When I first bought my copy of Pieter Doensen's excellent book, "Watch. History of the Modern Wrist Watch", I was amazed by that movement photograph on the back cover. What on earth was it? It looked so complicated but I decided that I just had to find out more and, hopefully, eventually own one.

It is, of course, the Longines calibre 6512 --- the World's First Cybernetic Watch, and, as it turned out, the only cybernetic watch ever produced. I guess the thing that makes this watch so unique is the presence of the large number of discrete electronic components (resistors, capacitors, transistors) rather than a single integrated circuit (IC), and all of them appearing to be haphazardly soldered together! It is truly the Bird's Nest of movements.

So what is a "Cybernetic" watch? Rather than me get it wrong, it is all explained in the Tech Bulletin link on the left hand side.

This is a very rare watch; I'm not sure how many were made but very few survive and even fewer are running. To obtain my running Ultra-Quartz, I had to buy one broken example and another example that was only partially working; from these two, I managed to get one good working example --- you can see these in the Cases and Dials link on the left hand side.