Watchmakers Have a Love-Hate Relationship With Tantalum
In 1994, when Edouard Meylan turned 18 years old, his parents gave him an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak wristwatch housed in a 33-millimeter case made of tantalum, a rare and hard metal with an unusual blue-grey sheen. To Mr. Meylan, now chief executive of the independent watchmaker H. Moser & Cie, the watch, which came…