The Chronograph

The chronograph mechanism can time events up to 12 hours in duration… and is great fun to play with.

To start the chronograph, press the pusher at 2 o'clock. This starts the central chronograph seconds hand. Every revolution of the central chronograph seconds advances the hand of the minute counter by one minute.

If you watch has an hour counter, every full revolution of the hand on the minute counter (30 minutes) will cause the hour counter hand to advance in a ½-hour increment.

To stop the chronograph, press again the pusher at 2 o'clock. The recorded time can then be read off the various scales.

To reset the chronograph, press the pusher at 4 o'clock. All the indicator hands will instantly be reset to zero.

All the chronograph sequences are, like the rest of the watch, entirely achieved by mechanical means: drive fingers, wheels, and heart cams with reset hammers. Treat them gently and they will be around for generations.

Telemeter scales

Your Annual Calendar Chronograph has a Telemeter scale allowing you to estimate the distance between yourself and an observed and heard event by simply using the difference in speeds between light and sound.

Here is a classic example: to estimate the distance to a lightening strike, start your chronograph when you see the lightening and stop it when you hear the thunder. The distance (in km and in miles) is then directly read off the scale. Another early use of this procedure was to estimate the distance to an artillery battery based on muzzle flash and report – we do not recommend this.

Finding North

OK, no way we can claim this as unique to Kennsen, but analogue watches possess another useful feature: They can be used as a rough compass to find North (that is if they are running to the correct time and outside of the tropics). Here is how to proceed:

Finding North in the Northern Hemisphere

1. Hold your watch horizontally.

2. Point the hour hand at the Sun.

3. South is pointed to by the imaginary line that is half the angle between the hour hand and the “12” hour index as measured through the central axis.

4. North is indicated by the continuation of that line in the opposite direction.

Finding North in the Southern Hemisphere

1. Hold your watch horizontally.

2. Point the “12” hour index at the Sun.

3. North is pointed to by the imaginary line that is half the angle between the “12” hour index and the hour hand as measured through the central axis.  

Straps

Our top quality leather straps are made by Hirsch Switzerland. You can of course also replace your strap(s) by any other strap with a width between lugs of 20mm.