Aviation wristwatches: "Time Flies" article from AOPA

[SALTY]

Thought you guys and gals might like this. It was written by Thomas A. Horne and published in AOPA magazine.


Take a look around. It seems like every wrist sports a huge, thick, clunky-looking watch. How did this fashion come about, you may wonder?

The answer lies in the intertwining of aviation and watchmaking history. It’s interesting to note that before aviation came along in the early 1900s, there were no wristwatches to speak of. Pocket watches were the rule for men; women wore watches pinned on their blouses, or as a pendant. For those who couldn’t afford to buy a watch, the town clock or church bells served as timekeepers, or a factory whistle, or the family grandfather clock if you were fortunate enough to have one.

The first recorded mention of a watch made specifically for pilots came in 1906. That’s when Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont, previously a balloon pilot, flew his first airplane, the 14-bis, before an audience in France. Santos-Dumont kept track of the durations of all his flights, but when it came to measuring time in an airplane there were difficulties. Pulling out a pocket watch while manipulating the flight controls in heavy clothing and gloves was an impossibility.

What Santos-Dumont needed was a watch he could wear on his arm—one with a face large enough to easily see while dividing his attention. His friend Louis Cartier listened, and made the first pilot watch—which he called the Santos-Dumont, of course. The Cartier wristwatch caught the public’s imagination, and soon it became a bestseller in a world that was rapidly becoming fascinated with all things aviation. Word has it that before this time, the very first wristwatches were worn by women as jewelry; Santos-Dumont made wristwatch-wearing a manly fashion.

As aviation advanced, pilot watches kept pace. In 1909 Louis Bleriot made the first crossing of the English Channel in his Bleriot XI. His wristwatch, a Zenith, had some new features: a luminous dial and numerals, extra-large numbers, and a huge crown that protruded from the case. The latter made it easy to wind the watch while wearing gloves.

During World War I, wristwatches were worn by military officers, and the public popularity of the wristwatch began a steep rise. By the 1930s, pocket watches were sliding out of style.

Charles Lindbergh’s solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1927 inspired the next round of innovation in pilot watches. In 1931 he collaborated with Longines to make a watch capable of determining longitude by calculating the sun’s hour angle. This was done by rotating the watch’s outer bezel so that elapsed time—translated into degrees and minutes of longitude—could be measured in the cockpit. The alternative was using a sextant—virtually impossible in a small airplane experiencing turbulence. Lindbergh’s popularity was at its peak in those days, and as a result many of Longines’ Lindbergh watches were sold—most to people who didn’t have the slightest need to determine the longitude of their position. This watch marked the first time the worldwide public glommed onto a purpose-built pilot watch as a fashion statement.

Lindbergh may have needed to know his progress over vast distances, but Swiss manufacturer Breitling made it possible to measure short distances and times by merging its expertise in making stopwatches with conventional wristwatches. By 1934, Breitling developed separate start/stop and reset buttons. In 1942, Breitling went a step further with its Chronomat wristwatch—which combined stopwatch features with a circular slide rule manipulated by a rotating bezel. Prior to this, Breitling made panel-mounted chronographs for Britain’s Royal Air Force, and even took the risk of smuggling them out of Nazi-occupied France from remote airstrips under cover of darkness.

Breitling’s next step came in 1954 with the Navitimer—a pilot watch that added aviation’s E6B flight computer functions. By using the rotating outer bezel and three inner, concentric scales, a pilot could quickly perform time-speed-distance calculations—as well as solve multiplication, division, and other arithmetic problems.

Other watchmakers may have capitalized on the design, but Breitling’s Navitimer retains its popularity—and its value—to this day. The company even makes other aerospace-oriented wristwatches such as the Navitimer Cosmonaute (with 24-hour dial markers) and the Emergency (with a built-in personal locater beacon and antenna).

Today, there are all sorts of gaudy, big-dial, numeral-bedecked self-winding, quartz, and even solar-powered knockoffs that owe their mass appeal to utilitarian pilot watches. And like the scads of leather B-3 bomber jackets and A-2 flying jackets on the market, most of them are not the genuine article.

Meanwhile, it’s somehow reassuring to know that Cartier, Longines, and Breitling still make modern versions of the historical wristwatches we’ve discussed. And for many—pilots and nonpilots alike—these are objects of great desire. Cartier’s Santos de Cartier line still offers three models of the square, tank-style watch that Santos-Dumont wore. Longines still sells Lindbergh hour-angle watches, and its website even tells you how to calculate hour-angles.

And Breitling’s Navitimer is stronger than ever. The classics live on, and always will.