You do rather have to start with the name. “Mega Cool” might, to the ears of the seasoned tastemaker, sound more like the utterings of a German tour guide selling the delights of a parochial shopping centre than an £11,000 wristwatch from one of Switzerland’s most sophisticated makers. However, H. Moser & Cie.is a brand that wears its top-tier status famously lightly. After all, this is the same company that made a one-off watch from Swiss cheese (literally) to highlight the emptiness of some brands’ claims to local craft, and had the chutzpah to reimagine Apple’s watch design as an haute horlogeriemasterpiece (the Swiss Alp series) that became highly collectible.

We all know watches pack some pretty complex movements into a small space. But just how tiny – and how difficult to make – they are might surprise you. Switzerland’s finest watchmakers go to huge lengths to make minuscule mechanics, which tick to tolerances imperceptible to the naked eye. Even if you can see the movement under a skeletonised dial or through a sapphire case back, you can’t see just how incredibly precise the movement really is. We’ve picked out seven of the smallest-scale wonders, common to every single mechanical watch, to remind us just how much goes into the task of telling the time.

Among all the watches (and there aren’t many) generally anointed as all-time classics, surely none is as charmingly left-field, if not downright improbable in both concept and execution, as the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso. As a watch that flips over on itself, sitting securely with its dial folded away and the reverse side worn outwards, it is in a category of one. And fair enough; it was invented to fill a decidedly specialist niche, aiming to keep the glass protected while the wearer crashed about on the polo field.

NOMOS Glashütte might have hit upon a horological first. Nothing whizzy in the mechanics department, though the brand does have form for that. No, rather it seems to have launched the first duo of watches inspired by the coronavirus pandemic. Two new shades inspired by it, to be precise, with particular focus on student life in, and out, of lockdown. Now, with university terms spent entirely on Zoom, rather than in the library, coming to an end, NOMOS has unveiled two new dial colours – Absolute Gray and Future Orange – as part of its Club Campus range.

You do rather have to start with the name. “Mega Cool” might, to the ears of the seasoned tastemaker, sound more like the utterings of a German tour guide selling the delights of a parochial shopping centre than an £11,000 wristwatch from one of Switzerland’s most sophisticated makers. However, H. Moser & Cie.is a brand that wears its top-tier status famously lightly. After all, this is the same company that made a one-off watch from Swiss cheese (literally) to highlight the emptiness of some brands’ claims to local craft, and had the chutzpah to reimagine Apple’s watch design as an haute horlogeriemasterpiece (the Swiss Alp series) that became highly collectible.

We all know watches pack some pretty complex movements into a small space. But just how tiny – and how difficult to make – they are might surprise you. Switzerland’s finest watchmakers go to huge lengths to make minuscule mechanics, which tick to tolerances imperceptible to the naked eye. Even if you can see the movement under a skeletonised dial or through a sapphire case back, you can’t see just how incredibly precise the movement really is. We’ve picked out seven of the smallest-scale wonders, common to every single mechanical watch, to remind us just how much goes into the task of telling the time.