World Time Watches

Every well-known luxury watch manufacturer offers timepieces that show more than just the current local time. In certain situations, such as an international phone conference, webinar, or while traveling, it's important to know what time it is somewhere else in the world.

That's exactly what a world time wristwatch is for. There are both quartz and mechanical world time watches. There is another important distinction with world time watches: One kind displays a single time zone in addition to the local time, while another displays 24 time zones at once.

If you want a more affordable watch with multiple functions, then you should consider buying a quartz watch. It's much easier and cheaper to produce electronic watches that display multiple time zones than mechanical ones. A mechanical watch requires its own, individually constructed movement with additional moving parts if it's to function as a world time watch. With a quartz watch, you just need to add an extra integrated circuit for this feature. This is much simpler than building a complicated gear.

You can purchase a Seiko with an integrated world time display from their Prospex or Sportura series for around 400 euros. The versions that receive radio signals always display the correct time. Solar powered watches are not dependent on batteries as a power source. More expensive Seiko watches have a GPS signal receiver instead of a radio signal receiver. The GPS variety offers advantages: It can receive a signal across the globe, while the radio-controlled watches can only receive a signal if a transmitter is within 2,000 km. Citizen, Seiko's largest Japanese competitor, also has many quartz world time watches available.

World time watches are generally divided into two subgroups: One type has an additional hour hand to indicate a second time zone and the other type displays 24 time zones simultaneously with representative locations written on the dial.

The first type is known as a GMT watch. The GMT-Master II from Rolex is an excellent example of this type of watch. Its second hour hand makes one rotation per day, meaning it moves at half the pace of the normal hour hand. The GMT-Master II and its predecessor have rotatable 24-hour bezels that correspond to the second hour hand. Imagine you're in Berlin or Paris and it's 8 PM CET. You'd like the GMT-Master II to display the time in New York as well. Therefore, you set the second hour hand to two o'clock using the crown since it's just early afternoon in the Big Apple. There's a time difference of six hours, so you turn the bezel so that the 14 on the bezel matches up with the extra hand. Now your watch will tell you both the local time and the time on the east coast in the USA.

Many world time/GMT watches function this way. One of the most famous is the Navitimer World, a variant of the legendary pilot's chronograph Navitimer. Breitling had the time zones of the most important cities around the globe engraved in the case. The city names are required to correctly set the second hour hand. Usually, you need to either know the time difference between the local time and the other location, or you must be able to look it up. With the city names engraved, the watch does the work for you.

The second type of world time watch doesn't just display a second time zone, but rather all 24 at once. A famous and especially luxurious example of this type of watch is the World Time from Patek Philippe. Its dial has two rotatable discs on its edge. The inner disc has a 24-hour scale. The local time is displayed at the 12 o'clock position and corresponds with the time displayed by the central hands. The outer disc has names of cities such as London or New York which represent their respective time zones. If you're in London at 10 AM, you can take one look at your World Time and see that it's 7 AM in Rio de Janeiro, 6 PM in Hong Kong, and 8 PM in Sydney.