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Wednesday, February 28, 2018

What's the Wrist Watch in "Interstellar"?

It took watching the movie "Interstellar" about five times until I started to get curious about the watch that's featured in the movie. Not Cooper's flashier metallic wrist watch but Murph's more toned down watch.

I'm not going to lie, I haven't really paid attention to watches or worn one since grade school and that was a while ago. It probably had to do with the fact that I kept taking them off all day when I still wore them and finally just stopped wearing one at all. Anyway, this ambivalence when it comes to time pieces is probably why I originally thought Murph's watch was a dollar store special. I didn't bother to read the name on the face of the watch, not that it would have been recognized by me, and it wasn't flashy on the surface. 

Googling "Interstellar Murph watch" turned up some interesting results. Apparently, it was a Hamilton watch and their watches were not exactly at dollar store prices -- or department store prices unless one buys watches that take up an entire average paycheck or two. The Google also suggested that this was a very popular topic back in 2014 when the movie came out. I missed the boat on that. 

Most importantly, what I walked away with from my relatively brief research was that the watch was custom made for the movie. However, I went through Hamilton's online catalog of watches in early 2018 and found some similar looking models -- by using a photo of the Murphy watch on Hamilton's website for comparison purposes. 

They were under Hamilton's Khaki Field collection. From what I could tell, the watch used the face and arms of the Hamilton Khaki Field Pioneer Auto -- minus the day of the month plate/field on the Pioneer Auto. The casing and winding knob (crown?) looked like that of a Khaki Field Auto 42 mm -- it could be a different size but the 42 mm seemed to have the right proportions. The strap was similar to the Khaki Field Auto but off in color or stitching depending on the exact model -- probably the least important part since it's easier to replace. Prices were between CA$ 500 to CA$ 1000 for each watch when I checked.

If I were to pick one or the other, it'd be a question of whether I thought the casing or face was more important. The casing is more visible in one's periphery and to other people, but the face is what one actually looks at to read the time. That's a tough one.

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