SPOTLIGHT: Patek Philippe Time Around The World

In our globally networked lives, World Time watches are more important than ever. We have conversations with people all over the world, and share ideas on a worldwide scale, so it's useful to know the time in the places to which we are traveling to or where people live with whom we communicate.

Patek Philippe World Time watches fulfil this function in an exemplary way: they show all 24 world time zones at a glance. The local time is most prominently displayed for the time zone whose assigned city name is just above the small red arrow at 12 o'clock – in the classic manner with the hour and minute hands. In the other 23 zones, the times are directly readable on the 24-hour ring that rotates counter clockwise within the city disk. The minutes indicated by the minute hand are the same for all time zones.

We owe this ingenious functionality to an invention in the 1930s by Genevan watchmaker Louis Cottier. The mechanism was later refined and patented by Patek Philippe. When traveling into a different time zone, the pusher in the case at 10 o'clock is pressed as often as needed to align the respective city name with the red arrow at 12 o'clock. Each time the pusher is pressed, the hour hand will advance by one hour while the city disk and the 24-hour ring will move by one increment in the counter clockwise direction. During this process, the time-zone mechanism is uncoupled from the movement so that the accurate progression of the minute hand and the amplitude of the balance remain unaffected. Consequently, the time in all 24 zones is always displayed with the precision specified by the directives of the Patek Philippe Seal.

An excellent example is the World Time Ref. 5230 which is available in two versions. Ref. 5230R in rose gold and Ref. 5230G in white gold, showcasing a manually guilloched dial centre with a motif inspired by a historic model in the Patek Philippe Museum’s inventory, the outer section of the dial holds the cities of the world. The case diameter is 38.5 mm, fitting perfectly on the wrist. Its luxurious case is also water resistant to 30 meters, and home to the in-house developed Calibre 240 HU, displaying a mini off-centre 22k gold rotor through an exhibition case back crafted from sapphire crystal glass. Both versions are worn on a hand-stitched alligator strap with large square scales and a Calatrava fold-over clasp, a classic shiny black strap for the white gold model and a shiny chocolate brown strap for the rose gold model.

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