Against the Flow
The word ‘innovation’ is often misused in watchmaking, but HYT is truly a brand of firsts, with its liquid time display and, more recently, a mechanically powered LED light system. Karishma Tulsidas chronicles the brand’s evolution and its many revolutions
our years is not a very long time to prove one’s mettle in the world of watchmaking—or the world of luxury, for that matter. But HYT demonstrated that age is but a number when it won top billing in the Innovation Watch Prize category at the Grand Prix d’horlogerie de Genève within the first year of its founding in 2012. The brand has established itself as the “Hydro Mechanical Horologists”— meaning that it has replaced conventional hour and minute hands with a viscous, coloured liquid that displays the time. The seed of the idea was sown by former nuclear engineer Lucien Vouillamoz. When in Geneva, the Swiss lakes captivated his imagination, and it prompted the idea of combining water and watchmaking. He worked on the mechanics for 10 years before launching the commercially viable end product. The challenges were immense, as H2O is the natural enemy of mechanical movements and can easily cause the small metallic components to rust. Using liquid to tell the time is not new, as water clocks were used in China as far back in 4,000 BC. HYT’S mechanism is by no means rudimentary. Essentially, the watch’s mechanical movement drives two bellows that pump two immiscible liquids (one neoncoloured one that contains fluorescein, and another transparent one) through a capillary system that has so far taken the shape of a circle (H1, H2 and H4), skull (HYT Skull) and a straight line (H3). It would be easy for such a concept to come off as gimmicky, as many newfangled innovations have, but HYT is the child prodigy of three top minds in the horological industry: CEO Vincent Perriard, who cut his teeth at Concord; the mechanical movements are developed by Chronode and Audemars Piguet Renaud & Papi; and in 2014, Dominique Renaud (master horologist and one-half of the aforementioned Renaud & Papi duo) joined the company as head of watchmaking. Together, they have so far developed five strong pillars within the brand’s line-up. Recent releases include the H2 Tradition, HYT’S version of a classical watch, which retains the boundary-pushing liquid time telling display. There’s also the H4 Alinghi, a skeletonised version of the H1. It commemorates HYT’S partnership with the Swiss sailing team, and features the world’s first dial lit by two LED lights. This process is mechanically operated, and turning the crown lights up the dial for five seconds.