It has been a decade since URWERK’s original GPHG award-winning EMC (Electronic Mechanical Control watch appeared, and eight years since the client/ owner-influenced EMC Time Hunter variant.

Now, URWERK have presented another client-lead EMC with the new limited edition EMC SR-71, which harks back to the original rather than the Time Hunter design (which itself has also appeared in more than the original form) and was created in collaboration with Jason Sarkoyan and Dr Roman Sperl, two of the three co-founders of new Nevada-based lifestyle brand Dreamland Aerospace. The former is also a watch collector and EMC Black owner.

In December 2020 they approached URWERK to create an EMC to mark its tenth birthday, with the idea of combining the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird with the EMC – they offered pieces of titanium from the fuselage of an SR-71. Only 32 SR-71 Blackbirds were built, of which a dozen were lost in accidents.Now, here it is, and the clue is, as they say, in the name.

This new EMC SR-71 Limited Edition retains the key features of the original EMC, but in slightly different forms. The case, made from shot-blasted titanium and steel, is 47.55mm wide, 49.56mm long, and 17.58mm thick. The crank handle is made from the SR-71 alloy (titanium, aluminium, vanadium, silicon, iron and molybdenum) which was melted down and re-formed.

Let’s start with a quick recap of the basics of the EMC, which combines a mechanical watch with a micro generator. The dial side of the EMC is composed of four sub dials which display hours/ minutes, seconds, a power reserve indicator, and the precision indicator (with a range of -20 to + 20 seconds per day) which URWERK call the “precision delta” (δ) performance indicator.

This 2014 innovation made the EMC the first mechanism to enable its wearer to measure their watch’s performance in real time and the ability to adjust the setting of their watch if required on the basis of this measurement. The idea behind it was that watches are vulnerable various types of shocks (physical, temperature etc) that can affect the timekeeping. The EMC performance indicator monitors any changes, the wearer can obtain the timing rate on-demand, and then use this information to adjust the precision of their watch – that is, it differentiates between the timing of the movement and that of the reference oscillator. This allows for the gauging of seconds lost/ gained, allowing the wearer to make any relevant changes.

For the EMC SR71, two of these sub dials have screw-down bezels, and the seconds indicator at 2 o’clock has a tip shaped like a stealth aircraft to reference the Blackbird.

This new EMC is powered by the same manually-wound UR-EMC calibre (28,800 VPH) and the Maxon® generator with manual winding charging super capacitor. As mentioned, a micro generator controls the computer component; all data is transferred via an optical reader that is situated on top of the balance wheel and captures the rate of oscillation. The sensor is connected to a 16,000,000 Hz (16 MHz) electronic oscillator and circuit board that calculates the difference between the movement and oscillator.

Coming on a nylon and leather NATO-style strap with Velcro fastening, the EMC SR-71 comes in a limited edition of ten pieces and has an RRP of CHF 150,000 (excluding taxes).

[Photo credit: URWERK]

Categories: Limited Editions, URWERK, Watch Profile, watches