Heuer Calculator Automatic Chronograph, 1970s

Dealer description — Analog/Shift

There is perhaps no more versatile complication than the chronograph. From race cars to rocket ships, boats to battlefields, you are likely to find a chronograph being employed to measure a plethora of tasks and times. From the Greek khrónos (“time) and gráphō (“to write”), a chronograph is a watch that has the ability to record time, generally via the addition of small sub-counters that register minutes and hours. Though many storied brands produced notable chronographs during the complication’s heyday from the 1930s through the 1970s, numerous other firms fell by the wayside during the Quartz Crisis, folding completely and disappearing or being rolled up into conglomerates that pillaged their stores of parts. Heuer, for its part, is still around today as TAG Heuer, but its pre-TAG period was perhaps its most fertile era of chronograph design. Take the Calculator watch, for example: this special model took advantage of the brand's esteemed automatic chronograph movement technology and paired it with a unique two-part slide rule bezel in what can best be described as a sort of mechanical calculator: Using the bezel, the wearer can easily calculate distance and weight and convert between metric and imperial. Pretty neat! This particular Heuer Calculator watch, a Reference 110.633, dates to the 1970s and features a 45.5mm 'tonneau-shaped' stainless steel case with an outer calculator bezel, dual 'pump' pushers, a left-hand crown, and a stainless steel multi-link bracelet. Its dial is a picture of legibility: Featuring an outer 1/5th-seconds track in white, luminous 'dash' indices, a dual-register chronograph with 30-minute and 12-hour counters, a date window at 6 o'clock, and a luminous orange 'baton' handset, it's easy to use as a time-recording device or for more complex calculations. Powered by the Heuer Calibre 12 automatic chronograph movement and paired to a cool stainless steel multi-link bracelet, this unique tool watch is an awesome vestige of one of the most creative periods in chronograph design. It brings a smile to our faces every time — we're confident that it'll do the same for you.