“Schocking. Poshzitively schocking.” So zings another one-line epitaph, dispatched by the great, late Sir Sean Connery – a perfect tip into the opening credits of Goldfinger, and a salutary tale for any baddie considering an electric bar-heater in his bathroom. And just as electricity and water is a fatal combination for evil henchmen (and let’s face it, everyone else as well), neither of them is something a watchmaker would want anywhere near his mechanical watch: both are, for different reasons, anathema to the whole business of “proper” watchmaking.

Not according to Mr Lucien Vouillamoz, though. Back in the mid-2000s, he and his team of scientists began toying with the very thing Swiss casemakers have worked hardest to keep out, by bringing it in. The result was HYT – the watch brand that swapped hands for liquids, in the form of cutting-edge engineering: the flow of time embodied by the flow of coloured fluid, through a capillary tube acting as the hours dial, sucked and squeezed by a dainty pair of mechanical bellows; driven by a regular, highly moisture-averse movement.

The wickedly defiant contradiction is conjured expertly by Mr Vouillamoz’s micro-tech sister company, Preciflex. Which, not content with throwing a cat among the pigeons, has now thrown a bar-heater into the bath. Only, instead of a goon getting fried by Bond (or a mixed metaphor coming close to torture), the new Flow’s sinuously striated anthracite dial strobes with a dazzling wave of LEDs, whenever you press the button at the four o’clock position.

Mechanics, liquids and now electricity – all packaged in synchrony beneath 51mm of water-tight sapphire crystal. Straight out of Q Branch, to stretch the metaphor even further, but for poetry’s sake alone.

“Flow is named after the idea that both our patented liquid time indication and our ‘lightning module’ share some sort of identical fluid energy,” explains creative head Mr François Nunez. “But also, just like the two coloured and transparent liquids running inside the glass capillary need to be immiscible yet complementary, we love the idea of opposing yet combining liquids and electricity.”

Given the “Indiglo” that illuminates the entire dial of your average Timex, you might think Flow’s two-second flash falls rather short. But that’s to underestimate the serious underlying science. Preciflex has pioneered one of the world’s smallest electro-generators, charged by a tiny barrel spring, wound via the crown surrounding the pushbutton. When released, the barrel’s mechanical energy is converted to an AC current by a solenoid.

“Generating electricity with a copper coil and magnets isn’t a new principle, of course – it’s been around since Faraday,” HYT’s CEO Mr Gregory Dourde told MR PORTER back in November. “The real challenge was the miniaturisation.”

Given the barrel’s slow, 29rpm rate of rotation, the other challenge on HYT’s hands was how to step things up within such confines.

“The energy is despatched too slowly,” Mr Dourde says. “But thanks to a complex, compact gearing mechanism, we’ve transformed that 29rpm to 11,000rpm. What’s more, LEDs need direct, DC current, not alternating AC. So we also created a system where the LEDs are positioned head to tail. Where the current is flowing positively, one is on, the adjacent LED not. So they blink, but at a frequency of 1,000 times a second.”

A stroboscopic effect, in other words – because the human eye can only register 24 events a second, you see a continuous ray of light emanating from the Flow’s dome.

Speaking of which, Mr Nunez appears to have grasped a further creative opportunity with this latest technical breakthrough: an aesthetic evolution of HYT’s overall design language; towards a more cohesive, biomorphic whole, rather than the glass cabinet of steampunk complexity that typifies the brand of old.

“Correct,” says Mr Nunez. “We wanted the watch to feel extremely comfortable – comfortable on the wrist, and comfortable on the eye. For example, its finely cut-out waves, initiating right at the four o’clock where the crown pusher is located, help to literally visualise the energy that runs through the entire product once the electric pusher is activated.

“Just like a piece of architecture, it takes the wearer to look at our models from all different perspective to gradually unveil and understand every detail."

The ebb and flow of time is something we’ve all experienced more keenly than ever before in the last year. Surely a watch at which to gaze, as time accelerates, decelerates and just plain stagnates couldn’t be more “of our time”. Just don’t wear it in the bath.