zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

The link to Chuck's original post is at the bottom, and has to do with a tachymeter bezel that has the number 37 at the top. We were all wondering WTF was up with this, and I think I may have found a possible answer. The bottom line is that it's still a major screw-up with the Tissots, but for a slightly different reason than I had suspected.

I was reading through my Grand Complications watch book, and came across the watch below with the same screwed up bezel, or so I thought when I first looked at it. Upon further examination, however, I realized this bezel WAS right, and to understand why you have to look at the KILOMETER tach ring inside the case. It goes from 60 to 500 just like the MPH tach rings that we are used to in this country, and if you think about it for a minute, with the tach ring IT DOESN"T MATTER if it's marked KPH or MPH. (!) In either system, if you go 1 mile or 1 kilometer in 60 seconds, you're going 60 K/MPH. If you go a mile or kilo in 30 seconds, you doing 120 K/MPH, and so on.

In the case of the Eberhard watch pictured, the inner tach ring is labeled KPH, and the outer ring is labeled MPH, and the numbers ARE correct. At 12 o'clock you have 60 KPH, and this IS equal to 37.2 MPH, which is the number at 12 o'clock on the outer tach ring.

If this watch had been made in the US instead of Europe (and a NASCAR watch would HAVE to be in MPH...), the inner ring would be MPH and the outer ring would be KPH, with the number at 12 o'clock on the outer ring being 96 KPH, which equals 60 MPH on the inner ring.

It would appear, then, that somebody from Tissot probably blindly copied the numbers on an outer ring from the Eberhard or similar watch design, and in so doing essentially "threw away" the original 60 - 500 tach ring on the watch, which resulted in the screw-up as Chuck originally found it.