The incredible A. Lange & Söhne Datograph, a favorite with watch collectors, will complete 20 years next year. While the original can be considered pure watchmaking beauty, where it lacked was the readability of the timepiece’s dial and operating the chronograph in dark. The German high-end watchmaker has introduced a new version of the timepiece which has received the “Lumen” treatment. The new Datograph Up/Down “Lumen” in platinum arrives with a dial made of dark tinted semi-transparent sapphire. What this treatment does is it filters out most of the visible light but lets the luminous pigments get charged with light energy. The central dial section is made of tinted sapphire giving a view of the mainplate and rotating date discs underneath. In dark, it causes the displays to glow contrasting the black background.
In the new Datograph Lumen Up/Down timepiece, most of the indications have received the Lumen treatment, which include the sub-dials for the running seconds and 30-minute totalizer, the power reserve indicator, the hour and minute hands, and even the entire rehaut with its tachymeter scale. This gives the dial an insane glowing face in dark. Everything else in the watch remains the same; the caseback still offers a breathtaking view of the hand-wound column-wheel caliber L951.7. The watch comes with an alligator strap with a platinum pin buckle and is limited to just 200 pieces. It is priced at EUR 95,000, which roughly converts to about $1,08,000.
