Nest of Vipers
On the outskirts of the city of Besançon, France, sits the Observatoire Besançon. The tree-lined field in which it has sat since 1883 is more built up than it once was, the campus growing to accommodate more and more research functions. The telescopes and equipment are certainly more advanced, and in fact, the Besançon Observatory has one of the finest astronomical telescopes in the world. In addition to numerous astronomical and meteorological duties, Besançon also provides a prestigious chronometer certification for watches. You may not have heard of it, but the Tête de Vipére (Viper’s Head) was once a hallmark of reliability and precision in timekeeping. If you know where to look for it, it still is.
The Tête de Vipére seal. Impressive, no? Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Watches are a curious business. They combine engineering, art, and design with a practical purpose: telling time (and other functions, depending on the watch). That said, in this modern world of cell phones, smartwatches, and ubiquitous technology, their time-telling abilities have in many cases taken a back seat to their presence as a fashion or lifestyle accessory.
That wasn’t always the case. For decades, a watch was an essential tool for many professions and in many cases lives might depend on the accuracy of said tool. Naval officers, military units, pilots, train engineers … the list goes on. Anyone who remembers the word problem from their childhood math class in which two trains leave different stations at different speeds has encountered a relic of that. The two trains “meeting” (a euphemism for “colliding”) is inspired by the very real collision near Cleveland, Ohio, in 1891 that killed eight people. The investigation led to the discovery that an engineer’s pocket watch had failed, leading to him missing a scheduled track switch that would have safely put one of the trains on a siding.
One consequence of that investigation was the establishment of stricter criteria for watch accuracy, spearheaded by Webster C. Ball, founder of the Ball Watch Company. Ball was appointed the Chief Time Inspector (which sounds very Doctor Who but was essential as the railways grew in prominence). Ball’s standards for railway watches were not unique, but they were comprehensive and were eventually widely adopted by other watchmakers. To this day, the Ball Watch Company trades on the “Official RR Standard” even though technology has moved on.
A Ball Watch Co. Engineer III Chronometer, featuring the “Official RR Standard” on the dial in addition to the Chronometer designation. Certified by COSC.
Other certifications for watch accuracy have been established over the years, perhaps the most well-known being the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres, often abbreviated as COSC, the Swiss chronometer testing institute to which many manufacturers send their watches. COSC and most others, including Besançon, base their testing on ISO 3159 (per the International Organization for Standardization, also based in Switzerland). The testing generally encompasses the watch movement outside of the case, though some manufacturers like Rolex have their own in-house testing divisions to ensure accuracy and consistency of the cased movement in addition to any COSC testing. Testing criteria and specifics vary, but generally the movements, and in some cases, the finished watches, are subjected to days of testing across multiple axes. The end result? A watch that is certified to run within a certain threshold of accuracy, usually notated as +/- a certain number of seconds per day.
Rolex Explorer ref. 214270, certified by Rolex’s in-house chronometer testing facility to “Superlative Chronometer” status.
Prior to the advent and dominance of the quartz watch, there were a fairly large number of observatories that offered chronometer testing and certification. Besançon, located in the capital of French watchmaking at the time, was one such observatory. Companies like LIP were headquartered in Besançon, and many other watchmakers, such as Zenith, had manufacturing concerns there. Those watches certified by the observatory were marked with the Tête de Vipére seal. Why the viper? I could not find a concrete origin for that symbol, just some apocryphal guesses, but it certainly lends the certification a little more melodrama and pedigree than the typical sterile chronometer certification.
So what happened? In the 1970s, the proliferation of quartz watches, coupled with a global economic downturn, upended the mechanical watch industry. Chronometer certifications may not have been rendered entirely obsolete by quartz watches, but they were certainly no longer as cost-effective. After all, a $40 quartz watch is generally at least as accurate as the most accurate mechanical timepiece, if not more so. Many of the observatories could no longer afford to offer their chronometer testing services or went defunct altogether. Besançon was one such observatory, and they took a hiatus from chronometer testing as many of the watch companies in the region folded.
The Besançon Observatory has experienced a renaissance of sorts in recent years, offering chronometer certification in the early 2000s for the first time since the 1970s. It is largely still a lesser-known certification, but those in the know are always on the lookout for the elusive Viper’s Head. In 2018, TAG Heuer’s Carrera Tourbillon Chronograph came with a Viper’s Head chronometer certification, which included the Tête de Vipére seal engraved on one of the bridge plates. That particular watch cost upward of $15,000 USD, but there are more accessible options, for instance, the 200M-C from Typsim, which I reviewed for The Time Bum and which retails for $1799 USD. For the detailed review, visit www.thetimebum.com.
A small batch of Typsim watches was sent to Besançon, and each of the Viper’s Head-certified pieces comes with a gilt dial and the word “Chronometer” printed beneath the brand’s name on the dial to differentiate it from the standard model. There is also a Viper’s Head emblem on one of the bridge plates, although you will not see it behind the screw-down caseback. Each of those units also ships with the hand-signed and hand-numbered chronometer certificate from the observatory. The 200M-C commands a $600 USD premium over its non-certified, snakeless sibling.
After all is said and done, what is the value of a chronometer certification? Is it worth so much more than an uncertified watch? Do the legions of Rolex owners value the Superlative Chronometer certification more than the brand cachet? The answer to those questions is almost certainly no, at least not from a purely pragmatic standpoint. Many watches without chronometer certifications are nearly as accurate as a certified timepiece. A chronometer certification is a statement of precision and quality and, in the back half of 2022, largely a novelty, but one that carries with it a sense of storytelling and history. In the case of the Tête de Vipére, that includes a sprinkling of mystique and rarity unmatched by similar certifications.
