I suppose there is a certain irony that I decided to write this sprawling 11,000-word story encompassing every World Time watch Patek Philippe has ever made, precisely when my country Singapore entered yet another lockdown, bringing my plans for spending time in Europe to a crashing halt. I know I’m not alone in my burning desire to rediscover the world and all the cities in it that I love, or to remake my bonds with the people in them that I miss so much. It’s funny but the moment that our new COVID measures came into effect, I found myself retrieving my Patek Philippe reference 5131 cloisonné enamel World Time watch. As if, somehow, by losing myself in the beautifully rendered map of the Americas, Africa and Europe, I could remember how interconnected this world once was and hopefully will be again. So, I began to see my World Timer as a chalice of renewed hope to once more live the glorious opiatic maelstrom of transcontinental travel, even if for the time being this is limited only to my imagination as I write these words.
THE SPIRIT OF PATEK PHILIPPE’S WORLD TIMERS
As I cast my eyes around the famous city disc that frames the 24-hour ring and enamel dial, a Proustian flood of memories came rushing back to me that was associated with these beautiful names: Paris, New York, Tokyo. I could almost smell the signature charcoal aburi otoro at Sawada Sushi in Ginza, or taste the boeuf bourguignon at Chez Fernand on Rue Christine. With them came a renewed surge of desire to once again venture to these extraordinary capitals, to feel each evening unfold with the promise of limitless adventures. And it dawned on me that my World Time reference 5131 is not just a watch in the time-telling sense, but since it has no real indexes beyond small applied gold dots at the cardinal points, it also alludes to the time with an Old World, gentlemanly elegance.
I feel that this is, and always has been, the spirit of the Patek Philippe World Timer. It has never been a watch that displays too much information, that shows daylight saving time or even zones with 30-minute discrepancies, a notable exception being the 1937 ref. 542 HU, which has a bezel that displays Honolulu with a red triangle as a half time zone, between Alaska and Samoa zones. Rather, it is a work of art — a majestic symbol of a world united by 24 time zones that transcends language, race, religion, and reminds us all that we live together on one planet. It is a watch that should be given to world leaders on the occasion of monumental peace accords or in moments of historic reunification. Mikhail Gorbachev deserves one for letting the Berlin Wall fall. F.W. de Klerk deserves one for freeing Nelson Mandela and effectively ending apartheid in South Africa. And Nelson Mandela deserves one for the 27 years he spent in captivity and for forging a modern multicultural democracy.
Over its 85 years, the Patek Philippe World Timer in both pocket watch format with the glorious reference 605 HU and across all 17 wristwatch iterations has been a resplendent playground for Patek’s signature artistry in case, dial and hand design. To me, this signals that from the very beginning, a Patek Philippe World Timer has approached travel from a stately and elegant manner, evoking bucolic equanimity. Even today, it is not a watch for anyone in a rush. For that purpose, for breakneck speed business trips or non-stop transglobal kinetics, there are other watches that have more precise indicators and that accommodate factors like daylight saving time. No, a Patek Philippe World Timer is a Grande Dame. She is a watch that epitomizes graceful repose; a watch you would have genuflected upon whilst smoking a soothing Hoyo de Monterrey on the upper deck of a cruise ship as you made the four-day journey from America to Europe in the 1930s. She is a watch to wear over your shirt sleeve as a totem of inimitable style on board your private jet, as was Gianni Agnelli’s practice with his Patek Philippe reference 1415. My Patek Philippe World Timer is best described by the refrain in the poem, “Invitation to Voyage,” by Charles Baudelaire: “Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, /Luxe, calme et volupté!” which can be translated as, “There — nothing but order and beauty dwell, /Abundance, calm, and sensuous delight.” Finally, this complication also represents a wonderful collaboration between the world’s most revered haute horlogerie maison and a watchmaker named Louis Cottier, who would become one of the 20th century’s most significant horological figures.
Before I get into the story proper, though, I want to thank the Patek Philippe team in Singapore, in particular its general manager Deepa Chatrath, as it was their wonderful event, Le Voyage, celebrating the history of the World Timer, that was the inspiration for this article. And I also want to thank my buddy Anh-Minh Nguyen of the Singapore Patek team, who was very generous with his time and knowledge for my research.
THE WORLD DIVIDED INTO 24 ZONES
It was the obscure Italian mathematician Quirico Filopanti who, in his book Miranda published in 1858, first proposed 24 zones with the prime meridian situated in Rome. Sadly, he was destined to remain shrouded in obscurity as very few people took notice of what turned out to be a profoundly pragmatic suggestion. Why? Because up until then, there was no such thing as standard time. It was up to every country, even every town in the world, to determine their own local time. Because most places wanted to maximize the daylight hours needed for farming and agriculture, the common practice was to define noon as the time when the sun was directly overhead. Which was to prove incredibly imprecise and which led to mass confusion, especially once vast stretches of land became interconnected through the railroad. It fell to Scottish-born Canadian railway engineer and inventor Sir Sandford Fleming to propose global standard time with the world divided into 24 zones. However, this was far from his only accomplishment. Fleming, a true Renaissance man, had already designed Canada’s first postage stamp and engineered the majority of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Intercolonial Railway when he ran afoul of the challenges related to the lack of standard time. In 1879, after missing a train in Ireland because of the lack of a universal coordinated time, Fleming took it upon himself to evangelize for the formation of one standard time to rule them all.
He proposed this during a meeting at
