Great answers Mark as always some more qs I would like to find out more (in blue) prior the weekend..., the mountains are waitng ;-)

: Thanks Arno. If I do a book, I'd like it to be at least
: semi-"official" so that would be a discussion I would
: have to have with TAG Heuer. The Carrera's 50th anniversary
: comes up in 3 short years, so that would be a nice timeframe in
: which to get it done.

Good idea !! There are so many variations it will make a good book, you can have some nice watches if its gonna happen.

: : Back to the advertised and discussed Carrera dial, just a
: few

: Some good questions Arno, let's see what we think. Maybe you have
: some ideas to pitch in too.

Do you have photos or more info about shown Chronomatics ? I know the mock up page, where was it shown ?
Paolo new breathtalking italian knowledge on that ? Any more meat on the bone ?

: That one's hard to tell. They showed prototypes at various shows
: building up to series production, but as Paolo stated in one of
: his replies, a number of each model was shown at each show, even
: as early as Basel in April.
:

I did not mean Chronomatic and Heuer but Carrera and Chronomtic ? Are these parallel ?
: This one is hard to tell, as the dial is skewed a bit in the frame.
: I drew some extrapolation lines on it though, and it is indeed
: parallel:

:
:

Have you spoken to Mr Racine or somebody at Singer, would be interesting to get their input ?
Is this confirmed by singer and Heuer, that singer did all the printing ?

Singer employed dial painters, so
: something like that A&F dial was probably handfinished at Singer
: but where it's a company logo it may well have depended on how
: controlling that company were over their logo. If they already
: had printers with the capability to print an existing logo on
: dials, then they may have gone to them for finishing - the dials
: with the Heuer text etc would still have come from Singer in
: that case, they wouldn't have been delivered as dial blanks.
: They can use the dial feet to locate the dial for printing,
: which Singer are obviously used to - a third party printer is
: less likely to have equipment to fit so I'd guess, and I stress
: guess, that most of the time the dial supplier was supplied with
: a printing template for the logo and passed the finished dial to
: Heuer.

Yes they do have a layer which can be removed !
But the R still looks strange on the chronomatic dial compared to others at least to me ?
: The starburst dials seem to me to have a thin layer of lacquer to
: protect them, whereas the dark ones don't. They look to be
: genuinely metallic so it's probably to prevent or at least
: retard oxidation - seems pretty successful, we tend to see the
: darker or matte dials patinated more often than the silver
: metallics.

I just wanted to understand who put the date frames on the dial dial maker or Heuer, really interested in the refinishing process in those days ?

: I expected to find that it had a gold window surround, as that's
: what I'm used to on the 1158s, even when they've got an S dial.
: Looking at that other early watch though, I can't really tell if
: that has a silver surround too. It's an outstanding question
: mark over this dial really.

We had calculator dials 7-8 years ago without the date frame...

Yes carrera chronomatics are scarce only five, case numbers are more widespread I think ? Can you confirm ? 147 and 148 ? Case supply of Carreras was limited at the beginning !

: I believe we're up to 5 now, all in cases numbered 147xxx (which
: also accounts for the earliest "Automatic Chronograph"
: watches) and all with N dials. The 1153 S Chronomatic is one of
: my "known unknowns" - never seen one, but I believe
: they may exist until absolutely proven otherwise. The sample
: size of Carrera Chronomatics is so small compared to the other
: models (for whatever reason) that it's still within the realms
: of statistical probability that it's just coincidence we've only
: seen N dials so far. Or so I tell myself!