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As an AHCI candidate member, Voutilainen exhibited at Basel World 2005 his Decimal Repeater, a world
first. This watch, Masterpiece No. 6, is a minute repeating wristwatch with up/down indicator. With
a stroke of inspiration and clever innovation Kari changed the way the minute repeater sounds out the time.
Traditionally these are quarters-based system, with the time being sounded out with the necessary hours
struck with a single blow (bong), the quarters (bing-bong) and the required minutes (bing). That’s fair enough
but not logical, not how we intuitively read the time.
Voutilainen’s decimal based system, however, is as clear in its approach, as it is in the sound
of its striking. Instead of being based on quarters, it works in ten-minute intervals.
This achieves the same result, yeah, except when we are counting the striking of the decimal repeater
we are counting the exact minutes. It is so simple, so wonderfully obvious, but it took the open mind of Voutilainen
to realize it.
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Since MP6 Kari has been a busy bee. Finishing Masterpiece No. 7, a decimal repeater
with second time zone and Masterpiece No. 8, a straight decimal repeater, we can expect at least two
more of these beauties in the not too distant future. In addition, he has developed his own chronograph, Caliber 25,
pulling from his years of experience to "make a very solid mechanism and movement, without
any delicate systems... Something that you wind up and it goes and goes."
A double function system (start/stop button at 2 and reset button at 4), 30-minute counting, column wheel
controlled chronograph mechanism that was arranged to suit the dial's layout. "I want to have clear vision - to
see the time and to measure the time."
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