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Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

#21

Post by ctordtor »

aidenn0 wrote: post #14
Qworg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An in-between is Warby Parker - I like being able to try on the glasses in store (or shipped to door). Roughly $100-$150.

In on the fence with my warby parker glasses. They seem to scratch far easier than my previous lenses. After 18 months I can't wear them in the dark anymore as they are so scratched that off axis light causes terrible glare. On the other hand, I can buy new glasses five times as often, and I usually will break or lose my glasses due to misfortune within 7 years, so it's still cheaper.

I tend to be ridiculously un-careful with my specs except with how I clean them, my current glasses are regular plastic with no coatings and they haven't scratched yet. I wash them under warm water with dish detergent and my fingers and them hit them with compressed air or a micro fiber cloth to dry. I wonder how you are cleaning yours as my current pair are over a year old and I can't find a single scratch.

Re: Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

#22

Post by ctordtor »

godelmachine wrote: post #2

Coincidental that I read this exactly 5 min after I broke glasses of my wristwatch, which was gifted to me by someone close. Wondering how to fix my watch now.

The glass face of a watch is often called a crystal for reasons unclear to me.

Re: Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

#23

Post by ctordtor »

benj111 wrote: post #18
Swizec wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience in wearing glasses my whole life it comes down to "you get what you pay for". Not in the functional department since they all use the same lenses, but in the fashion department. I've worn 30euro glasses. They work and bring no joy. I've had 300 euro glasses. They work just the same and you think "Damn I'm hot" every time you take a selfie. This effect is even more pronounced with sunglasses. I get th…

Would you say theres an actual qualitative difference between frames, or is this purely psychological? Your comment seems to be pointing at both, which may be the reason for the down votes.

I'd suggest any such benefit is largely psychological to the user. You can find nearly any style/color you want and branding is difficult to ascertain from any appreciable distance. I tend to buy memory metal half frame glasses and I can't tell the difference between the "knockoff" zenni and my $600 foolish pair I bought at a mall.

Re: Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

#24

Post by hristov »

Everyone that wants to get into tech investing should read about Mark Twains misadventures in investing. Current stories about tech investing and investing in general are greatly affected by survivor bias. If you are not a successful investor you do not become famous your story does not get told, so many more people get to make the same mistakes you did.

Mark Twain on the other hand was famous for a completely different reason, and he is a great story teller to top it off. So his stories did get told. And they are very illuminating about how difficult technology investing really is.

He was very lucky in this watch investment story. I am sure he was able to get most of his money back mostly because he was famous and he threatened to expose the watchmakers about their shady dealings. The ordinary person in his place would have suffered more losses.

Another very illuminating story is his investment in automatic type setting machines. Here one would think he had all the advantages. He had worked as a type setter as a kid and as a journalist later on. As a writer he worked with many publishers. He was very familiar with the printing and news paper industries. He knew very well that an automatic type setting machine was sorely needed and would make much money. And he was right, an automatic typesetting machine did make lots of money, but not the one he invested in. The company he invested in failed.

So yeah ... tech investing is not easy.

Re: Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

#25

Post by peteri »

ctordtor wrote: post #22
godelmachine wrote: post #2

Coincidental that I read this exactly 5 min after I broke glasses of my wristwatch, which was gifted to me by someone close. Wondering how to fix my watch now.

The glass face of a watch is often called a crystal for reasons unclear to me.

I assume that it's because the better ones are made of sapphire.

Re: Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

#26

Post by digikazi »

vinay427 wrote: post #19

Thanks to better technology, quartz watches are now cheaper, easier to maintain, almost always more accurate, and often more robust to shocks and damage. Even the cheapest quartz watches are often more accurate than a $500 (or more) mechanical watch today, and more expensive digital watches are certainly more accurate than anything mechanical no matter the price. For functionality, then, it seems to me like affordabi…

That's very true. My two quartz watches, a Seiko and a Timex are both reasonably cheap, accurate and save for the odd battery change maintenance-free. My mechanical Seiko on the other hand.... it's beautiful but it seems to have a mind of its own. In the 8 months that I had it it started gaining about 5min a week. I understand automatics do gain or lose a couple of minutes a week, but even so. After being spoiled by the accuracy of quartz, that bugs me.

Re: Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

#27

Post by C1sc0cat »

Swizec wrote: post #7
lrem wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never worn glasses... But it does seem that in Europe you can get them in the range of €2-€5000. And they all basically have to work, otherwise the seller could get in trouble. Can you tell me why is the range so wide? And are you saying the top end is of equivalent quality, but cheaper in Japan?

In my experience in wearing glasses my whole life it comes down to "you get what you pay for". Not in the functional department since they all use the same lenses, but in the fashion department. I've worn 30euro glasses. They work and bring no joy. I've had 300 euro glasses. They work just the same and you think "Damn I'm hot" every time you take a selfie. This effect is even more pronounced with sunglasses. I get th…

Id agree my expensive oakly's with prescription lenses do subjectively feel better in terms of vision.

I normaly pay around £400 for a pair of glasses but they do last five to ten years.

Re: Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

#28

Post by craigsmansion »

digikazi wrote: post #26
vinay427 wrote: post #19

Thanks to better technology, quartz watches are now cheaper, easier to maintain, almost always more accurate, and often more robust to shocks and damage. Even the cheapest quartz watches are often more accurate than a $500 (or more) mechanical watch today, and more expensive digital watches are certainly more accurate than anything mechanical no matter the price. For functionality, then, it seems to me like affordabi…

That's very true. My two quartz watches, a Seiko and a Timex are both reasonably cheap, accurate and save for the odd battery change maintenance-free. My mechanical Seiko on the other hand.... it's beautiful but it seems to have a mind of its own. In the 8 months that I had it it started gaining about 5min a week. I understand automatics do gain or lose a couple of minutes a week, but even so. After being spoiled by…

Just give them a couple of decades. Chances are your quartz watches will no longer work, whereas your mechanical watch will happily tick along, and can still be repaired if it ever breaks down.

But 42 seconds a day is quite a lot. You could try to have it regulated (or do it yourself if you're feeling adventurous).

Re: Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

#29

Post by inflatableDodo »

vinay427 wrote: post #19

Thanks to better technology, quartz watches are now cheaper, easier to maintain, almost always more accurate, and often more robust to shocks and damage. Even the cheapest quartz watches are often more accurate than a $500 (or more) mechanical watch today, and more expensive digital watches are certainly more accurate than anything mechanical no matter the price. For functionality, then, it seems to me like affordabi…

'Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.'

Re: Mark Twain’s Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

#30

Post by willis936 »

digikazi wrote: post #26
vinay427 wrote: post #19

Thanks to better technology, quartz watches are now cheaper, easier to maintain, almost always more accurate, and often more robust to shocks and damage. Even the cheapest quartz watches are often more accurate than a $500 (or more) mechanical watch today, and more expensive digital watches are certainly more accurate than anything mechanical no matter the price. For functionality, then, it seems to me like affordabi…

That's very true. My two quartz watches, a Seiko and a Timex are both reasonably cheap, accurate and save for the odd battery change maintenance-free. My mechanical Seiko on the other hand.... it's beautiful but it seems to have a mind of its own. In the 8 months that I had it it started gaining about 5min a week. I understand automatics do gain or lose a couple of minutes a week, but even so. After being spoiled by…

If it’s consistently losing or gaining time you can adjust the regulator pretty easily. If it’s random then minimizing thermal cycles helps.
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