The Best New World Time Watches Bring the Globe to Your Wrist
From left to right: Jaeger-LeCoultre geophysic tourbillon universal time, price upon request; Frederique constant classic manufacture worldtimer, $4,195; Ulysse Nardin executive moonstruck worldtimer in platinum, $75,000; Patek Philippe, 7130G ladies’ world time, $45,700.
Photographer: Janelle Jones; Prop stylist: Gozde Eker
World time as we know it began in 1884, when the International Meridian Conference convened in Washington, D.C. Leaders there accepted a proposal by Sandford Fleming, a Scottish civil engineer who’d helped build Canada’s transcontinental railroads, to slice the globe longitudinally into 24 time zones—standardizing the hours to comply with the demands of the Second Industrial Revolution.
The first watches with a world time complication arrived about 50 years later, when the Swiss craftsman Louis Cottier devised a pocket watch for Vacheron Constantin and then a wristwatch for Patek Philippe SA. Each house issued a design with a rotating exterior ring (or bezel) around the perimeter that listed the names of locations to represent each time zone. Moving the bezel made it simple to compute the hour anywhere in the world.