Tudor Chrono question

[chris5150]

just wearing the tudor for a spell....wondering about the chrono counter. Firstly why a 45 min counter?, why not 60 min as per the usual chrono sub dial.
Also why would the area between 50 - 55 mins be highlighted on the dial?...surely it would make more sense to shade the 55 - 60 min area so you can see when its approaching the hour,ie the next 5 min section onwards that would end at 15 mins,cannot for the life of me understand what the purpose of highlighting the 50 -55 min area is at all.
Its a nice watch, really enjoying it currently
knowledgable lot out there so I am sure someone can enlighten me....

Edited by chris5150 on Tuesday 22 April 13:55

[Riff Raff]

I've got no idea, apart from the fact that it's a homage to the original Monte Carlo that had a sub dial like that.

The thing I found hard to get used to was the fact that the minutes don't 'jump' on the sub dial. The hand moves continuously. That made it hard to read for me.

[andy_s]

The 45 min scale was probably used in early chronographs as it was the maximum minutes they could get on such a small register while still being able to discern the minutes. Bearing in mind they had no hour register so the minute register dictated the technical length of your chrono function. 45mins is better for footy/rugby etc than a 30min one maybe.



The 7750 has a 30min counter and is perhaps the most widely used auto chrono movement now however.

Interesting that the old Breugeut / Dodane / Airane MkXXs used a 15min register and still do:



While Sinn has just launched its second chronograph with a 60min register subdial.



The orange highlighting is simply a mirror of the original, which was to differentiate predominantly the first 0-5-10-15 min sectors, like the TopTime above.

Edited by andy_s on Tuesday 22 April 15:00

[chris5150]

interesting...but the orange highlighting is on the 50 - 55 mins , only on that section, it makes no sense why that particular 5 min section has been highlighted. Makes a lot more sense on the one shown above that highlights the three sections
Just seems so odd to make a point of highlighting only that area...when you glance at it you would think that the orange area would be indicating either that last 5 mins of the counter or the starting first 5 mins of it...puzzling, I understand what you are saying, but surely the 45 - 5 mins should be highlighted

[andy_s]

...also bear in mind that the scale is not the normal scale, so reading is unintuitive compared to a normal 60min scale. To make reading easier if you highlight a sector then the chrono becomes quicker to read at a glance - for example in your picture it is about ten minutes elapsed as I know the orange covers 5 to 10 and the hand is just leaving the sector. If I saw the hand just in the orange I'd know we were over 5 minutes in to something. In design language sectoring was popular in the early 1970's although chronographs featured a 3-6-9 line well before that.

The 30min scale is still unintuitive, but easier to read individual minutes and easy to link to an hour register (which is needed to go over 30mins), which is why most watches are now 30minute registers.