Glashütte Original PanoMaticCounter XL: Watch with a Counter Complication
Glashütte Original presents a new watch model “PanoMaticCounter XL” featuring a superb mechanical movement with complication – a counter which helps to count and keep track of things from 1 to 99. The PanoMaticCounter XL presents its curiously fascinating counter complication in an elegant and effective manner. Red numerals appear on a black ground in a double-digit window positioned at 9 o’clock. The wearer activates the counter using three pushers positioned on the left side of the stainless steel case.
The plus pusher at 9 o’clock moves the count forward, one unit at a time, from 00 to 99; the minus pusher at 8 o’clock counts down, and the zero pusher at 10 o’clock resets to zero (00). Directly opposite the counter window, at 3 o’clock, is the visually compelling Glashütte Original panorama date display, with its seamless presentation of the date in white numerals on a black ground.
Aligned along the vertical axis are the off-center hour and minute display in the lower half of the dial and, in the upper half, the large chronograph stop-seconds scale, raised above the galvanized black dial and flanked by the subsidiary seconds and 30-minute counters, whose zero points have been rotated 60° to guarantee optimum legibility. The hour and minute dial features applied white gold numerals and hour markers and white gold hands; the stop-seconds scale, subsidiary-seconds and 30-minute counters present white numerals and indexes on black.
A superb example of the art of engineering, the PanoMaticCounter XL features the new Caliber 96-01, a classic column wheel chronograph with flyback function. Comprising 584 individually-crafted components, the 96-01 is based on the award-winning Glashütte Original Caliber 95. Its patented bilateral winding mechanism uses step gears to transmit energy quickly and efficiently to the movement and enables an ‘intelligent’ accommodation to the behavior of the wearer.
Complementing this remarkable movement is the novel counter complication. Deceptively simple in appearance, the new complication module was designed by Glashütte Original’s in-house development team and requires 217 individual components, each of which is precision-crafted in the Glashütte Original manufacture. Like the panorama date, the counter window’s seamless display presents a double-digit figure (the current count at any given time) without the need for a double window.
The PanoMaticCounter XL offers the characteristic features of the fine art of watch making at Glashütte Original, including the three-quarter plate with Glashütte ribbing, polished steel components, beveled edges and blued screws, a hand-engraved balance cock and a swan-neck fine adjustment with a finely threaded spindle. Its exquisite finishings are easily visible through the antireflective sapphire crystal case back. The stainless steel case is held firmly in place by a black Louisiana alligator leather strap.
