Ultra Sportivo Porsche Design, IWC Cal. 631 - SEIKO SKX779K, Cal. 7S26

10 Years and look what has happened to the Watch Size!
The IWC Ultra Sportivo was not a particularly small watch in the late 80ies or early 90ies, that happened to be the size of a sports/allrounder watch in those days. And only 10 years later in the year 2000, look what kind of trend started: the watches got bigger and bigger. And now in 2003 it would be really easy to find e.g. a Zeno or a RXW Marina Militare that would make the SKX779K look like the Ultra Sportivo. And from this perspective, you can not even see, that the same thing happened to the watch height. In the late 70ies, the race to build the flattest quartz watch was on. And before that, it was the pride of every manufacturer to have at least a super flat automatic. Micro rotors helped to reduce watch height, or extremely fragile wheels and bridges. All that seems to be forgotten today. It cannot be big enough. I am not saying this is not fun, I am just wondering, will this trend one day reverse, will smaller and flatter watches - which make the wearer feel so great, almost let him forget that he is wearing a watch - come again and be the "new" standard? Only time will tell. Right now it certainly does not look like it.
From a watch making friend I learned that e.g. a super sized Zeno chronograph had a design error. He had a brand new watch in his repair shop. The second hand kept falling off after resetting. The reason: the hand was simply too long and the torque while resetting the chronograph, was simply too high. The way the second hand was built, that ought to happen. The friction was simply not big enough to keep the hand on the axle.