When a brand has a specific spin on timekeeping itself and an engineering philosophy built on that spin, it will find itself very lonely indeed. It is like being the only star lighting up a supervoid or a field of one taking on a marathon, for example. The Hydromechanical Horologists HYT find themselves in this perhaps enviable position — there is no other brand working with the combination of fluids, gears and springs and thus HYT never suffers any comparisons. This does mean that HYT has to shoulder the burden of explaining how its vision of timekeeping works. In other words, what are hydromechanical horologists anyway?

Well, the Neuchatel watchmakers have revealed the H0 to this end. As the name suggests, this watch is meant as a sort of primer into both the functions of a HYT timepiece as well as the meaning behind the brand, so to speak. Vice President of Sales Giancarlo Mantuano says the H0 is the watch the might have started the whole HYT story, had it been scripted differently. Clearly, looking at the visuals here, it mostly looks exactly as one would expect a HYT to look. No HYT H3 this.

The story here is one of revealing some elements while placing others under wraps; dedicated followers of fluidic fashions will notice that the H0 obscures the bellows for the first time while the lack of the typical ‘dome’ at 6 o’clock means one can finally see how the fluid tracks out of the tubes. These two important details are a little overshadowed by the very dramatic case, which looks like the watchmakers dropped a sapphire dome onto the caseback, covering the calibre like it was a sumptuous main course at some Old World gala dinner.

Assuming one is not familiar with HYT at all, well the hours are indicated by the aforementioned liquids, which are controlled by the bellows. In this watch, the minutes are at 12 o’clock, seconds at 9:30 and power reserve at 2:30. It is worth repeating that there are two fluids here, one coloured and one clear, moving just like a retrograde indicator. In fact, this action is controlled by how much pressure the movement exacts upon one of the bellows, via a cam. The precise pressure determines how fast the fluid moves and the cam controls when the fluids reset.

At 48.8mm and 17.9mm thick, this watch certainly proves that watches are not shrinking this year. HYT says this will not be a limited proposition, being limited only by production capacity.

Specifications

Movement Manual-winding with exclusive HYT calibre

Power Reserve 65-hours

Case 48.8mm in black DLC titanium water resistant to 30m

Water resistance to 30m

Strap Rubber, black DLC titanium deployant buckle

Price SGD 55,000