Wow Watch Wednesday: Change Your Perspective With The wn-2 Earth Watch
This week’s ‘Weird Watch’ not only looks cool, it has also been designed to serve a higher purpose. To put it simply, the wn-2 watch from Japanese not-for-profit organization Think The Earth is out of this world! Why you ask? Well you’re just going to have to read on to find out.
View From The Top
There are a lot of things that make the wn-2 watch unique, not least of which is the design. Where you would normally find a nice flat dial instead there is a tiny replica of the Earth that rotates in the same direction and at the same speed as the real thing.
I know all you techie types out there will probably not be satisfied with the above description so here is a bit more detail. The small globe under the glass dome makes one revolution every twenty four hours. The globe rotates slowly counter-clockwise, imitating our view of the Northern Hemisphere from space (hence the name “watch Northern Hemisphere).
Now for the really amazing part. The innovative minds that designed this piece created there representation of the Earth at a scale of 1:580 millionth of the real thing. As a result, this translates into the distance between the wearer’s eyes and their wrist equating to approximately 380,000km, the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
Are you starting to get the picture?
The thinking is that by giving the wearer a view similar to that seen from orbit they will begin to put things in perspective and consider the world around them and their impact on the planet as a whole, as opposed to just their individual existence. As they say, sometimes you need to take step back to see the bigger picture.
Does It Tell The Time Too?
It certainly does! The watch has two luminous indicators, a needle shaped hour hand and a smaller orange round minutes hand which allow the wearer to set the watch to any of 24 worldwide time zones.
As you would expect from a watch manufactured in Japan it is powered by a Seiko quartz movement and is water resistant up to 100 meters (pretty standard really.) It comes with two bezels, one plain silver or blue and the other shaded to represent night or day hours.
Continuing the theme of thinking about the environment we live in the packaging can be reconfigured to form the base for a desktop clock if you want to remove the core piece and display it your home or office. Desktop calendar covers are also available for download.
Priced at around US$800, the wn-2 watch is available to order from Think The Earth.
The Final Word
More than anything I love this watch for the concept it represents. Yes it is pricey and probably fairly impractical to a degree but even just by reading this article maybe this watch has indirectly inspired you to think a little bit more about your impact on the planet you live on. Plus it looks great and I’m fairly certain you aren’t going to see to many other people wearing one.
Which is a bit of a shame really.
Category: Wow Watch Wednesday
I remember reading about those a few years ago, pretty clever.
Yes it never ceases to amaze me what I find when I go digging for watches for this segment. I have to agree though, the concept is very clever (although admittedly I probably couldn’t see myself ever wearing one.)