Review: Junghans Max Bill Chronoscope

It may look like it, but this is not a Jony Ive design. If Apple were to make its own mechanical watch, it would undoubtedly look a little something like this, the Junghans Max Bill Chronoscope. But what is Junghans, who is Max Bill and why did they make a Chronoscope?

Junghans

In the early 1900s, which watchmaker would you say had the largest factory in the world? Rolex, perhaps? Barely, they’d just got started. Omega? Good shout, but no. What about Longines, they were big at the turn of the century? That’s a pretty well-educated guess, but no. Not only was the watchmaker with the world’s largest factory not any of those brands, it wasn’t even from Switzerland.

Junghans came into being at the wish of Erhard Junghans in 1861. Erhard was German. Why am I telling you this? Because if there’s one thing the Germans are exceptional at, it’s doing things properly. With the help of his brother-in-law, Jakob Zeller-Tobler, Erhard set about making watches with the techniques he’d learnt during his time in America. American watchmakers had developed processes for producing high quality at enormous volume for the growing railroad system, and Erhard liked what he saw.

Well, most of it, because although the American way was surprisingly German in its efficiency and quantity—whatever happened to that, anyway?—it wasn’t quite good enough for Erhard. He wanted more. A lot more. And so he hired 6,000 people to help him build clocks and watches in the German Black Forest. The numbers were staggering: Junghans put those 6,000 people to work at 10,000 machines to make over 20,000 clocks and watches every single day. To put that into perspective, that’s a whopping quarter Apple’s output of Apple watches over a century ago.

But unfortunately, all good things had to come to an end. That terrible thing that happened between 1939 and 1945 got rather in the way of Junghans’ operations and so the watchmaker had to put things on hold for a while, relinquishing its factory and tools in the process. It started again from the ground up, purchasing new machines in a journey of much-needed modernisation.

Despite the hardships, Junghans still found the time to produce its first wristwatch chronograph, as well as the first chronometer-rated self-winding movement and become the third largest producer of chronometer-rated movements in the world. The brand, however, needed a kickstart, something fresh and exciting to see off this new, post-war era of men's watches. Enter Max Bill.

Max Bill

Swiss native Max Bill, born in Winterthur in 1908, was built different. Where you and I would see concrete and expect nothing more than an industrial building material, Max saw something else. He saw art. But not art in the flowing lines and colour that you and I would describe, but art that is developed, and I quote, “Largely on the basis of mathematical thinking.”

Max attended the famed Bauhaus school of art and design in Germany, an operation built around the idea of extracting form from the most everyday of items. Simple lines, crisp forms and stark shapes were the basis of the Bauhaus movement, and Max was very much on board. He is, in fact, known as the founder of Concretism, and is one of the biggest names in Swiss design.

If the last two paragraphs sounded like the kind of fluff you’d read in tiny print on a small sign next to a piece of sculpture that looks like it could’ve been recovered from a demolition site just that morning, bear with me. What Max wanted to do was take a modern understanding of physics and engineering, which had changed the landscape overnight with new materials and construction techniques to build bigger, stronger, faster and cheaper—and give it all sense, make it beautiful.

I’m sure you’ve seen how grotesque design can become when it takes a back seat to budget; towering blocks of apartments wrought in concrete that give the skyline an oppressive vibe—and that’s exactly what Max wanted to prevent. With some gentle influence here and there, Max could turn even the simplest, starkest designs into eye-candy.

This ability had not gone unnoticed by Junghans. And so, a proposal was made that would sow the seeds of a long-term relationship that would ultimately lead to this: the Max Bill Chronoscope. You don’t have to be a sweater-wearing art student to see how the influence of an industrial artist shaped this 1961 design, what is very clearly and simply laid out in a way that just makes sense. It’s hard to explain why, but it sits well with the eyes—and that was Max Bill’s gift.

The original wasn’t actually a chronograph like this Chronoscope version, in case you’re wondering. This was designed in 1997 with the blessing of the late Max Bill’s son, Jakob Bill, who declared it a fitting addition to the collection and one his father would have welcomed.

Chronoscope

So, what exactly do we have here with the Junghans Max Bill Chronoscope? First and foremost, a design that feels completely timeless. It could have been penned a century ago—but equally the ink could barely be dry. And that’s the beauty of industrial design; whether Max Bill or Jony Ive or anyone in between, the mentality is one and the same: find form in function, and never the other way around. That’s exactly why this watch looks like it could have just as easily emerged from a Californian design studio as much as it could a Swiss one.

At 40mm across, it’s neither too big to be old or too small to be new. From the front, the wide, simple dial bleeds almost right to the edge, the case—here, in black PVD with 30m of water-resistance—doing as little as possible to interfere with readability. The lugs exist solely to hold onto the strap. That’s industrial design in action; a watch should tell the time clearly, and any design that gets in the way of that is superfluous.

It’s a thinking that extends into every facet of the watch. The hands are easy to read thanks to the high contrast of black on white, yet skinny to avoid making the exact time difficult to read. The minute hand extends exactly to the minutes and the hours to the hours, with a larger offset that you might expect—again, to make reading it the topmost priority.

The addition of a chronograph, with pushers wide and flat for easy operation, but no deeper than they need to be to remain sold, is diminished in weight on the dial so as to maintain the hierarchy of function. At a glance, it will always be secondary. The sub-dials sit top and bottom, balanced in the most visually satisfying way, with the branding equally balanced with a day and date complication.

If there were to be a criticism of this watch, it would be the work it has to do to hide the thickness of the mechanism. A Junghans-produced chronograph is sadly no longer an option, the calibre J880.2 in truth an ETA 7750, a notoriously thick chronograph movement that gives the Max Bill Chronoscope a surprising 14.4mm of height.

That height, however, has been as well managed as it could be, with a physics-defying case profile that blends into the plexiglass crystal to create a shape that, like the rest of the watch, ticks all the right visual boxes. They could well have used the harder and more scratch-resistant sapphire, but it would have ruined those lines. Perhaps, sometimes, it’s okay to compromise function for form just a little bit.

At just under £2,000, the Junghans Max Bill Chronoscope is no Apple Watch competitor in price, but in looks it’s practically inseparable. The industrial design-led thinking that inspired both is clearer to see than the numbers on the dial, both items finding that elusive space between practicality and beauty. Your eyes move to it to read the time and linger to enjoy the view. When it comes to a piece of jewellery that requires observation to extract its function, what more could you possibly ask?

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