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Having lost so many words on the external features of the watch, readers might wonder if enough enthusiasm is left when it comes to describe the PanoGraph's movement. There is, I can assure you. This is the most stunningly beautiful watch movement I had the joy to strap on my wrist. The overwhelming majority of watch lovers - lovers of mechanical watches - are intrigued by the thought of the mechanical complexity, the marvelous wheelwork that to understand is far beyond our average education's capabilities. The more complicated the movement looks, the better for us. An additional bonus is drawn from a comlicated mechanism, that really reacts to our actions. Normal watch movements just move (if wound, of course), and do nothing more. A chronograph, however, offers much more than that: Whenever its owner presses a button, several small and tiny elements move and do something. You turn around the watch, and see a hitherto unmoving hand running; press again, other parts move, and the hand stops again. The second button makes it jump back by the movement of another, different parts. This is the moment when we wish someone could invent a chronograph that allows us to observe the front and the back at the same time!

The beautiful complexity of chronograph movements is often compromised by large oscillating parts, which are necessary to build up energy in an automatic movement. Most of the movement is covered by the oscillating mass, which makes selfwinding chronographs unacceptable to the true purist "voyeurs du mechanisme". A hand-winding chronograph does not need the large and view-obstructing part, offering us plain sight of all the tiny things and whatever-else-I-do-not-know-the-name-ofs.

In this discipline, the PanoGraph's cal. 61 really excels. Already a first glimpse discloses that this movement was developed from the very beginning with display backs in mind. The hundreds of visible parts were not simply located where the desired function placed them; they were also arranged in an aesthetic pattern, resulting in the optical counterpart of a mechanical symphony (I did promise you superlatives, didn't I?).

Whenever direct light is falling on the movement, it awakens to sparkling and glittering life, with all the reflections from tiny polished screwheads, wheels, bevelled edges,and the silky-smooth pattern of light, coming from the stripes; "Glashütte stripes", as they are officially designated here, the more widely-known term "côtes de Genève" would never pass anyone's lips in the GO factory.

The cal. 61 movement has a diameter of 32.2 mm, and a height of 7.2 mm. Its balance wheel is produced in-house from German silver, which has very similar technical attributes as the beryllium alloys generally used for balance wheels.

Already standard is the high level of hand-applied decorative finishing, starting with the engraved balance cock, the black-polished swan-neck regulator, to the marvelous six-column-wheel responsible for the different functional modes of the chronograph mechanism.

All screws are heat-blued in the Glashütte factory, all edges are cleanly bevelled, beautifully applied stripes adorne the bridges, and the designers even found some place to accomodate three of the traditional screwed-down golden châtons.

A movement like this makes one seriously consider to wear the watch upside down in order to have the marvel visible at all times.

V. Strap and clasp

The golden Panograph is delivered on a brown alligator strap of very high quality. I liked to see that it does not have its edges simply cut and lacquered with brown paint, as it is the case with the straps of many, even top-of-the line watch brands. Instead, the top leather is larger then the core, bent around it, and sewed together with the lining. Rather stiff from the beginning, it needs some time until it adapts itself to the shape of the wrist. Then, it is vey comfortable, and also solid enough to look good for years, which at the price point of these straps should be an argument of some importance.

While I am very happy with the strap, I am hesitant to express similar enthusiasm in the face of the double deployant clasp. This golden clasp is solidly made, and works very safely, released only by simultanous pressure on the twin pushers. However, its design results in the whole arrangment of the strap and the clasp building highly on the wrist's inner side, which many owners consider rather uncomfortable. I must admit, though, that until now I have yet to find a deployment clasp that meets the wearing comfort of the simple tang buckle, at least on my wide wrist. Yet even among all the less than optimum clasps, the GO design is not ranking in the top, in terms of wearing comfort. Its biggest advantage certainly is its safety; it firmly stays closed, and not a single occurence happened when it opened erranously. Not many clasp designs can claim that.

VI. Wearing the PanoGraph - ergonomics

With a diameter of 39.4 mm and a height of 13.3 mm, the PanoGraph certainly is not a small and slim watch. In spite of its quite massive presence, the watch fully qualifies as a highly elegant timepiece, and is very comfortable to wear, too. The concave, barrel-shaped sides of the case make it appear smaller than it actually is. The PanoGraph's case also is not so edgy as one might think at first sight. It fits very well under long shirts' sleeves, only the high strap/folding clasp arrangement sometimes poses an obstacle.

One of the most important advantages of the PanoGraph is the satisfaction it gives the typical male urge to play. It is incredibly nice to press on the pushers, while observing the movement reacting on these interventions. Responsible for this fun also is the marvelous smoothness of the pushers' operation. I have to admit to be extremely finicky in this respect. Whenever there is the chance to inspect a chronograph in a shop or elsewhere, I hold it next to my ear, close my eyes, fully concentrating on the sound and the feel of how the chronograph pusher is working: is it smooth all the way down? Is its resistance against the pressure well defined? Or does it feel rough? What sound does it make? A nice and clear "ding", or a scratching "chhrrrt"? And above all: Is there a noticeable difference between starting and stopping of the chronograph mechanism? As you probably know, a lever-operated chronograph movement needs a very different force to activate and to stop it, while a column wheel needs the very same amount of energy to be turned; in theory at least. I have encountered some lever chronos, even modular ones, which had a very smooth and uniform feel when operating its pushers, and some column wheel chronos that were rough and one could easily detect from the mere feel, whether the chronograph was started or stopped.

In the discipline of pusher operation, the PanoGraph's cal. 61 movement excels every other chronograph movement I have tested until now. Of course I am aware of a certain variation over the series, due to the manual finishing and assembling of the watches. Thus maybe not all PanoGraphs will be equally smooth as my test piece.

What follows now, is a - literally - dark chapter: legibility. Have you ever seen the movie "Apollo 13", especially the unforgettable scene (unforgettable at least it is for us watch enthusiasts) when the crew fires the rocket engines without computers and navigational aids, just by timing the burning interval with their Omega Speedmaster chronograph? Do you remember the shaking and massive vibrations of everything, as shown in the scene? If the Apollo 13 crew had been equipped with PanoGraphs, they would still be up there, circling around the Earth in some crazy orbit. In a critical situation like this, the timing capabilities of the PanoGraph would be next to useless, simply because it is impossible to read the timing results from the unique dial.

In general understanding, chronograph mechanisms are tightly connected with sports and aviation. Both disciplines inevitably lay stress on perfect legibility under all conditions. However, this connection also is responsible for a massive and unearned underrating of the chronograph. As a matter of fact, chronographs are a very difficult complication, and certainly more complex than a conventional perpetual calendar. While the latter can be realized with but 60 additional parts, a chronograph module easily consumes twice as many, not to speak of the necessity to deal with rapid movements and accelerations. Consequently it is not astonishing that the chronograph mechanism soon became a desirable complication for watch enthusiasts, and has appeared in highly elegant watches without tool or "professional" character since. The GO PanoGraph clearly is representing this specific category.

As all other Glashütte Original watches, with a few exceptions, the PanoGraph's hands do not feature any luminous mass, so they are invisible at night. Many purist watch lovers consider this perfectly adequate for the faceted hands and claim that the application of luminous material would compromise their elegance. However, other brands successfully combine elegance and nighttime legibility, and in my eyes, the luminous hands of the new GO PanoMaticChrono are not overly instrumental, either.

While the lack of luminosity is one consequence from the design approach, the lack of legibility of the minute counter is another. Contrary to conventional counters, which feature a small subdial and a hand, the PanoGraph has an arc segment with three lines, each one dedicated to ten minutes. The shaft of the minute counter does not feature one hand, but three, 60 degrees apart from each other. They have different lengths, and each one of the hands is assigned to its own counter segment. Since the counter cutout spans 60 degrees, only one of the three hands is visible at a time.

At first, I found this system of counting the minutes even more intuitive than conventional ones, and quickly read the minutes, assisted by the red tips of the counter hands. This positive impression vanished, however, after twenty minutes, when the shortest hand undertook its journey over the shortest part of the cutout window. In spite of its red tip, it was barely visible inside the window's frame, and due to the smaller radius, the ten minute dots in the third line are very compressed. This combination makes it nearly impossible to accurately discern the counter hands' position.

Nevertheless, I found myself letting the chronograph function run almost permanently. Whenever I needed a new measurement, I simply reset and restarted it with a single pressure on the flyback pusher, which is an extremely comfortable way of using a chronograph.

Absolutely no compromise in terms of legibility is made in the display of the actual date. Here, GO's panorama date justifies its fame of being one of the best, if not the very best big date display on the market. The narrow demarcation line between the two figures is barely visible, resulting in a good view on the date, without being obstracted by a large central division bar, which is common on other systems. Another plus of the GO design is the very quick advance of the date display at midnight.

VII. Conclusion

The PanoGraph really is the starting point of a new development, and founder of a new tradition at Glashütte Original. It is not just a fine hand-wound chronograph, but also truly an original, worthy to wear this designation in the brand name. Its uniqueness makes it a "must" for serious collectors, not only of chronographs, but especially for collectors of watches that are special and unique.