Friday, December 4, 2009

World's Most Expensive Watch at The Watchery Luxury Watch Blog: CHOPARD’S $25 MILLION DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

The Watchery Luxury Watch Blog: CHOPARD’S $25 MILLION DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

World’s Most Expensive Watches

World’s Most Expensive Watches

World's Most Expensive Pocket Watch

World's Most Expensive Pocket Watch: "Graves Supercomplication pocket watch"

The World's Most Expensive Watch (Watches, Timepieces, Clocks)

The Day That Changed Watch Collecting - BusinessWeek - Stacy Perman : The auction of the Graves Supercomplication netted $11,002,500, which is still the world record, 10 years later.

As Stacy Perman writes:
"Known as the Graves Supercomplication, the unique timepiece possessed 24 complications—or mechanical features in addition to timekeeping—including a different chronological function for each hour of the day, a chart of the nighttime sky over New York City complete with the magnitudes of the stars and the Milky Way, and a minute repeater that played the same melody heard in London's Big Ben.

The storied watch was the most ingeniously complicated mechanical watch ever created and required five years to design and build. Off the market for 66 years, it was also the ultimate prize in a 30-year collecting duel between Graves and the American automaker James Ward Packard, who spent a good part of the early 20th century attempting to acquire the most extraordinary timepiece with the greatest possible number of complications ever made. Both men wanted the best—and for that they chose Patek Philippe."

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

The Falkirk Wheel : First, Only and Biggest Rotating Boat Lift in the World

This is our photograph of the Falkirk Wheel, Lime Rd, Falkirk, FK1 4RS, United Kingdom, +44 1324 619888, which is located about halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, and is the world's first, only and largest rotating boat lift.


The following photographs show how the Falkirk Wheel looks in operation at various stages of hoisting the passenger boat you see in the above picture from the Forth and Clyde Canal up to the Union Canal 35 meters (115 feet) above it. Yes, one can purchase a ticket to be in the boat and be uplifted by the Falkirk Wheel.

Starting Position of the Falkirk Wheel


The Falkirk Wheel Heading Toward the Half Way Point Up


The Falkirk Wheel Nearly Three-Quarters of the Way Up


The Falkirk Wheel Nearly at the Top


The Falkirk Wheel Having Hoisted the Boat to the Top


Take a look at the Falkirk Wheel home page for details about this unique and creative engineering achievement.

Giant Straw Field Mouse at Lejasciems Latvia

My father, Arvids Kaulins, was born in Lejasciems, Latvia.

Ivan_By at Panoramio has a photograph of a giant straw field mouse at Lejasciems (the town name means "Hamlet in the Dale").

field mouse at Lejasciems

This reduced-size photograph is published here with the permission of the photographer. Take a look at the original full-size photo at Panoramio.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Bigger Than Life

This was
a blog idea
to write about
things that
are really

BIG.

Like a giant pumpkin which is the header for this blog, QUANTICALIAN.
Quanti is clear for "quantum" and Calian is a term I came up with for my surname Kaulins.