As a conclusion …
The Raketa “Russian Code” watch underlines the link between Raketa and space: the Raketa brand was created in 1961 in honour of the first manned flight in space by Yuri Gagarin (Raketa means “Space Rocket” in Russian). Since then, the engineers and designers of Raketa were always inspired by space and there was always a tradition of making watches for cosmonauts (Raketa “Baikonur” watch) and watches celebrating the solar system (the Raketa “Copernicus” watch).
The automatic movement of the Raketa “Russian Code” watch has 2 more oddities:
- if you wind-up the movement manually, it is necessary to turn the crown towards you (i.e. contrary to the usual direction);
- when you set the time, it is necessary to turn the hands counterclockwise.
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