Have you ever thought your sports watch could use a little extra, to quote Bill Murray in Stripes, razzle-dazzle?
Swiss watchmaker Ball Watch Company and British watch magazine Oracle Time did — literally. The duo teamed up to make a special version of Ball’s Engineer II everyday sports watch featuring a unique dial pattern based on the striking dazzle camouflage used on warships during the First World War.
Dazzling Dial
Known as dazzle camo in the UK and razzle dazzle in the U.S., this type of camouflage is recognized for its hectic patterns of intersecting geometric shapes in different colors — originally black, white and gray.
The camo, which is very bold, was not intended to conceal the ships like typical camouflage. Rather, its confusing visual patterns made it difficult for an enemy observer to accurately judge the ship’s distance, speed and, especially, the direction it’s headed.
The camo was invented by a Brit, a marine painter named Norman Wilkinson, who refined an earlier rejected idea from fellow Brit and zoologist John Graham Kerr, who proposed ships painted like zebras.
