Horological Meandering

Marcus Hanke
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Welcome, and many thanks for presenting your collection!

I think it is always fascinating to observe the growing of collections that are based on a specific topic, in your case: GMT/World Time watches. You have already a very nice little collection here, of very different styles. While being aware that your collecting activity is currently paused, may I nevertheless suggest to include another consideration in your wish list?

Generally, we use to distinguish two-time zone watches into two categories, sloppily called "Travel to there"- and "Stay at home"-Watches.

A typical "Travel to there"-Watch is based on the assumption that you are wearing the watch, while crossing time zones yourself. In that case, it makes no sense to have a small 24 hours hand that can be adjusted to time zones, while you still have to hack the watch and set the main hour and minute hands conventionally, like any other watch. In the contrary, a "Travel to there"-Watch normally offers a quick-adjustment function of the MAIN hour hand in hourly increments. This permits to leave the watch running and accurate, without affecting (and changing) the minute hand. In this case, the separate 24 hours display indicates the time at home, and does not change when you adapt your watch to another time zone.

Since this mechanism is a bit more complicated, fewer two time zone watches offered on the market belong into this category. Within, they differ according to the cleverness of their mechanism (ease of use, forward- AND backward sedtting capability of the date, quick-setting of the date possible, etc.).

Your nice Union watch clearly  belongs into this category. It is a very rare watch indeed, since it was produced only in small numbers. The GMT module was made by Dubois-Dépraz, if I recall correctly. Yours seems to be from the improved series already. The very first one used the plain pushers for adjusting the hour hand. Since they were not locked in any way, and easy to press, it happened frequently that the hour was changed accidentally. Upon realizing that, the people in Glashütte enlarged the "sleeve" of the pushers, only leaving a slit, so the user has to use his finger nail to press the button.

Your other watches fall into the "Stay at home"-watches category. Here, the main hour and minute hands are set conventionally, and only the small 24 hours hand is set independently. The date is not coupled with the second time zone, but with the main time display. These watches are ideal when the wearer stays at home, but wants to keep record of the time in another time zone, home of a business partner, for example. On pilot watches, this is often used to keep the Greenwich mean time as a reference.

Your Zenith Elite is a very fine example of this category. When the cal. 600 (Elite) was released by Zenith, the additional 24 hours complication was already in the offer as well. For a very long time, this remained the only additional complication of the Elite movement. When it was designed, the developers pursued the then current design ideal of very fine and thin movements, that fit into delicate watches. Consequently, it is a bit weird to see the huge chunky cases Zenith uses now to house that movement. Due to its delicacy, the Elite did not permit the addition of complex and energy-consuming modules, so the small second and the 24 hours indication were the utmost possible then.

So if you plan to somewhen acquire other watches, may I suggest a "Travel to there"-watch with big date? Here, an Ulysse Nardin would be an appropriate candidate. Due to it being a long-time bestseller of UN, it should be rather easy to find fine examples pre-owned at a good price.

Best regards,
Marcus