The Trilogy of Time watches were the result of a meeting in the early 1980s between the late Rolf Schnyder, who bought and was responsible for the revival of Ulysse Nardin, and Dr. Ludwig Oechslin, watchmaker and polymath. The meeting came about as a result of a visit by Schnyder to the Lucerne-based watchmaker Jörg Spöring, during which the former saw a highly complicated astronomical clock of a type known as an astrolabium (the astrolabe is an early astronomical instrument which shows visible stars and allows elevations of heavenly bodies to be taken, among other things, and which is the ancestor of mechanical astronomical complications). At the time, Oechslin was working as Spöring’s apprentice, but the clock amazed Schnyder, who famously asked Oechslin if he could shrink his astrolabe clock down to wristwatch size. The idea at first struck Oechslin as absurd; he said, “Who would be interested in buying it?” Schnyder retorted, “I would!”
In-Depth A Ulysse Nardin Tellurium Johannes Kepler, One Of The Three Original Trilogy Of Time Watches From The 1990s
