Much like the recent spherical Eris watch, here's another way to tell the time that is a little "out of this world". Japanese not-for-profit organization Think The Earth has released the wn-2 watch, featuring a tiny replica of the Earth that rotates in the same direction and at the same speed as the real thing. By offering a view similar to that seen from orbit the creators hope the wn-2 watch will encourage the wearer to put things in perspective and consider the world around them.
The wn-2 watch (which stands for "watch Northern Hemisphere") features a small globe under a glass dome that makes one revolution every twenty four hours. The globe rotates slowly counter-clockwise, emulating our view of the Northern Hemisphere from space. The Earth dial is at a scale of 1:580 millionth of Earth, with the distance between the wearer's eyes and their wrist equating to 380,000km, the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The creators say they intended for this breadth of scale to hopefully give the wearer the "opportunity to think about global issues and relate to the Earth in their everyday lives".
The watch has two luminous indicators, a needle shaped hour hand and a smaller orange round minutes hand and the wearer can set the watch to any of 24 worldwide time zones. Featuring a Seiko quartz movement, the watch is water resistant up to 100 meters and comes with two bezels, one plain silver or blue and the other shaded to represent night or day hours. The aluminum watch uses a lithium battery and in an environmentally friendly twist, the packaging can be reconfigured as the base for a desktop clock if you want to remove the core module and display it in the 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.
Via Red Ferret.