The tourbillon is perhaps the most impressive complication in watchmaking. It’s also not really a complication, nor is it, in a wristwatch, particularly useful. So, what is it, how does it work, and if it’s so useless, why are we so obsessed with it?

So, you want a Rolex Submariner. You’ve got your £6,550, and you’re out the door on the way to the shop—but when you get there, you’re told there’s a waiting list. Yet out of the corner of your eye, you see something else, the Grand Seiko Sport SBGA229. Here’s the dilemma: do you stick, and wait for the Submariner, or twist and buy the Grand Seiko instead?

As a watchmaker, Breitling has changed its direction a few times over the years, trying—and in some cases failing—to keep up with the demands of consumers in an ever-changing environment. One thing has remained true through all of it, however, and that’s the Navitimer, the meat and two veg of the Breitling diet. It’s good, it’s wholesome—and now it’s been changed to something completely different. Has Breitling finally lost it?

When you’re travelling from one celestial body to another within the 100 billion or so stars that make up our galaxy, which itself is one of 100 billion galaxies within the observable universe, it’s nice to have something to remember your place amongst it all. Interstellar hitchhiker Arthur Dent had his towel to remind him of home; perhaps if he’d had £220,000 to spend, he could have had this instead: the Patek Philippe 6102R.