The HYT Skull Bad Boy presented just before Baselworld was a taste of things to come, since black is most definitely this season’s colour at HYT. The new HYT H1 Full Gold also uses the new black fluid to tell the time at night in an unusual way. And this is a black with a history, as Grégory Dourde, CEO of Preciflex, the company that makes the little fluidic modules for HYT, explained to WorldTempus. “We use dyes to colour our fluids, not pigments such as those that dial makers might use, because they are essentially made up of small bubbles that would fall to the bottom of the capillary in HYT watches due to the force of gravity. We use two fluids in the module and both start out transparent. We add a dye with very particular chemical properties to one, because it has to remain in one fluid but not transfer to the other.”
So much for the theory. To get to a practical implementation requires a lot of research, calculation and testing, all of which takes time. Between nine and twelve months to be precise. “First of all we have to make a shortlist of colour candidates from a sample of maybe 20 different colours,” explains Mr Dourde. “We subject them to extensive UV light testing to guarantee that the colour will last over time. Perhaps only 10 colours will pass this test.”
The new colour also has to be tested for compatibility with no less than 10 different materials with which it is likely to come into contact in its passage through the module, from glass in the capillary to a fine layer of gold inside the bellows. HYT needs to be sure that there will be no discolouration on contact with any of these. What’s more, the hydro-mechanical horologists wanted this new black to be completely opaque – a new property compared with the existing colours offered by the brand.
This new property adds yet another intriguing dimension to the HYT collection. After different colours, dial configurations, bellows arrangements and even a new means of illuminating the dial in the H4 Metropolis, HYT creates yet another playful way of telling the time at night: A layer of luminescent SuperLuminova is added to the trough on the dial beneath the capillary. Since the opaque black fluid does not let any light through, at night the luminous green area visible on the dial actually shows the time remaining until 6 o’clock (am or pm) and the fun moment when the black fluid returns to the bellows. HYT has even come up with a name for the concept: the “deducted hour”.
