The starscape on view from James Ward Packard’s window in Warren, Ohio, was magnificent. In the summer, Draco, the dragon, would have wheeled above, clawing at Ursa Minor. Gemini would have ridden across Clinton Street and up the old Canal as Ursa Major reared and fell. And, with the help of his powerful, handmade, bespoke watch, Packard would have been able to plot the locations of all these constellations and more.
Packard – he of the Packard Motor Car Company and Packard Electric Company – was a watch collector and an amateur astronomer. Like so many rich men in that era, he wanted the best of the best and he was in competition with Henry Graves, a New York millionaire with a watch fetish. A few hundred miles separated these two millionaires – Packard in Warren, Ohio, and Graves in Manhattan – but they both swore to have the most complicated watches in the world. Described in the beautiful book A Grand Complication[1], their friendly rivalry resulted in the apex of the watchmakers art when, in 1927, Packard announced delivery of his Vacheron Constantin grande complication (or supercomplication), a watch with 24 features or “complications” including a star chart of the night sky over his home in Ohio.
Graves, for his part, wanted an even better watch. He ordered a similar watch from Patek Phillipe. These men spent millions of dollars and hired countless men and women to create some of the most complex mechanical gearwork in the world. They were the early early adopters, the proto-techies who had to have the best of the best. And that quality cost them dearly.
This war, one that exerts so little weight on our lives today, marked the apex of the...