The watch that tells the time around the globe

Whether they’re called World Time or Universal Time watches, the kind that permanently shows the time in all 24 timezones designated by as many or more localities can boast a most useful complication and a distinguished horological pedigree. They take you back in history, to the age of exploration, long journeys and the quest for a seaworthy timepiece, accurate enough to give you longitude. They tell how nations agreed on a common reference from which to slice the global orange into 24 mostly equal and geopolitically acceptable segments.

The most eloquent models are based on a mechanism dating from the 1930s, and any new versions are bound to attract attention – like the World Time model presented in Geneva at the SIHH luxury-watch salon in January by a local brand, Vacheron Constantin. There was no lack of competition in this winter market spread between the official salon and an increasing density of fringe stalls. It’s not easy to stand out among the amazing gadgetry, artwork and craftsmanship, let alone the crazy ideas and original concepts that struggle for centre stage. Then you have to face Baselworld two months later, when the pressure is even greater.

The status enjoyed by this geographic time indication is remarkable considering that it is not classified among the great complications, although it is regarded as a somewhat rare classic. This relative modesty did not however stop an old World Time model signed by the Geneva company, Patek Philippe, (ref. 1415 in platinum) from breaking the price record for wristwatches at an auction in 2002: 6.6 million Swiss francs. Another model in gold with an enamel dial from the same year, 1939, was sold for a bid of 2.7 million. Such cash values, which are due to a number of factors, magnify the fascination of the World Time watch. Besides, it has the right cultural and scientific associations to confer the utmost respectability.

The international agreement that fixed the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian followed the Washington conference of 1884. It brought together representatives of around 25 countries, but it took several decades before Greenwich Mean Time was widely adopted as the time standard. Even today there are local times that insist on differing from GMT by a half or a quarter of an hour. Switzerland aligned its Bern mean time with central European time, 15° East of Greenwich or GMT+1.

Gallic pique
Such honour given to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich went down badly with the French whose Paris Observatory was three years older. France stood by the Paris Meridian. Britain suggested it might adopt the metric system – one of the glories of the French Revolution – if the French succumbed to Greenwich. France gave up its nine minutes of difference, joining its European neighbours in 1911, when it accepted the Greenwich prime meridian. Britain never kept its side of the undertaking.

That historical footnote reveals the symbolic importance and national susceptibilities involved in such issues. It should be remembered, however, that the United States refrained from imposing an American meridian, although it was keen to have a time standard for its growing railways. The main advantage of the European 0 meridian is that it would put the 180° meridian for the date change at midnight through the middle of the Pacific. Nevertheless, adopting GMT meant following the British habit of starting the day at noon. Thus the morning ended one day at 0 hours GMT and the afternoon started the next. It took almost a century to correct this cultural aberration with the introduction of UTC – Coordinated Universal Time – in 1972. Today’s time reference is based on the mean frequencies of 200 atomic clocks, and it starts the day at midnight.

Master Cottier
It also took time, though not as long, before the watch industry took an interest in time beyond a local zone. In the early 1930s an independent watchmaker in Carouge, near Geneva, devised a clever mechanism that gave the time in all timezones on a single dial at a glance. Louis Cottier thus became the pivotal figure in any research into this watchmaking speciality. His work unavoidably leads to the Vacheron Constantin World Time model, the latest reincarnation of the Cottier system.

The idea of showing different local times is not new. Those big 19th-century pocket-watches with an arrangement of subdials for the times in major capitals are quite common in auction and exhibition catalogues. An exhibition of the Beyer collection at the last SIHH luxury-watch salon in Geneva featured a timepiece made in 1780 with the names of 53 towns around a 24-hour disc rotating anti-clockwise. This is certainly an ancestor of the Cottier solution, made by Rouzier and Melly, two Geneva watchmakers. A couple of steps away was another cousin in the World Time genealogy among the 270 pieces of the Cartier exhibition. It showed the time in around 50 localities. One must remember that before 1884 there were hundreds of local times.

The decisive emergence of the World Time watch in the 1930s is attributed to the growing importance of air travel and telecommunications. Louis Cottier’s invention came at just the right time. Produced with the jeweller, Baszanger, in 1931, it immediately attracted the big names in Geneva watches who commissioned pieces or entered into profitable and personal partnerships with this creative watchmaker.

One shouldn’t forget that this kind of cooperation has been more the rule than the exception in the watch industry. On this occasion, the main beneficiaries were Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin and Agassiz (Longines). Nor did Louis Cottier complain about his lot, although he did not deliberately choose it. Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex appointed him to look after his collection.

The researcher’s reward is to come across some gem in the archives that throws light on the watchmaker’s situation. It’s a job application to Vacheron Constantin by Louis Cottier shortly after the death of his father Emmanuel in 1930. Emmanuel, who was born in 1858, had worked with the Geneva firm in his youth, before opening his own workshops in Carouge. Vacheron Constantin was a regular client. His son, Louis, had done brilliantly at watchmaking school and was working at his side. But when Louis inherited the workshop in the wake of the 1929 crash, things looked bleak for the ­family business.

The letter to Charles Vacheron dated August 31, 1930 suggests a privileged relationship: “… I’m asking to join your firm before making any enquiries elsewhere.” He adds as a postscript: “I found among my father’s things a most original movement for a watch without hands that might interest you.” But the times were tough for everybody and the brand, which was struggling to keep its own jobs, could not hire him. The past cannot be undone, but it is tempting to speculate on a different outcome considering the contribution made by Louis Cottier as a free electron.

Couldn’t be simpler
The first Cottier World Time watch signed by Vacheron Constantin (ref. 3372), appeared in 1932. It’s a pocket-watch with the times of 31 cities on the dial. The basic principle is clever. At the centre there’s a dial with hands showing the hours and minutes of a selected local time. Around it, a 24-hour ring turns anti-clockwise one step every hour. Surrounding that is a fixed disc displaying the reference cities with the home city conventionally at 12 o’clock. For example, the watch shows 10 past 10 and you are in Geneva, which is opposite the 10 on the 24-hour disc. Next to Geneva, London is opposite the 9. An hour later, the hands show 11 o’clock, the ring has moved a step and shows that it is just after 10:00 in London, 07:00 in Rio and 20:00 in Sydney, and so on 24/24. Universal time is as simple as that.

A World Time watch shouldn’t be confused with the countless watches dubbed “GMT” with their variations on the timezone theme. (It would be more correct to follow the French watchmaker, François-Paul Journe, in adopting the term UTC for timezone watches.) Timezone watches make it easy to change to the time in another zone or to display two or even three local times (see Watch Around N° 5), but there is no permanent and automatic display of the time in all 24 zones. The confusion comes from the presence of towns associated with the choice of a second timezone.

The Cottier solution has evolved over the years with improvements and additions but the basic principle has remained the one laid down by its inventor. Vacheron Constantin brought out two more models, both pocket-watches, four years later in 1936. One had the same 31 cities and the other, only 30, Cairo having mysteriously vanished. In this regard, one touches on one of the interesting aspects of World Time dials, which reflect the geopolitical context of the times, tracking the relative importance of the selected locations as markets or islands. It’s not surprising that the island of St Helena used to be mentioned.

Stops on the trans-Siberian
The piece in the collection of the MIH international watchmaking museum in La Chaux-de-Fonds, which was on display in Geneva in January, has to be the archetypal travel watch. It shows the time in 140 locations including the major stops of the trans-Siberian railway. It’s a boon for researchers, considering that the route changed for political reasons along the Russian-Chinese border. The dial has become a snapshot of an era, a document of record. According to Dominique Fléchon, historian for the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie, and about to retire: “Watches that explore the indications that can be derived from a familiar mechanism take you beyond watchmaking into a different dimension, and that is exciting.”

The World Time watches also give clues about the original owner from the locations that are selected – where he has friends, does business or goes on holiday. Unlikely locations always crop up. South Georgia in the south Atlantic for example, whose only timezone rival is Greenland, would be unknown to all but the British, if it weren’t a regular on the World Time dials representing the timezone between the Azores and Rio. Since the local time is a political or administrative decision that might not conform to the right timezone, the Azores sometimes take the place of South Georgia.

In the late 1930s, Vacheron Constantin used the Cottier system in a series of table clocks that featured 67 locations. World Time watches have since appeared regularly in the collections over the ensuing decades. In the 1940s the International Time model included 41 cities and adopted the day and night indication. At the end of the following decade, a selfwinding wrist model came out with a pushpiece at 9 o’clock to move the mobile cities dial. It reappeared in a hunting-cased pocket-watch of the 1960s, subsequently in the Phidias collection and lately in limited-series watches in the 2000s.

Patek’s turn
At the same time, Louis Cottier developed his mechanism with the other Geneva watchmaker, Patek Philippe, who filed a patent in 1959. In its wake came a device for the simultaneous display of two local times, which reappeared in the Travel Time wristwatch of the late 1990s. Louis Cottier had died in 1966, but not before leaving a prototype of a watch without hands and dial. Patek Philippe declined to produce it, but it inspired the Geneva-based Urwerk company to introduce its Cobra watch last year (see Watch Around N° 9).

Patek Philippe brought Universal Time back into its collection in the 2000s on its slim calibre 240 selfwinding movement with an offset mini-rotor. The 24-hour mechanism is isolated from the going-train of the watch so that the local time can be changed at any time without affecting its rate. In 2008, the company made the inner dial of its World Time watch in cloisonné enamels.

It’s a great tribute to Cottier that his watch that showed the time around the world should be back on centre stage in 2011, some 80 years since its debut. The model, fittingly signed by Vacheron Constantin in its Patrimony collection, features a new development that Louis Cottier would have approved of.

Timezones out of phase
The Vacheron Constantin model accounts for the renegade timezones such as the Indian half-hour or the Nepalese quarter-hour. Among its 37 reference localities are a good dozen cities, states or islands where the official local time varies from its timezone by 15 or 30 minutes. You have to set the minutes hand as well as the hours for Delhi, Teheran, Kabul, Adelaide, Caracas, Kingston, the Marquesas Islands and Nepal. A few timezone watches, for example, the Tonda Hémisphères by Parmigiani, cater for such irregularities, but to do so on a World Time scale is an achievement of a higher order.

The display uses three dials. One is in metal and shows a conical projection of the world with the North Pole in the centre; the second, in sapphire-crystal, darkens from day into night over 24 hours; the outer chapter ring, in metal, is marked in minutes. The home city, the local time of which is shown by the hands, is positioned opposite a small triangle at 6 o’clock on the chapter ring. All the functions can be set by the crown. The 28,800 v/h (4 Hz) selfwinding movement inside the 42.5 mm pink-gold case with sapphire-crystal caseback has a power reserve of 40 hours. A patent application has been filed.

Before concluding this special report with an investigation into Harrison and the unwinnable Longitude Prize, we should like to recommend a visit to our site, www.watch-around.com, where you will discover the timezone watches (wrongly yet persistently known as GMT or UTC watches) that are the poor relations of the venerable World Timers.