Time Travelers
Whether they knew it or not, when the Wright Brothers took off at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, they were not only ushering in the age of flight, but new directions in watchmaking. First came men’s wristwatches when early pilots adopted the style, previously thought feminine, to replace hard-to-access pocket watches. And when advancements to the brothers’ invention ultimately made international travel common and convenient, watchmakers responded with multiple-time-zone functions that allowed jet-setters to keep up with their globe-trotting lifestyles.
Today, the ease of communication from one side of the world to the other also makes keeping a handle on differing time zones a must. (Who wants to mistakenly awaken a client by phone at 3 a.m?) Timepieces that includetime-zone complications—such as dual-time, world-time and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) watches—are forever being upgraded by watchmakers with improvements that have made them responsive to more time zones, more easily settable, simpler to read and just plain more interesting to look at.
It was another development in travel, the rapidly expanding railroads of the nineteenth century, that spurred the establishment of the standardized time zones that travel watches now reconcile. Official time had varied from region to region, even town to town, wreaking havoc on rail schedules and confusing travelers. The 1884 International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., officially named Greenwich, England, as the prime meridian of the earth, and GMT became the standard for determining other time zones based on longitude. In 1972, GMT was replaced as the primary time standard by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is synchronized with International Atomic Time, though we often use the interchangeably.
After missing a train in Ireland in 1876, Sir Sandford Fleming, a Canadian engineer and railroad pioneer, became an early proponent of worldwide standard time. He also commissioned the first world-time watch, displaying all 24 standard time zones at once, from a London jeweler in 1880. He called it the Cosmic Time pocket watch.
Geneva master watchmaker Louis Cottier designed and produced his first world-time pocket watch for a local jeweler in 1931. He followed up with the first world-time wristwatch for Patek Philippe in 1937. His ingenious system used a rotating 24-hour ring on the dial paired with a bezel engraved with the names of cities in each of the 24 standard time zones, allowing the wearer to read the time almost anywhere in the world at a glance. Cottier considerably advanced his world-time concept in 1950 with a two-crown world-time system utilizing a movable disc on the dial printed with the city names and a rotating 24-hour ring. Variations of Cottier’s rotating-disc system are still used today. Bringing Cottier’s mechanical concept into the digital age, Seiko’s solar-powered Astron, which added seven new models this year, connects to the GPS network and automatically adjusts to the exact time in your position as well as in 39 world time zones.
Rolex collaborated with Pan Am Airways to design and develop the first GMT watch, the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date GMT Master, which launched in 1954 at the dawn of the jet age. Originally intended for professional use, the watch featured a 24-hour ring and a fourth hand to track GMT, which at the time was essential for aviators to follow. (Before GPS, navigators determined longitude by comparing the exact time where they were located to Greenwich Mean Time.) As commercial air travel spread, GMTs found a new audience with international businessmen and jet-setters alike. Purists may argue that a GMT’s second time zone should remain set to actual Greenwich Mean Time, but travelers generally prefer to set it to whichever second time zone they wish to follow.
Rolex upgraded the original in the early 1980s with the release of the GMT Master II, which allowed for quick setting of the hour hand without disturbing the operation of the minute, second and GMT hand. The model was updated again in 2005 with improved movement technology and a resilient Cerachrom ceramic bezel. This year’s Oyster Perpetual GMT-Master II in 904L steel ($8,950, rolex.com) features a bicolor Cerachrom bezel insert with blue representing day hours and black for night. The two-tone aesthetic recalling the original GMT Master and GMT Master II may appear a simple design flourish, but combining two colors in a single piece of ceramic is something of a technical feat resulting from an exclusive process developed by the brand. The GMT Master II’s rotating 24-hour bezel and separate 24-hour hand allow travelers to follow three different time zones.
The 45 mm Ingenieur Dual Time Titanium ($8,800, iwc.com) is one of several new models in the newly revamped IWC Ingenieur range, which draws design and technical inspiration from the brand’s partnership with the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team. Set your local time forward or backward in one-hour steps using IWC’s TZC (timezone corrector) system via the rubber-coated crown. A hand with a white triangle tip keeps track of a second time zone of your choosing on the 24-hour ring printed around the periphery of the gray and black dial. To help distinguish day from night in the second time zone, the numbers from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. are printed in white against a black background contrasted with daytime hours on gray.
TAG Heuer also celebrated its automotive spirit this year as it marked the 50th anniversary of its flagship Carrera line named for the perilous Carrera Panamericana race. In addition to several new chronographs, the brand released the Carrera Calibre 8 RS Grande Date and GMT ($3,900, tagheuer.com) in steel with a choice of dial colors. You can also opt for an alligator strap or an ergonomic H-link steel bracelet. Under the dial beats the automatic Calibre 8 movement constructed from an ETA base caliber fitted with a Soprod module that controls the GMT function and big date, which is displayed at 12 o’clock. The second time zone is easy to read on a two-handed sub-dial at 6 o’clock.
While GMTs and dual times offer a straightforward approach to tracking an additional time zone, watchmakers have devised myriad systems of varying complexity over the decades. This year, Jaeger-LeCoultre applied its breakthrough Dual-Wing movement to create the Duomètre Unique Travel Time ($33,100, jaeger-lecoultre.com), limited to 100 pieces and exclusively available at the brand’s Paris boutique. The Dual-Wing movement consists of two separate mechanisms—one dedicated to local time and the other to displaying a second time zone. While both share the same regulating organ, they each have their own power source eliminating the potential for lost precision. Accordingly, the dial shows two power reserve indicators. The subdial at 10 o’clock displays the hour in an aperture paired with a central minute hand, while the subdial at 2 o’clock displays a second time zone in a traditional two-hand format. An eye-catching turning globe—represented from an above-the-North-Pole viewpoint—and hours disc at 6 o’clock serve as a day/night indicator and world-time function (provided you are very good at geography). The names of the cities corresponding to the world’s 24 time zones are engraved on the case back for reference. Duomètre Unique Travel Time is the first travel watch that allows you to set the second time to the minute—accommodating nonstandard time zones, such as India’s, that vary from standard zones by 30 or 45 minutes.
Montblanc’s TimeWalker Hemispheres ($4,900, montblanc.com) brings a north/south perspective to the typical east/west mindset of the world timer. Available in two versions—one for each hemisphere—the watch’s central dial consists of a rotating disc that portrays a map of the earth as viewed from above either pole. The fixed ring listing city names corresponds only to locales in the designated hemisphere. The differences between each version are more than merely cosmetic as the movements had to be tailored to each hemisphere. The rotating 24-hour disc in the center of the dial of the Northern Hemisphere watch turns clockwise with the 24-hour scale labeled counter-clockwise, and vice versa for the Southern Hemisphere model. Aside from the different worldviews, the watches are distinguished by different colorations—the Northern Hemisphere comes with a gray dial and black leather strap, while the Southern version has a dark anthracite-colored dial and a stainless steel bracelet.
Breitling has outfitted the Bentley B05 Unitime with its Breitling Calibre B05 ($14,420 in steel, $56,600 in red gold, breitling.com), which debuted in last year’s Transocean Chronograph Unitime. Designed and built in house, the COSC-certified chronograph also features a worldtime function with a patented double-disc mechanism that is easy to set. Turn the crown forward or back in one-hour increments and all indications adjust with the date corresponding to local time. The bezel, marked with the 24 cities, also shows Daylight Saving Time (DST).
Since its debut in 2000, Girard-Perregaux’s ww.tc (world wide time control) world timer had various iterations—including special versions featuring cities geared to financial traders and fashionistas. This year’s Traveller WW.TC ($16,000, girard-perregaux.com) has been repackaged in a sleeker, streamlined 44-mm case with graduated bevels on the long lugs and alternating satin and polished finishes that enhance the case’s contours. The Caliber GP 03300 movement is equipped with a chronograph, date and small seconds, and the operation of the worldtime function is controlled by a single crown at 3 o’clock that has three positions to set the city disc; date; and hours, minutes, and 24-hour ring.
Cartier’s Tortue XXL Multiple Time Zones watch ($46,700 in white gold, $43,600 in rose gold, cartier.com) exudes the elegant design we have come to expect from the Paris house, which has made huge strides in original high horology. Cartier turns the world-time concept on its side, literally—the cities disc appears in a sapphire crystal window on the side of the case, allowing for a cleaner, engraved dial depicting a partial map of the world. The easy-to-use 9914MC movement, which was conceived and built by Cartier, indicates home time with a 24-hour hand and automatically adjusts for summer and winter time changes.
Originally launched in 2006, Carl F. Bucherer’s Patravi TravelTec FourX ($52,900, carl-f-bucherer.com) has a new construction in titanium, ceramic, rubber and rose gold, limited to 125 pieces. The triple-time-zone watch’s design integrates the intricate movement with the brawny 46.6-mm case. Before traveling to a new time zone, synch the hour hand with the red triangle-tipped 24-hour hand, which will continue to track your home time after you use the crown to set the hour hand to local time. To follow a third time zone, use the pusher at 10 o’clock to adjust the innermost 24-hour ring forward or back to the desired time zone—the 24-hour hand tracks the third time on the movable inner ring and home time on the fixed outer ring. An open-worked dial and sapphire crystal window on the side of the case showcase the mechanics in motion, much to the delight of horological gear heads.
Certainly the most radical travel watch of the year is Jacob & Co.’s Epic SF24 ($95,000, jacobandco.com), which brazenly breaks from tradition with an unprecedented split-flap display evoking the mesmerizing flipping schedule boards seen in train stations and airports. While the main dial shows the time in a conventional format, a second time zone appears in a cylinder at the top of the case housing the split-flap system displaying one of 24 city names and its corresponding time. Just push the button on the side of the cylinder to select the desired city for a second time display, and the flaps move to show that time in a numeric format. An automatic Concepto Caliber 2220 base movement augmented with the exclusive GMT‐SF24 module developed by Studio7h38 powers the watch. Using high-tech mechanical firepower to evoke an emotional response is at the core of today’s most innovative horology. The Epic SF-24 captures the romantic nostalgia of standing before a train station’s Solari board (named for the Italian firm Solari di Undine that produces them) before heading to your platform for a slow-motion departure, preferably with a distraught lover waving good bye as you pull away.
Laurie Kahle writes on timepieces and travel for Cigar Aficionado.
