TAG Heuer Watches and Your Car Dashboard: A Surprising Relationship
Standard car dashboards today come with so many diverse amenities and technical accessories. You can simultaneously charge your phone and play music from a digital device, listen to the radio (either FM/AM or digital) and monitor the status of your trip, manage home appliances and locks remotely, and regulate numerous temperature options, among many other myriad features. The dashboard of a car today is an information driven and technically specific central hub of daily travel. But what exactly do TAG Heuer watches have to do with any of this?
Like many watch companies, the company behind the TAG Heuer watches we see today are part of a lineage that goes back a very long way in Switzerland. Their first patent was obtained in 1887, for an oscillating pinion. Oscillating pinions are still used today in the construction of many modern chronographs. Another patent that TAG Heuer watches received was in 1911 for an item called "Time of Trip," essentially a novel way to monitor the length of an automobile trip using a device added to a car's dashboard. It was also designated for use in aircraft. The device had the same trappings as a regular chronograph, similar in build to the TAG Heuer watches of its time, but it also had a small set of hands mounted toward the 12 position that indicated trip duration. A crown setting provided a way for drivers or pilots to assign and start the timing, including options for stopping and resetting.
From there, TAG Heuer watches introduced a variety of models into the "Time of Trip" vein, continuing to bolster the information power of car and aircraft dashboards. Many of these were created in order to meet the particular needs and requirements of race car drivers, as well as a series used by the German Airforce. Other versions even included ski vehicles. Though their automobile and aircraft chronographs were discontinued in the 1980s, the general idea behind them continues to this day. TAG Heuer watches may very well have had a hand in the formation of your car's dashboard, acting as an initial pioneer in the idea that the dashboard can do more than just sit there, but instead can also convey a great deal of information and be tailored to specific uses. So, the next time you get in your car and turn on the MP3 player, consider this function's roots in an otherwise obscure 1911 Swiss patent.
About the Author
http://www.jacobtime.com is the premier source for luxury designer timepieces, offering an array of finely crafted pieces from Raymond Weil, Fossil, and Nautica watches. Visit our blog at http://www.jacobtimeblog.com/ to see watches Armani made, or TW Steel, Gucci, and numerous other brands.
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