During our visit at Trucchi Orologeria we have re-discovered a complicated watch, unveiled at Baselworld 2012: the Breitling Transocean Chronograph Unitime. With an ingenious (patented) and original system of visualisation of the world’s time zones, it belongs to the Worldtimer’s family, those watches that let you see the different time zones of the world, especially indicated for people who frequently travel from one time zone to the other.
We have already introduced, on Horbiter, the “Worldtimer” watches, we invite you to read the first article Worldtimer " href="https://www.horbiter.com/en/the-executives-must-have-the-baume-et-mercier-capeland-worldtimer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here. In that occasion we have already anticipated that the leader of worldtimers, in our opinion, in the range of prices lower than ten thousand euros, was and is, the model introduced by Breitling: the Breitling Transocean Chronograph Unitime. And we will explain you why. The Breitling Transocean Chronograph is positioned on a higher level as opposed to the more traditional worldtimers, for two reasons: it allows you to instantly visualise the time of the city (one of the 24 timezones) in which you are and it is a chronograph.
In general, a worldtimer is characterised by having two concentric rings, placed on the outer part of the dial: the hour ring and the one that indicates the cities. And here is the first distinction: many worldtimers out there have the hour’s ring movable while the cities one is fixed. This prevents an immediate reading of the time in the desired time zone, but it forces to identify the city on the external ring of the time zones. In the Breitling Transocean Chronograph Unitime, the hour hand, the ring of the 24 hours and the ring of the cities move along to indicate at a glance, and at 12 o’clock, hour, minutes, and desired time zone: a true pleasure! Again: having always the index at 12 o’clock as reference.
You just extract the crown in one twitch, and move it clockwise or counterclockwise, until you find the desired city; hours, minutes, and time zone (compared to the starting time zone) are visualised! A third reason that sets forth the leadership: the movement, calibre B05, is in-house, derived from the extremely robust in-house calibre B01, to which there were added the gearings for the complication of the world time zones. And a forth one, for the pleasure of tact and sight: the mirror polishing of the entire case, area of expertise for Breitling. Is there anything we don’t like? We always find something but it doesn’t take the beauty of this watch away: the fastening. Now, on a watch like this, with such a successful dial (included the representation of the world map) and the mesh bracelet, we find that the classic Breitling fastening is a bit out of tune, we would have preferred a clasp integrated into the mesh with the historical Breitling logo.
(Photo credit: Horbiter®’s proprietary photo shooting)
Gaetano C. @Horbiter®
