Tissot’s connection with motorsport is real and long-established, through both sponsorship and timekeeping. It continues today, through involvement in endurance car racing, including the Le Mans 24-hr race, and motorcycling. The company also supports basketball, rugby, ice hockey, fencing, the Asian Games, and cycling’s epic Tour de France, for which Tissot takes on the enormous task of timekeeping.
Tissot also has a long tradition of using unusual materials, to which carbon fibre is a fitting addition. I distinctly remember being tempted by their Rock Watch, its case made of polished Alpine granite. They also produced a lubrication-free movement, made of plastic, and watches with wooden cases.
Carbon occurs naturally in three familiar forms – amorphous (soot), graphite, and diamond. It has a significant role in the measurement of time. Clocks and watches can indicate hours, minutes, and seconds – days, months, and years, even – but if you want to measure centuries, you need radio-carbon dating.
Carbon fibre combines a woven lattice of graphite with a plastic resin, typically epoxy, to achieve great strength. It is widely used in motorsports – Formula 1, Indycar, rallying, and elsewhere – and in other sports too. It was all over the recent Olympic and Paralympic games – in boats, bikes, crash helmets, racing wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, and much else. However, a new wonder material – graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of graphite – has huge potential. Its high electrical and thermal conductivity could help reduce the energy demands of the human race, overturning carbon’s present reputation as the environmental bad guy.
Back to the watch! The strap is black rubber with a matte surface reminiscent of slick racing tyres. Indentations echo the perforations of a rally-style strap or ventilated driving gloves. It is secured by a folding, black PVD deployant clasp. Clearly a high-quality item, it inspires confidence that it will last well.
The day-date display has a black background, with weekdays and date in white. Sunday is differentiated in red, which would surely have pleased those Genevan Calvinists of long ago. This is a very legible watch, in all respects; the time, day, and date are all commendably easy to read. Even the “Swiss Made” designation seems larger and clearer than usual. Luminosity is good too; when the light fades, the hands show their bright glow first, followed by the hour indices as it darkens.
In conclusion, then, Tissot and ABTW not only gave me an excellent watch, but also an opportunity to think and learn about the story behind it – a most satisfactory giveaway! I heartily recommend that anyone looking for a robust and handsome sports watch should look at the Tissot PRS 516 range, including this carbon version. So, to Mesdames et Messieurs at Tissot – Chapeau! And to ABTW – many thanks guys for such a great giveaway! tissotwatches.com
