I’d like to share with you a story of one watchmaker’s fascinating journey.
Archak Boyadjian was born in 1906 in Bulgaria to a family of watchmakers. His grandfather was a talented clockmaker who could easily fix a hairspring in the palm of his hand with his trusty tools. His father was also a watchmaker.
When Archak turned seventeen, his father sent him to study horology in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.
Archak Boyadjian was born in 1906 in Bulgaria to a family of watchmakers.
After graduating from school, Archak went back to Bulgaria, to a town called Varna. It was there he got a job through a family friend as a watchmaker repairing clocks. After a while, Archak moved to the capital city, Sofia, with his dad to launch a family watch repair business.
There was one particular customer who often came around to the store, not only asking plenty of questions but also bringing in quite a collection of clocks to repair. After many of these visits, Archak finally asked about the clocks.
He was surprised to discover that they belonged to His Majesty Czar Boris III of Bulgaria. The Czar was an avid collector of timepieces with a penchant for cuckoo clocks. Archak serviced and repaired the Czar’s clocks from 1932 until 1937, after which he moved to Paris and then to the United States.
New name and Navy
Once he landed on the shores of the U.S., Archak changed his name to Archie Boyer to begin his new life in America. In 1939, he joined the Navy as a watchmaker, first fixing chronometers, clocks, and watches on the East Coast before being sent to the West Coast.
During World War II, 15% of all total watch imports coming into the U.S. were destined for the military.At one point during the War, Archie was seemingly sent to the sick bay (at least on official documentation) but in reality, he journeyed on a cargo plane to the South Pacific to fix something.
Omega and Rolex
After the war, Archie joined Bulova and then Omega. Finally, in 1951, he began his career at Rolex, which was located on Fifth Avenue and 45th Street in New York City. As the head of repairs, Archie was always in charge of fixing watches that belonged to dignitaries. For example, he fixed President Eisenhower’s golfing watch and President Kennedy’s timepiece.
Archie’s son Michael remembers his dad bringing watches home all the time to fix them at his workbench at night and on weekends. Archie was always tinkering away at something, whether building, restoring, or repairing. Archie was also the head of the Rolex training program for distributors around the country.
The Rolex USA technical team. After 30 years at Rolex USA, Archie retired in 1971 as Technical Director.
Reviewing all the correspondence that Michael brought to the interview, I could feel and sense the respect that Archie received from peers and clients. They penned beautiful notes of thanks and appreciation.
After 30 years at Rolex USA, Archie retired in 1971 as Technical Director. Michael describes his dad Archie as a reserved man, not very expressive but charming and gifted, and as you can imagine, a perfectionist. He took his craft very seriously and he loved working at Rolex. As Michael described it, Archie was happiest when attending Christmas parties at the company’s headquarters.
Archie Boyer at one of the many Christmas parties at Rolex USA.
Life is an amazing journey and Archie’s is a true testament to his passion, love, and talent for making sure the timepieces under his care worked flawlessly. I could feel Michael’s emotions when he spoke of his late father, who he describes as an “unsung hero.”
Laurent Martinez is the proprietor of Laurent Fine Watches, Greenwich, Connecticut. Read more by him at blog.laurentfinewatches.com or visit his store’s site at www.laurentfinewatches.com
HSNY derived the name of the new scholarship from Grace Fryer (1899 – 1933), a dial painter in New Jersey who was poisoned by radium during her work in dial-making companies in the 1920s.
Grace Fryer
The women at these companies, which were located in Connecticut, Illinois and New Jersey, were instructed to point the radium-lined brushes using their lips. The Radium Girls, as the women would later be called, suffered horrific side effects from radium poisoning and many lost their lives.
Fryer spent years fighting for the Radium Girls and their case would go on to gain national media attention and establish legal precedents, having tremendous labor rights impacts and ushering scientific advances.
“I believe Aunt Grace would view this scholarship, which the Horological Society of New York has graciously named after her, as a symbol of progress for women,” says Art Fryer, Grace Fryer’s nephew. “I feel Grace would be honored to be associated with HSNY in helping to welcome women into the horological craft.”
The Grace Fryer Scholarship joins HSNY’s additional financial aid opportunities in watchmaking, which include:
The Henry B. Fried Scholarship for Watchmaking Students
The Benjamin Banneker Scholarship for Black Watchmaking Students
The Oscar Waldan Scholarship for Jewish Watchmaking Students
The Howard Robbins Award for Watchmaking Schools
Students can apply now until March 1.
Any female student who has been accepted or is currently studying at a full-time watchmaking school in the U.S. is eligible to apply to the Grace Fryer Scholarship. Prospective students may also apply, with the understanding that the scholarship is contingent on their enrollment at a full-time watchmaking school. Financial aid is awarded every April with awards up to $5,000 in 2022.
High accuracy has long been the ‘holy grail’ of many serious watch collectors. This stripe of enthusiast demands much more from their choice of timepiece than simply that it color-coordinates with their wardrobe. And these collectors are likely tomonitor their chosen watches carefully – and frequently – for any loss of precision, whether resulting from shock damage, magnetism or moisture.
The ONEOF Accuracy2 is a compact watch measurement tool.
It’s for these collectors that new Swiss-based company, ONE OF, has launched a set of three devices, two of which are pocket-sized, built to assist them as they check their watches. ONE OF offers measurement tools that quickly check a watch’s health and wirelessly transmit that information to a smart phone or tablet.
ONEOF offers the accuracy tool/app in three different function levels, with versions designed specifically for collectors (Accuracy2, pictured above), for boutiques (Accuracy Boutique Edition) and also for watchmakers in a retail or professional setting (AccuracyPro).
The Accuracy technology automatically detects your watch when placed nearby. It then amplifies every single vibration within the mechanical movement, converting those sounds into a digital form and creating a full ‘health’ record visible on your phone or tablet.
Analyzing the watch movement’s myriad internal vibrations, ONE OF’s technology quickly calculates the watch’s rate accuracy, frequency, beat error, amplitude, lift angle and stability (known as integration time).
As a bonus, the new products use an integrated magnetic field sensor to check whether a watch movement is magnetized. Owners can scan their watch from various angles to see if it suffers from magnetization.
Additional functions
The Accuracy Boutique Edition, pictured with results on smartphone.
While the compact Accuracy2 ($320) tool will check for magnetization, with the card-deck-sized Accuracy Boutique Edition ($1,270), collectors can also demagnetize a mechanical watch, also using a smartphone or a tablet. The collector need only press the DEMAG function on the application. This generates a short but powerful electromagnetic pulse that demagnetizes the watch’s spiral balance.
The ONEOF Accuracy Boutique edition is a watch measurement tool with integrated demagnetizer.
“The ONE OF Accuracy Boutique Edition’s sensor is provided with a piezoelectric microphone that is very sensitive to the vibrations of the regulatory organ, the ‘ticking’ of the watch,” explains Alexis Sarkissian, founder of Totally Worth It, the tool’s distributor in the United States. “The application’s algorithms process the acoustic signal in real time and measure, among other things, the chronometric accuracy”.
For watchmakers, the AccuracyPro can test the watch in various positions.
As its name implies, the professional-level Accuracy Pro provides the watch owner with much more data. It can perform measurements manually using its integrated accelerometer to check the watch in multiple positions. It provides the watchmaker with amplitude and oscillation flaws and displays the acoustic characteristic of the escapement in diagrams and cumulative graphs.
The ONEOF Accuracy Pro is a manual multi-position watch measurement instrument.
See the ONEOF USA site for additional details about all three Accuracy products.
After the Horological Society of New York appointed its former president Nicholas Manousos to a new position as the Society’s Executive Director (succeeding Edwin Hydeman), and with the addition of actor and horological designer Aldis Hodge as its newest Trustee, we thought it might be a good time to catch up on the latest news from the Society.
Below you’ll find our recent interviews with both Manousos and Hodge.
Nicholas Manousos Horological Society of New York Executive Director
Nicholas Manousos, Horological Society of New York Executive Director
The necessary cancellation of all our in-person events has definitely been the biggest challenge for HSNY. HSNY has a reputation for holding standing-room-only lectures, sold-out watchmaking classes, and a packed annual gala. Very quickly, COVID-19 made our consistent ability to attract large crowds into a problem.
Our annual Gala & Charity Auction was canceled, as well as our May and June lectures and all of our watchmaking classes. Although our Gala was canceled, HSNY still awarded its Henry B. Fried Scholarships, Howard Robbins Awards, and Working Watchmakers Grants ($155,000 in total).
Even with these difficult cancellations, HSNY remains a resilient organization. Looking back at history gives some context. HSNY was founded in 1866 and has survived through the 1918 flu pandemic, the Great Depression and both World Wars. HSNY will continue to serve watchmakers, clockmakers, and the interested public during the COVID-19 pandemic and into the future.
David Walter speaks at an HSNY event in 2019 at the General Society Library at 20 West 44th Street in New York.
How has HSNY been keeping in touch with its members?
HSNY has an amazing marketing and Public Relations director (Carolina Navarro) who has been doing a great job communicating with our members and the public, even through the most difficult part of New York’s lockdown. Our monthly newsletter, The Horologist’s Loupe — which began publishing in 1936 and is one of the oldest continuously running horological publications in the world — has continued publishing throughout the pandemic, keeping everyone up to date on HSNY’s activities. HSNY maintains an archive of vintage copies on our website offering a fascinating look back at watchmaking history in New York.
Watchmaker Joshua Shapiro speaks at HSNY in 2019.
Are the virtual tutoring classes working out for HSNY?
HSNY’s new Virtual Horological Tutoring classes are working out really well! Our instructors are all professional watchmakers who teach for HSNY on a part-time basis, and all of them had their day jobs affected by the lockdown. This left a lot of time for our traditional in-person class curriculum to be adapted to online classes.
The multi-camera setup that the instructors use is impressive. It allows for students to look at the instructors as they explain certain topics and also get a close-up view of the movement as it is being worked on. The Virtual Horological Tutoring classes complement our in-person New York classes and Traveling Education initiative allowing HSNY to reach anyone in the world with an internet connection who wants to learn what makes a mechanical watch tick.
Our instructors are based throughout North America allowing us to accommodate people in different time zones and we even offer courses in French upon request.
Can you tell our readers about the Working Watchmaker’s Grant program?
In April, when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak in New York, I began hearing stories of watchmakers around the country who had been furloughed or lost their jobs, and it made me think about the origins of HSNY. HSNY was founded as a guild by and for watchmakers, similar to what we today call a union. Benefits were offered to help colleagues in times of need, and no one was turned away.
With this in mind, I approached HSNY’s donor network with the idea of giving grants directly to working watchmakers in the U.S. who were negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In just a few days, $100,000 was raised, and the program was announced. In one day, all grants were reserved, and HSNY staff began the large project of issuing one hundred $1,000 checks to working watchmakers.
Today, HSNY has evolved into a non-profit organization that welcomes enthusiasts and collectors, but the spirit of generosity and support of professional watchmakers from our early years is still there. The Working Watchmakers Grant is today’s version of the altruism that led to the founding of the Society in 1866.
Are the newest goals of the HSNY based on necessary evolution?
I think of it more as an accelerated evolution. For example, we had been looking into offering virtual classes and live-streaming lectures for quite a while as we now have members from all corners of the world.
Watch fun at the Horological Society of New York.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the timeline for these now very important projects. Even with the COVID-19 pandemic, the amount of financial assistance HSNY distributed in 2020 was over five times what it was in 2019 ($155,000 in 2020, versus $30,000 in 2019).
Behind the scenes, HSNY is working on a number of other projects that have also been accelerated due to the pandemic, and I look forward to sharing them with everyone soon.
When do you expect to start scheduling events again?
Luckily, HSNY has only experienced one true month of inactivity. On March 2, we held our last lecture before lockdown with François-Paul Journe and Osama Sendi lecturing on the Phenomenon of Resonance.
I remember that night vividly; it was a great lecture and a good note to pause on as New York entered lockdown later in March. In late April, HSNY started offering its Virtual Horological Tutoring classes and on September 9, our world-famous lecture series will resume in an online format.
As far as in-person events, only time will tell. Not only are we complying with New York City and state guidelines, but we are also seeking our members’ feedback on how they envision HSNY reopening.
Watchmaker Bernhard Stoeber addressed the HSNY in January about the Omega Calibers 321 and 861.
Are any HSNY classes nationwide (or worldwide) currently in operation?
No, all in-person classes are on hold for the foreseeable future. New York is doing well with the coronavirus at the moment and its reopening plan is moving forward. We will continue to monitor the situation and will restart our in-person classes only when it is safe.
Our traveling education classes will likely take longer to restart because of travel restrictions in place around the world. Our Virtual Horological Tutoring classes are filling in the gap quite nicely during this time.
What opportunities from HSNY are available to any International Watch reader eager to expand his or her knowledge about horology?
HSNY’s YouTube channel is a great resource for anyone interested in expanding their horological horizons. Our lecture series has been running continuously since 1866, attracting the world’s brightest minds to share their expertise.
For 150 years, the only way to experience a HSNY lecture was to attend in person. In 2016, HSNY started video recording its lectures, and we now have 33 lectures available to watch for free. Lectures cover technical, historical, collecting, business, and cultural topics so there is something for everyone.
What are the benefits of an HSNY membership?
Joining HSNY as a member shows that you care deeply about advancing the art and science of horology. HSNY’s vast membership is what allows our non-profit to offer such a wide range of educational programs and deliver its critical financial assistance every year.
In terms of tangible benefits, all HSNY members receive an exclusive lapel pin. Members also receive priority access to lectures and special events, immediate access to video-recorded lectures, and library access in the heart of Midtown Manhattan.
What have been some of the highlights of your tenure as the President of HSNY, and how does your role now change?
Every year in late March, I make a number of phone calls to watchmaking students across the country to let them know that they have been awarded the Henry B. Fried Scholarship. These phone calls are a definite highlight for me, as I know how difficult it is for students to balance studying and paying their bills.
Every year in the U.S., more watchmakers retire than graduate. HSNY will continue to do everything possible to help watchmaking students, including expanding our financial assistance programs. I also greatly enjoy meeting the lecturers that travel to New York to speak at HSNY. I have learned so much from our world-class speakers, and I am very much looking forward to restarting our lecture series in September (in an online format).
As Executive Director, my responsibilities will now include all of the operational aspects of the organization. This year has been very challenging for the entire watchmaking industry. I am looking forward to meeting those challenges with HSNY, and making a positive contribution to the art and science of horology.
Aldis Hodge, HSNY Trustee
How did you initially learn about the Horological Society of New York?
When I began teaching myself how to design watches at around nineteen years old, I sought every way to self-educate. I started studying the history of horology, which is how I stumbled upon HSNY.
Aldis Hodge,HSNY Trustee
I would fly back and forth to New York City often for work, and whenever I was there I’d try to attend the meetings to learn. I wanted to begin establishing my own connective community within the city so that every time I went there, I’d be able to maintain a constant state of educational growth.
I knew of Nick Manousos and his accomplishments, and as I remember it, I met him at one of the meetings. I approached him really as an admirer of his prior and current work. We kicked up a conversation, which turned into a friendship and the rest is history.
What has your involvement with the Society been up to this point?
I’ve been a proud member of HSNY since 2016. My travel schedule is demanding but luckily requires me to be in New York City often, so I attend lectures whenever possible. I remember the day I received my membership lapel pin and I still wear it proudly today.
How will that change now that you are a Trustee?
Now that I’m a Trustee, I have the opportunity and responsibility to directly impact the Society. I can use my voice to represent HSNY and contribute to its growth. I’m excited about the challenges that lie ahead and I’ve already discussed several of my ideas with the board. I’m determined to accomplish the goals set forth within the time frame of my tenure.
What do you see as the Society’s responsibility to the watchmaking industry?
Education, education, education! As a seasoned designer, I’ve realized that the primary challenge of maintaining the validity of traditional watchmaking is obtained through education.
I love having conversations with people that may spark a newfound interest in horology or a new way to appreciate our artistically mechanical world from a refreshed perspective.
I really enjoy teaching people about ways to understand value and quality regarding the many difficult techniques that we as horologists apply when creating our work. And my joy is equally matched when I get to introduce someone to the world of “independent watchmaking”.
I also see a great opportunity for HSNY’s continued efforts to be a major asset towards the resurgence of American horological manufacturing. This, I would dare to say, is the potential accomplishment I’m most ambitious about being a part of.
My mind overflows with ideas about the jobs and opportunities we could create, the horological wonders we could develop, and the history that we could establish. There was once a time when America was known for great watchmaking and that time has come yet again.
The Academy of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG), now reorganized with 350 members in its first year of existence, is transforming its selection and voting process as it ramps up for the annual GPHG Awards ceremony, this year scheduled for November 12 in Geneva.
On April 8, the Academy published a full list of the 350 Academy members for 2020. Their first mission, according to a GPHG press release, is to propose eligible watch models, starting in May.
“In parallel, and as they have in the past, brands will also be able to enter their models. Academicians will subsequently be invited to take part during the summer in the first round of voting to select the nominated watches; then in the autumn they will take part in a second and final vote to determine the 2020 prize list,” according to the release.
A full list of the 2020 GPHG Academy members can be found here, while the 2020 Award regulations are described here. Additional details are available on the GPHG website
