#longines — Public Fediverse posts

#LONGINES chatgpt.com?prompt=Analy... #LONG #RANGE #DESERT #GROUP multi-search-tag-explorer.aepiot.com/advanced-sea... aepiot.com/semantic-map... aePiot: The vision for Web 4.0. Create your semantic nodes and lead SEO.

ChatGPT

#LONGINES chatgpt.com?prompt=Analy... #LONG #RANGE #DESERT #GROUP multi-search-tag-explorer.aepiot.com/advanced-sea... aepiot.com/semantic-map... aePiot: The vision for Web 4.0. Create your semantic nodes and lead SEO.

ChatGPT

Baume Before Mercier

The recently-announced sale of Baume & Mercier by Richemont to Italian distributor Damiani Group spurred me to research the history of that famous brand. Just as there was a LeCoultre before Jaeger, an Audemars before Piguet, and a Vacheron before Constantin, there was a Baume before Mercier. These unions often tell a story of greater transitions in the industry rather than simply consolidation of corporate control. And the story of the Baume family of Les Bois and London is particularly illuminating.

Note: Baume & Mercier is an independent company founded in 1918 by William Baume. This Geneva-based retail and manufacturing company has no real connection to the historic company founded by his great grandfather, Louis-Joseph Baume, with whom we shall begin. His company, known as Frères Baume, was primarily focused on British market through a related company, Baume & Co of London. Even though William Baume worked for these family firms, Baume & Mercier was entirely independent and was locked out of the British market by Baume & Co for most of the 20th century.

The Baume Family of Les Bois

Louis-Joseph Baume (1783-1867) and his wife Agnès née Froidevaux (1786-1850) lived in the remote village of Les Bois, a French-speaking area along the current national border which was annexed into the German-dominated Canton of Berne in 1815. Baume was a farmer like most of his neighbors, but starting in 1834 he also produced watches at a home-based workshop. He would deliver these to La Chaux-de-Fonds, a rising center of watchmaking located an easy 2-hour walk southeast on the Jura plateau. He appears to have been found bankrupt in 1835. The Baume family lost their first five children, four of whom died as young children in 1816. But three daughters and four sons born later survived.

Victor Baume (1817-1887) and his brother Célestin Baume (1819-1880) organized a watchmaking company as “Baume frères” as soon as they reached the age of maturity in 18401. In 1848, when the Indicateur Davoine directory first includes Les Bois, it shows “Baume frères, fabricans d’horlogerie.” This listing also includes their brother, watchmaker Auguste Baume (1820-1859), and a gilding operation also called Baume frères perhaps run with their youngest brother, Eugène Baume (1822-1875).

Their father’s bankruptcy likely kept him from being officially involved, but he certainly continued to contribute to the efforts of his young sons. He died in 1867, having seen his sons build a flourishing watchmaking business, marry, and have children of their own.

Although the original establishment of the company is murky2, it is clear that the Baume family was at the center of watchmaking in Les Bois by the 1840s. Production of components was distributed across the region, with small workshops contributing individual components that were brought together as semi-finished watches to be disassembled, finished, adjusted, and reassembled for sale. The Baume brothers acted as wholesalers, gathering these watches for sale in La Chaux-de-Fonds and Neuchâtel. But the ambitious young men saw greater opportunity in the trade, leaving the village and even the country to make that happen.

An Early and Unusual Vertical Strategy

The hallmark of industrialized watchmaking is vertical integration: Starting in the late 19th century, manufactures like Longines, Omega, and Zénith attempted to consolidate production of as many components as possible under their control, either under the same roof or by purchasing supplier factories. This was a repudiation of the etablisseur tradition, which collected components produced by thousands of tiny workshops to produce a finished watch. Vertical integration was incredibly controversial, pitting traditional watchmaking fathers against their industrialist sons and even whole cities like Geneva and La Chaux-de-Fonds against upstarts like Bienne and Grenchen. This was a wholesale mindset shift that enabled 20th century industrial watchmaking.

This is why the Baume brothers are so interesting: They built a different kind of integrated company that embraced the workshop tradition while ensuring control and quality. And it connected rural Les Bois to La Chaux-de-Fonds, Geneva, and London! There are very few examples of such a far-reaching watchmaking enterprise, and certainly none this early.

The idea was straightforward but it was incredibly challenging. Each of the four Baume brothers established his own business focused on a key aspect of watchmaking:

• Since he was the oldest son, Victor Baume remained in Les Bois to run the company and source raw components from the workshops of the Jura
• Célestin Baume moved to England, focused on watch finishing and sales, leveraging the skilled watchmakers in Clerkenwell north of London
• Auguste Baume specialized in gilding movements and producing dials, first in Les Bois but soon moving to La Chaux-de-Fonds
• Eugène Baume ran a finishing and sales operation in Geneva, securing the finest watchmaking skills and commercial opportunities there

This dispersed watchmaking enterprise was active by the 1850s, when the Baume brothers were still under 40. Their presence in London and Geneva gave them an incredible understanding of the market, which was widely misunderstood by parochial competitors in the Vallée de Joux, Le Locle, and La Chaux-de-Fonds. And their effective use of the finest watchmakers in these cities allowed them to exploit the inexpensive and rough components produced in the Swiss Jura.

Focus on the English Market

The young Baume brothers faced a significant decision in the 1840s: Would they produce watches in the thinner French style or the robust English genre? Given that their home in the Swiss Jura was firmly in the French sphere of influence (harboring both Huguenots and French Catholics alongside revolutionaries opposed to German Berne) one would think it a simple choice. And since Les Bois was among the first Swiss firms to adopt the cylinder escapement and Lépine ebauche, their watches were better suited for the French market. But Victor Baume opted instead to build a bridge between Les Bois and London, and 25 year old Célestin Baume departed for London in 1844.

Baume settled in Clerkenwell, which was a center for watchmakers in the 1850s. As was the case everywhere before the industrial revolution, British watchmakers worked in small workshops, performing specialized tasks to produce finished watches. But the watchmakers of Clerkenwell were far more skilled than their Swiss counterparts at this time, and they knew exactly what British buyers wanted. Célestin Baume quickly built a network of specialists that could turn the rough components of the Jura into high-quality English style watches.

The Baume brothers innovated beyond the classic English watch design, but always kept close enough to keep from alienating customers. The firm created the first watch to use the 3/4 plate design typical in Germany with their modern cylinder escapement. And as early as 1851 they created the first so-called “flat glass” cases, with a tall polished bezel housing a flat glass crystal. These soon became popular with English gentlemen and were widely copied.

The watches produced by the Baume brothers were in strong demand in London and the British Empire. It was said that wholesalers would descend on the Clerkenwell office as soon as a new batch was ready, carrying them throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland. Baume even had distributors carrying their watches to Australia and New Zealand as well as British ports in Asia.

As early as 1852 Célestin Baume had partnered in a retail operation located along the fashionable street of Hatton Garden. Baume & Lezard remained in operation until 1872, exposing the company’s products to buyers from around the British Empire. The company chose the block of buildings behind the Union Bank at Holborn Circle, situated alongside many other jewelers and watch retailers. This block remains the home of upscale jewelers today and was the home of the De Beers diamond company for a century.

In 1876, control of the London operation passed from Célestin Baume to his nephew, Arthur (about 1852-1936). Over nearly a half-century in Hatton Garden, Arthur Baume would become a fixture in London society, contributing to the so-called “Swiss Colony” as well as more conventional organizations like the Royal Geographical Society. Arthur’s connections allowed him to challenge the status quo of British watches, tempting fashionable gentlemen away from the old fashioned designs that had earned Baume & Company a place in the market.

In addition to selling watches produced by their own workshops in London and Switzerland, the Baume & Company showroom represented the Longines factory of Saint-Imier. The English considered the anchor or “Swiss lever” escapement to be unreliable, but the Longines watch was eventually able to overcome this reputation. Thus, the Baume Brothers not only met the needs of the British market but cracked it open for French and Swiss imports! The Baume Frères “Ironclad” pocket watch also caught on with the British sportsman thanks to its unusual oxidized steel case.

Another major new product to reach Switzerland through the Baume showroom was the so-called “Four-in-Hand” watch. This used a large 38-ligne movement and could be mounted on the dashboard of a “brougham, dog-cart, Raleigh cart, or similar vehicle.” Longines produced these clocks with 30-hour or 8-day movements as large as 60 lignes and they became a must-have accessory that lasted even into the time of the automobile.

Consolidation of Swiss Suppliers

While Célestin focused on his English customers, his brothers continued to organize and centralize their supplier relationships.

The third brother, Auguste Baume focused on gilding (“dorage”) in the first half of the 1850s but was listed alongside Baume frères in Les Bois as a “negociant et fabricant” in the second half of the decade. About 1856, Auguste moved to La Chaux-de-Fonds to tap into the network of suppliers there, but this effort was cut short: He died on May 29 1859 at just 38 years of age. Still, the Baume family maintained its ties to suppliers in La Chaux-de-Fonds, and would move the operation to the city in the 20th century.

Youngest brother Eugène Baume was a skilled assembler of watches in Les Bois before moving to Geneva in 1859. He spent his life connecting the Baume family to the skilled makers of complicated watches and suppliers of gold cases there. His watch finishing operation was located on the right bank in Geneva, moving one block from Rue du Pradier 3 to rue du Mont-Blanc 20 by 1866. Eugène’s life was cut short on February 24, 1875, ending the official presence of the Frères Baume in Geneva.

The marriages of the Baume siblings created deeper connections: Their spouses included a Chapuis, two Jobins, two Girardins, and a Piquerez, all familiar names in watchmaking. There are many records showing contributions by the Jobin family in particular3 to the growing Baume enterprise, jointly opening a steam-powered watch case factory in Le Noirmont and Les Bois.

In 1857 the Frères Baume exhibited at the Swiss Trade and Industrial Exhibition in Berne. This was a predecessor to the familiar Swiss Industries Fair in Basel (later called BaselWorld) as well as the famous series of national expositions, which continue to this day. The company sent 59 watches (21 in silver and 38 in gold), “all exquisitely crafted and valued at over 7,000 francs; they were produced by Messrs. Baume in the style of the watches they manufacture for the English market, where the firm successfully sells its products to great advantage.” The company was criticized for the crudeness of its display (it was the first-ever such expo after all), as well as the fact that none of its successful English-style watches were included. But this is no surprise, since the company was already producing different watches in Les Bois, Geneva, and London, and this exhibit only reflected local products from the Jura region. Considering how young the company was, this global scope was truly revolutionary.

Fragmentation of the Baume Family

Perhaps it is unsurprising that this far-reaching and interconnected network of companies did not last. Control of the Baume family business fell solely to Victor’s sons, since Auguste and Eugène lacked heirs, and Célestin’s son Alexandre died tragically in Alsace in 1894.

Alcide and Virgile Baume replaced Victor and his brothers as the namesake “frères Baume” in the 1883 FOSC survey of Swiss businesses, though Victor Baume retained his power of attorney until his death in September of 1887. Alcide, Virgile, and Mélina Baume inherited the Swiss properties of their father Victor three years earlier; middle brother Arthur Baume is left out, as he had become a British citizen and taken over the London firm of Baume & Co in 1876.

24 year old Virgile Baume aligned himself with the London branch in 1885, moving to Geneva to re-establish Baume & Co there after the death of his uncle Eugène a decade earlier. He was removed from the Les Bois operation in 1892, with his older brother Alcide Baume becoming the sole “successeur de Baume frères.” Alcide also took over the Le Noirmont watch case factory formerly called Baume & Jobin. But Alcide was increasingly focused on supplier companies outside Les Bois. In August 1889 he offered the company’s brand new factory, including its 8 horsepower steam power plant, for sale. He simply no longer needed manufacturing in the village of his birth.

Everything seemed to be going well for Alcide Baume, who married Alexine Chapuis and welcomed twin sons Jämes and Alexandre in 1882, followed by Rachel in 1884, William in 1885, Jeanne in 1887, and Marguerite in 1892. But Alcide’s family would never be as close as their predecessors. Alexine died on September 8, 1893, leaving business-focused Alcide with six young children. They were raised at boarding schools4, as their father and uncles had been, but with no home in Les Bois to welcome them.

Jeanneret and Mosimann

With Jämes Baume intent on becoming a dentist, Alcide Baume sent his twin Alexandre to London in 1904 to learn about the family’s British business. It is likely that Alexandre worked at Baume & Co in Hatton Garden alongside another Swiss apprentice three years older, Paul-César Jeanneret. Alexandre must have impressed his uncle Arthur, as he remained in London and took over the British operation in 1923.

Paul-C. Jeanneret was sent back to La Chaux-de-Fonds a few months after Alexandre arrived to establish a better supply network for Baume & Co. This operation was acquired in 1909, becoming an official subsidiary of the British firm.

With the historic Baume family workshop in Les Bois now closed, the remaining corporate structure was merged into an established firm in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1911. Ulrich Mosimann established a watch workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1876, the same year Arthur took over Baume & Co in London. He was likely a supplier of the British branch, either directly or through Victor and Alcide Baume in Les Bois. His sons, Paul and Albert Mosimann, took over the company as Mosimann frères following his death in 1889 and incorporated it as Mosimann & Cie six years later. Paul Mosimann became increasingly important in politics and in the Swiss watch industry, becoming mayor of La Chaux-de-Fonds and a National Councilor and president of the Chambre Suisse de l’Horlogerie, leaving him little time for his family firm.

When Paul Mosimann left Mosimann & Cie in 1911, the former firm of Alcide Baume in Les Bois was absorbed into it, with Alcide’s son William Baume joining Albert Mosimann as owner.

The three successor companies (Baume & Co of London and La Chaux-de-Fonds and Mosimann & Cie) must have been very close indeed: They used the same trademarks, with confusing overlapping registrations for “Baume Watch”, “Baume”, and the “B & Co” hallmark found on British and Swiss movements alike. Following the death of Alcide Baume on May 20, 1916 the La Chaux-de-Fonds businesses even shared the same office at Rue du Nord 1165. Jeanneret left the company in 1913 to focus on greater ambitions, becoming the head of the Syndicat des Fabricants Suisses de Montres Or and founding the Information Horlogère Suisse, a clearinghouse of industry statistics. He was replaced by young William Baume, son of Alcide and brother of Alexandre.

Baume & Mercier, Baume & Company, and Baume

Following the death of his father, with his brother ensconced in London and the historic Baume family companies now under the ownership of the Mosimann family, William Baume looked elsewhere. He had met a dashing salesman at the Geneva showroom of Haas Neveux while on a business trip in 1912. Baume decided to take his inheritance and invest it in a new partnership with Paul Tcherednitchenko-dit-Mercier in 1918. Thus, the Geneva firm of Baume et Mercier was born.

In 1923, after nearly 50 years in control, Arthur Baume passed control of Baume & Company in London to his nephew, William brother, Alexandre Baume. He continued to grow the business there, soon coming into competition with his brother’s Baume & Mercier. Baume & Company was able to prevent the Geneva upstart from using the family name in the British market, especially after William was forced out during the Great Depression. Alexandre was succeeded in 1946 by his own son, Louis-C. Baume, who continued the firm until the 1960s.

Following his 1934 departure from his namesake firm of Baume & Mercier, William Baume opened a retail jewelry store in Geneva. The Baume showroom, located directly across the street from the famous department store Grand Passage, represented the great Swiss watch brands: Zénith, Tissot, Omega, Longines, and even Baume & Mercier! The business was continued by Baume’s own sons well into the 1970s.

The Grail Watch Perspective

The most impressive accomplishment of the Baume family was how quickly they built a global watchmaking business, and how early they were to the idea of vertical integration. Even before industrialization and factories, Victor Baume and his brothers understood the importance of controlling the supply chain and the value of reaching all the way to the customer. Despite being constrained by the nature of watchmaking in the 19th century, both in Switzerland and in England, which was limited to small workshops and suppliers, the Baume brothers built a remarkable enterprise.

The wide reach of the Baume family watchmaking business made it incredibly difficult to research. There is very little primary source information, and I am far more adept when it comes to Swiss history than British archives. Thankfully, David Boettcher beat me to it with a thorough look at Baume & Company in England, and I suggest looking at his excellent article! I have far more to say on this subject, and hope to write a follow-on article about “Baume After Mercier” in the future.

Notes

1. It is often said that Victor and Célestin Baume organized a watchmaking company in 1834, but this must have been their father, since Victor (the oldest) was just 17 years of age and could not legally or practically form a company at this point. For decades, Baume & Mercier advertising has shown a date of 1830, but this does not correspond with anything in historic records. Incredibly, even William Baume included “Horloger depuis 1830” in his advertisements in the 1940s!
2. In 2010, Baume & Mercier posted a series of 16 diary entries alleged to be written by Victor Baume and his grandson, William. Although it is filled with anachronisms and inaccuracies, it contains some interesting details on the family and makes for an enjoyable read. But the connection between the Baume family and Baume & Mercier is vastly over-stated in modern times.
3. The Jobin and Baume families did not always get along: Aurèle Jobin clashed with his cousin Arthur Baume shortly after he moved to London to take over Baume & Co in 1876. This lead to a public confrontation when Alcide Baume sent Aurèle’s private apology to Le Jura for publication!
4. Even 18 moth old Marguerite was sent to boarding school: The 2010 diary, which appears better-sourced when it comes to William’s entries, claims that Marguerite was raised at a boarding school in Vienna. It also claims she sat on the lap of Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph, an odd and specific recollection.
5. Despite housing two companies, and being on the block below the famous Montbrillant factory, the building at Rue du Nord 116 was not very large or notable. I was unable to find a good photo, let alone any indication of the occupants.

The Backward Evolution of the Rotating Bezel

Not everything gets more complicated as it evolves. The bezel, once a simple frame around the glass of a watch, became an integrated mechanism before it evolved into a simple numeric scale. From alarm clocks, navigational computers, and slide rules it became the most-recognized feature of the most iconic watches. Let’s consider the history of the rotating bezel.

From Complex to Simple

We tend to think that innovation starts with simple ideas and becomes more complex over time. Surprisingly, the opposite is usually true. Lacking a clear use case, inventors tend to start with a complex concept before stripping away less-useful elements. Consider the Apple Newton, a full-featured handheld computer with dozens of innovative ideas that inspired simpler PDAs before morphing into the modern smartphone. My 2017 BMW i3 electric is truly an exotic car, built like a carbon fiber science project and entirely unlike the conventional 2027 i3 sedan.

The same is true in watchmaking, and this brings us to the humble rotating bezel. Nearly every brand has a dive watch styled after the Rolex Submariner with a bold black knurled rotating bezel marked with triangles, sticks, and numerals. Most buyers never give these a second look, let alone turn them to time a drive, let alone a dive. Some brands also make a watch styled after the Breitling Navitimer with a busy two-part bezel marked with confusing aeronautical indications of speed and fuel load. Rolex even created a functional rotating bezel for the 2012 Sky-Dweller, used to select different functions.

A bit of research reveals that the history of the humble rotating bezel runs exactly counter to expectation, beginning with functional complications before proceeding to obscure slide rules before being stripped down to a basic hour indicator. It took 50 years for the rotating bezel to be simplified enough to enter the public consciousness and that long again before Rolex invented the Sky-Dweller’s ring command. Like so many innovations, there’s a lot to learn if you look into the rotating bezel!

The Functional Bezel

The bezel itself was an innovation. Most early clocks and watches were “open faced”, but by the 17th century some included a glass to protect the dial and hands. This was mounted in a frame of metal called a bezel, which was often attached to the case with a hinge. Thus, the first bezel was a functional part of the case, if not the watch movement.

Watches in the 19th century adopted setting and winding using a crown and often had a fixed glass over the dial, since the hands no longer needed to be manually manipulated. The glass was set directly into the rounded case without a separate bezel. This gave the watch a smooth curving contour that felt in the hand like a bar of soap (“savonnette” in French). Some watches still featured a bezel around the glass, notably the screw-on bezel and back produced by Keystone and others in America.

Winding and setting functions were not unified in a single crown until the 20th century. Earlier watches often had keys for winding or were set manually by rotating the hands. Pendant winding using a crown became widespread in the 19th century, and inventors were constantly working to enable hand setting by rotating the crown as well. These often involved levers or buttons, but some involved a rotating knurled bezel very similar in concept to the modern Sky-Dweller.

As alarm watches became popular in the early 20th century, a question arose about how to set this additional function. Attention again turned to the bezel, which could be rotated to set the time of the alarm. This must have been fairly common, as 1907 coverage of a new alarm watch from F. Schweizer & Cie discusses the limitations of bezel-set alarms (reliability and accuracy).

This was notably used by Eterna on their innovative if unsuccessful 1914 Cal. 68, the first alarm wristwatch. This 13 ligne movement was offered in a small pocket watch, a wristwatch, and a convertible watch that could be mounted on the steering wheel of a car. Although the wristwatch didn’t sell well, Eterna used the same movement in a line of successful travel alarm clocks, and these inspired the entire industry to adopt this mechanism.

Soon, most alarm clocks used a rotating bezel to set the time, often with an indicator on the bezel to show the current setting. This complicated mechanism was the first widely-used rotating bezel, pre-dating the dive watch craze by three decades.

A similar system was employed by John Harwood to set the time his Perpetual, the first self-winding wristwatch. The primary driver for his invention was the need to prevent dust and moisture from damaging the movement, a common issue on the battlefields of World War I. Since sealed crowns and stems had not yet been developed, Harwood’s goal was to create a sealed case with no crown, and he was inspired by the alarm clock setting mechanism created by Eterna to use a rotating bezel to set the time.

The Harwood Perpetual was a global sensation, even if it ultimately did not find many buyers. And the knurled or fluted bezel became a common look in the 1930s, adopted by other waterproof watch cases like the Rolex Oyster. Although not a rotating bezel in the strictest sense, many of these could be unscrewed to access the hands, dial, and movement during assembly and servicing.

It is easy to see how the Harwood Perpetual inspired the legendary Rolex Oyster Perpetual, and Rolex agreed: They specifically cited Harwood along with Abraham-Louis Perrelet as inspiration for their Oyster Perpetual in a series of advertisements in the 1950s. And it wasn’t just the Perpetual name or centrally-rotating winding: Rolex popularized the rotating bezel in this same time period, introducing the Turn-o-Graph, Submariner, and GMT-Master, as we will discuss in a moment. All of these feature a bezel that strongly resembles the Harwood Perpetual.

Lindbergh, Longines, and Weems

The idea that a rotating bezel could serve as an indicator of information rather than a mechanism to set the time originates with American aviator Philip Van Horn Weems. He developed a simplified navigational system for aircraft while serving in the American Navy in the 1920s and early 1930s. His system relied on a so-called “second-setting watch” featured a rotating inner dial that could be set to a time signal over the radio. This was based on Longines’ 1918 Touran pocket watch, which was designed to be re-set to zero at sunset to approximate the Alla Turca timekeeping system of the Ottoman Empire.

A close collaboration between Weems, aviation pioneer Charles Lindburgh, Longines-Wittnauer director John P.V. Heinmuller, and the Longines and Fluckiger factories in Saint-Imier resulted in a revolutionary watch that allowed pilots to determine their location using markings on a rotating bezel. This began with a specially-modified version of the Touran watch with an outer chapter scale showing units of arc, delivered in 1930. In 1931 Longines added a rotating bezel marked with units of arc in red and green. This bezel would be pre-positioned according to the equation of time table to instantly perform the calculation needed to determine the Greenwich Hour Angle of the Sun.

Once Longines developed a stop-seconds flyback movement the inner rotating dial component was no longer needed, allowing all calculations to be performed using the rotating bezel. Later versions even dispensed with the units of arc markings on the bezel, using a simple scale with units marked 10 through 60. These were no longer Hour Angle watches at all, but they were some of the first watches with a rotating bezel. In later decades Longines produced faithful reproductions of the Lindbergh Hour Angle watch, including a lovely limited edition in 2018.

The Evolving Chronograph Bezel

As the world industrialized in the early 20th century, a need for time measurement appeared. Businesses were more interested in tracking efficiency, and aviators needed to record and note time of travel. Watchmakers struggled to develop affordable and reliable chronograph mechanisms in the 1930s and 1940s, and this a fascinating area of study. This was the era when the old monopusher gave way to the Compax, flyback, and chronostop.

The alarm time indicators of previous decades gave innovators a new idea: A rotating bezel could set an indicator to measure elapsed time. In 1935 Heuer introduced a new chronograph for aviators that featured a knurled rotating bezel attached to a white triangular indicator “to mark the departure time or any other observation.” It is unclear if this is the first chronograph watch with a rotating bezel, but it is the earliest our research has uncovered.

Breitling produced a similar-looking aviation watch with a rotating bezel in early 1936. Unlike the Heuer chronograph, the Breitling model has no minute totalizer, only chronograph seconds. As noted in Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie, the bezel indicator would “serve as the minute totalizer”, synchronized with the running minutes hand for timing flight operations.

Fortis also produced a chronostop watch with a rotating bezel in 1936. This movement had a stop and reset function for the central chronograph seconds hand using a pusher in the crown. The Fortis chronostop was the first watch we’ve seen with a full set of 60 markers on the rotating bezel, complete with numerals from 5 to 60. The design also departed from the classic rounded screw-on bezel look: It has a flat bezel that aligns with the dial along with a sharp vertical knurled edge.

The 1938 Damas Ref. 2452 dispensed with the expensive chronograph movement entirely, relying solely on a rotating bezel and central running seconds hand to record elapsed time. This watch advanced the bezel markings in a significant way: It features a triangle at the top rather than 0 or 60. This is a common design today, combining the Heuer and Breitling bezel indicator with the full minute track and vertical edge seen on the Fortis chronostop.

The next major advancement in bezel design came from Invicta, then a respected maker of complicated watches in La Chaux-de-Fonds. They introduced two models for 1940 with a deeply-grooved 12-hour bezel: The Secontrol had a chronostop movement and telemeter and tachymeter scales on the dial, while the Time-Log used a start-stop chronograph movement with three pushers. The new bezel served as an hour counter for these watches, which would be much more useful in association with the minute totalizer subdial on the Time-Log. It is unclear exactly how the 12-hour bezel would be useful on the Secontrol.

The next important advance in simple bezel design came in 1949 with the Minerva Ref. 1527, which features numerals that count down rather than up. This is useful as a reminder for future events rather than a recorder of elapsed time. Since this model is marked from 1 to 11 (again with the triangle at 12), it was designed to be used by aviators to mark the next turn using the hour hand. Count-down bezels are uncommon today but they remain an interesting variation on the theme.

The Slide Rule Bezel

The slide rule (“règle à calcul” in French) was invented by English mathematician and clergyman Reverend William Oughtred and others in the 17th century, utilizing the mathematical concept of logarithms discovered by John Napier. Logarithms exploit the relationship between two scales to perform various calculations, especially multiplication and division. Slide rules were the most convenient and accurate mathematical tool until the creation of electronic calculators and computers in the 1960s.

The straight slide rule is most familiar but the circular slide rule has existed since the 19th century. In 1905, Emile Alexandre Moret of France received a patent for a mechanical calculator that used geared hands to perform logarithmic calculations using circular disks. Moret recognized that a circular slide rule could be packaged as a clock or watch, calling his invention a “montre à calcul”, but it did not include a timekeeping function.

Zénith, the famous Le Locle watchmaking firm, received a patent for a mechanical slide rule calculator in a pocket watch case in 1918. Once again, although this resembled a watch it was actually a pocket calculator without any timekeeping capability.

Importantly, both of these designs appeared before the Harwood Perpetual watch popularized the concept of a rotating bezel. It was only a matter of time before someone moved the circular slide rule to the bezel of a watch.

Graef & Cie, Fabrique Mimo, was one of the most innovative watchmaking companies in the first half of the 20th century, introducing many firsts between 1930 and 1941: The first wristwatch with a calendar, a double-barrel 8-day movement, a digital jump-hour display, and even a quick-change strap. So it is no surprise that Mimo was also the first company to produce a wristwatch with a slide rule bezel.

The Mimo-Loga was the first watch to feature a freely-rotating bezel, and it included classic slide rule markings. The July 27, 1940 patent eloquently describes that, “in addition to the chronometric and chronograph devices, includes at least two conjugate logarithmic scales, at least one of which is mounted on a rotating member concentric with the dial that carries the other.”

The Mimo-Loga was introduced in early 1941, just before Mimo founder Otto Graef retired. He left his sons in control of Mimo to his sons, but they were more interested in re-establishing the famous Girard-Perregaux brand, which the family acquired in 1928. Despite its history of innovation, the Mimo brand soon disappeared.

One watch comes to mind when we think of the slide rule bezel today: The Breitling Navitimer. Although Breitling is correctly credited with making the slide rule bezel famous, it was introduced with the Chronomat, not the Navitimer, and just a few months after the Mimo-Loga! Let’s set the record straight.

Most contemporary accounts claim that Breitling introduced the Chronomat in 1942, but primary sources include advertisements for “Le Chronomat” in September 1941. Although the watch may not have entered production this early, it was clearly a focus for the company at this time. Like the Mimo-Loga, the Chronomat had slide rule markings on the rotating bezel. But Breitling’s watch used a chronograph movement, and this allowed the wearer to perform many more useful calculations.

Breitling produced a companion booklet to help buyers make the most of the Chronomat’s capabilities. The dial also included red reference markings to assist in measuring seconds, fifths, minutes, and hours as well as a telemeter indicator. The Chronomat was specifically designed as a tachymeter, telemeter, pulsometer, and metronome, and the scale could perform standard mathematical calculations like previous circular slide rules. Breitling even produced a cardboard cutout model, available to retailers to help demonstrate these functions.

The Chronomat name combined these capabilities, “chronograph” and “mathematics”, but this did not last long. An automatic Chronomat without a chronograph function was introduced by 1954 and the famous Chronomatic movement further muddied the waters. Today the Chronomat line includes many chronographs but not one has a slide rule bezel.

This brings us to the most famous slide rule watch, the Breitling Navitimer. Today, the company claims that this watch was created in 1952 and released in 1954 with AOPA branding, and we have no reason to doubt their internal records. But the earliest public references to the Navitimer appear in 1955, and the trademark for the name was received on January 22 of that year. The Navitimer is a specialized watch, originally exclusively available to pilots, and may not have been publicized or even named until 1955.

While the Chronomat had indicators for various capabilities, the Navitimer was designed specifically to perform specialized calculations related to air travel: Ground speed, distance per minute, fuel consumption, rate and distance of climb or descent, and nautical and statute mile conversion. These scales and indices made for a very busy dial despite the hefty 41 mm case. Breitling’s current lineup includes a variety of beautiful and colorful interpretations of the classic Navitimer.

Incredibly, it is this specialized tool watch design that has become dominant in the public consciousness. Today there are numerous “Navitimer” style watches made by brands like Casio, Citizen, Hamilton, Seiko, and Victorinox. The Sinn 903 also deserves special mention: They bought up the remaining Navitimer stock from Breitling in 1979 and continued to sell these original watches as their Navigation Timer into the 1980s. This has remained in production today, with the Model 903 II released in March of 2024.

Rolex: Turn-o-Graph, Submariner, and GMT-Master

When the Swiss Industries Fair in Basel opened on May 8, 1954, visitors to the Rolex stand were treated to three new product releases: Explorer, Submariner, and Turn-o-Graph. These watches marked a transition for Rolex and ultimately the entire watch industry. All three were tool watches with modern Oyster cases and Perpetual movements, and two were defined by their distinctive rotating bezels.

The Turn-o-Graph name is not well-remembered today, but it was a staple of the Rolex lineup (on and off) until 2011. It was a simple time-only watch with a rotating bezel designed to calculate elapsed time. The Rolex rotating bezel was mostly flat, with a sharp knurled edge. In the Turn-o-Graph it was marked with four dots then a stick or numerals at 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. A triangle with a luminous dot was placed at the top. This design reflected the dial, which used dots on the hour, sticks at 3, 6, and 9, and a triangle at 12, all with luminous paint. The Turn-o-Graph was thus the most harmonious of the trio.

The Submariner was very similar to the Turn-o-Graph but was rated to 200 meters. Rolex had a long history of producing waterproof watches, but the Submariner was altogether more elegant and refined. The bezel was wide and flat, lacking the dots of the Turn-o-Graph, with stick markers alternating between numerals on the 10s. Although a true icon today, this original Submariner looked like nothing else on the market at the time. The look was soon copied by the entire industry, making the simple flat rotating bezel a sports watch staple. And the Submariner is undoubtedly one of the most in-demand watches globally to this day.

On March 22, 1956, Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf gathered friends and industry figures to the Hôtel des Bergues in Geneva to celebrate his 75th birthday and the success of the company. Along with the “Stick-o-Matic”, presented to him by the factory, the crowd was able to see a brand new Rolex model.

The GMT-Master was developed with the needs of pilots in mind, though Rolex did not go to the same extremes as the Breitling Navitimer. It was the first Rolex to feature a 24 hour hand, though it was not adjustable until the 1983 GMT-Master II. And it also included a date window under a magnifying glass bubble at 3 on the dial. But it is the rotating bezel that we will focus on, since that is the subject of this article.

Mechanically quite similar to the Submariner bezel, the GMT-Master featured alternating dots and numerals from 2 to 22, indicating the hours for the central 24 hour hand. In this way, it could be used to show the time in a second time zone by rotating the bezel ahead or behind the fixed hand. This too would become an iconic design, copied by many other firms in the coming decades. And it remains a favorite Rolex model today.

From Complex to Simple, With Many Variations

There is far more we could say about the rotating bezel, but perhaps this is enough to prove my point: Invention often proceeds from complex to simple. What was once an integrated mechanism to set the alarm or time became a simple alternate time scale. But there is subtlety to the rotating bezel! While most count up, some count down. While most are marked at 60 minute intervals, others are marked at 12. And some function as slide rules or perform complicated calculations specific to navigation. The simple bezel is far from simple, and many different companies and inventors were involved in its evolution!

The Backward Evolution of the Rotating Bezel

Not everything gets more complicated as it evolves. The bezel, once a simple frame around the glass of a watch, became an integrated mechanism before it evolved into a simple numeric scale. From alarm clocks, navigational computers, and slide rules it became the most-recognized feature of the most iconic watches. Let’s consider the history of the rotating bezel.

From Complex to Simple

We tend to think that innovation starts with simple ideas and becomes more complex over time. Surprisingly, the opposite is usually true. Lacking a clear use case, inventors tend to start with a complex concept before stripping away less-useful elements. Consider the Apple Newton, a full-featured handheld computer with dozens of innovative ideas that inspired simpler PDAs before morphing into the modern smartphone. My 2017 BMW i3 electric is truly an exotic car, built like a carbon fiber science project and entirely unlike the conventional 2027 i3 sedan.

The same is true in watchmaking, and this brings us to the humble rotating bezel. Nearly every brand has a dive watch styled after the Rolex Submariner with a bold black knurled rotating bezel marked with triangles, sticks, and numerals. Most buyers never give these a second look, let alone turn them to time a drive, let alone a dive. Some brands also make a watch styled after the Breitling Navitimer with a busy two-part bezel marked with confusing aeronautical indications of speed and fuel load. Rolex even created a functional rotating bezel for the 2012 Sky-Dweller, used to select different functions.

A bit of research reveals that the history of the humble rotating bezel runs exactly counter to expectation, beginning with functional complications before proceeding to obscure slide rules before being stripped down to a basic hour indicator. It took 50 years for the rotating bezel to be simplified enough to enter the public consciousness and that long again before Rolex invented the Sky-Dweller’s ring command. Like so many innovations, there’s a lot to learn if you look into the rotating bezel!

The Functional Bezel

The bezel itself was an innovation. Most early clocks and watches were “open faced”, but by the 17th century some included a glass to protect the dial and hands. This was mounted in a frame of metal called a bezel, which was often attached to the case with a hinge. Thus, the first bezel was a functional part of the case, if not the watch movement.

Watches in the 19th century adopted setting and winding using a crown and often had a fixed glass over the dial, since the hands no longer needed to be manually manipulated. The glass was set directly into the rounded case without a separate bezel. This gave the watch a smooth curving contour that felt in the hand like a bar of soap (“savonnette” in French). Some watches still featured a bezel around the glass, notably the screw-on bezel and back produced by Keystone and others in America.

Winding and setting functions were not unified in a single crown until the 20th century. Earlier watches often had keys for winding or were set manually by rotating the hands. Pendant winding using a crown became widespread in the 19th century, and inventors were constantly working to enable hand setting by rotating the crown as well. These often involved levers or buttons, but some involved a rotating knurled bezel very similar in concept to the modern Sky-Dweller.

As alarm watches became popular in the early 20th century, a question arose about how to set this additional function. Attention again turned to the bezel, which could be rotated to set the time of the alarm. This must have been fairly common, as 1907 coverage of a new alarm watch from F. Schweizer & Cie discusses the limitations of bezel-set alarms (reliability and accuracy).

This was notably used by Eterna on their innovative if unsuccessful 1914 Cal. 68, the first alarm wristwatch. This 13 ligne movement was offered in a small pocket watch, a wristwatch, and a convertible watch that could be mounted on the steering wheel of a car. Although the wristwatch didn’t sell well, Eterna used the same movement in a line of successful travel alarm clocks, and these inspired the entire industry to adopt this mechanism.

Soon, most alarm clocks used a rotating bezel to set the time, often with an indicator on the bezel to show the current setting. This complicated mechanism was the first widely-used rotating bezel, pre-dating the dive watch craze by three decades.

A similar system was employed by John Harwood to set the time his Perpetual, the first self-winding wristwatch. The primary driver for his invention was the need to prevent dust and moisture from damaging the movement, a common issue on the battlefields of World War I. Since sealed crowns and stems had not yet been developed, Harwood’s goal was to create a sealed case with no crown, and he was inspired by the alarm clock setting mechanism created by Eterna to use a rotating bezel to set the time.

The Harwood Perpetual was a global sensation, even if it ultimately did not find many buyers. And the knurled or fluted bezel became a common look in the 1930s, adopted by other waterproof watch cases like the Rolex Oyster. Although not a rotating bezel in the strictest sense, many of these could be unscrewed to access the hands, dial, and movement during assembly and servicing.

It is easy to see how the Harwood Perpetual inspired the legendary Rolex Oyster Perpetual, and Rolex agreed: They specifically cited Harwood along with Abraham-Louis Perrelet as inspiration for their Oyster Perpetual in a series of advertisements in the 1950s. And it wasn’t just the Perpetual name or centrally-rotating winding: Rolex popularized the rotating bezel in this same time period, introducing the Turn-o-Graph, Submariner, and GMT-Master, as we will discuss in a moment. All of these feature a bezel that strongly resembles the Harwood Perpetual.

Lindbergh, Longines, and Weems

The idea that a rotating bezel could serve as an indicator of information rather than a mechanism to set the time originates with American aviator Philip Van Horn Weems. He developed a simplified navigational system for aircraft while serving in the American Navy in the 1920s and early 1930s. His system relied on a so-called “second-setting watch” featured a rotating inner dial that could be set to a time signal over the radio. This was based on Longines’ 1918 Touran pocket watch, which was designed to be re-set to zero at sunset to approximate the Alla Turca timekeeping system of the Ottoman Empire.

A close collaboration between Weems, aviation pioneer Charles Lindburgh, Longines-Wittnauer director John P.V. Heinmuller, and the Longines and Fluckiger factories in Saint-Imier resulted in a revolutionary watch that allowed pilots to determine their location using markings on a rotating bezel. This began with a specially-modified version of the Touran watch with an outer chapter scale showing units of arc, delivered in 1930. In 1931 Longines added a rotating bezel marked with units of arc in red and green. This bezel would be pre-positioned according to the equation of time table to instantly perform the calculation needed to determine the Greenwich Hour Angle of the Sun.

Once Longines developed a stop-seconds flyback movement the inner rotating dial component was no longer needed, allowing all calculations to be performed using the rotating bezel. Later versions even dispensed with the units of arc markings on the bezel, using a simple scale with units marked 10 through 60. These were no longer Hour Angle watches at all, but they were some of the first watches with a rotating bezel. In later decades Longines produced faithful reproductions of the Lindbergh Hour Angle watch, including a lovely limited edition in 2018.

The Evolving Chronograph Bezel

As the world industrialized in the early 20th century, a need for time measurement appeared. Businesses were more interested in tracking efficiency, and aviators needed to record and note time of travel. Watchmakers struggled to develop affordable and reliable chronograph mechanisms in the 1930s and 1940s, and this a fascinating area of study. This was the era when the old monopusher gave way to the Compax, flyback, and chronostop.

The alarm time indicators of previous decades gave innovators a new idea: A rotating bezel could set an indicator to measure elapsed time. In 1935 Heuer introduced a new chronograph for aviators that featured a knurled rotating bezel attached to a white triangular indicator “to mark the departure time or any other observation.” It is unclear if this is the first chronograph watch with a rotating bezel, but it is the earliest our research has uncovered.

Breitling produced a similar-looking aviation watch with a rotating bezel in early 1936. Unlike the Heuer chronograph, the Breitling model has no minute totalizer, only chronograph seconds. As noted in Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie, the bezel indicator would “serve as the minute totalizer”, synchronized with the running minutes hand for timing flight operations.

Fortis also produced a chronostop watch with a rotating bezel in 1936. This movement had a stop and reset function for the central chronograph seconds hand using a pusher in the crown. The Fortis chronostop was the first watch we’ve seen with a full set of 60 markers on the rotating bezel, complete with numerals from 5 to 60. The design also departed from the classic rounded screw-on bezel look: It has a flat bezel that aligns with the dial along with a sharp vertical knurled edge.

The 1938 Damas Ref. 2452 dispensed with the expensive chronograph movement entirely, relying solely on a rotating bezel and central running seconds hand to record elapsed time. This watch advanced the bezel markings in a significant way: It features a triangle at the top rather than 0 or 60. This is a common design today, combining the Heuer and Breitling bezel indicator with the full minute track and vertical edge seen on the Fortis chronostop.

The next major advancement in bezel design came from Invicta, then a respected maker of complicated watches in La Chaux-de-Fonds. They introduced two models for 1940 with a deeply-grooved 12-hour bezel: The Secontrol had a chronostop movement and telemeter and tachymeter scales on the dial, while the Time-Log used a start-stop chronograph movement with three pushers. The new bezel served as an hour counter for these watches, which would be much more useful in association with the minute totalizer subdial on the Time-Log. It is unclear exactly how the 12-hour bezel would be useful on the Secontrol.

The next important advance in simple bezel design came in 1949 with the Minerva Ref. 1527, which features numerals that count down rather than up. This is useful as a reminder for future events rather than a recorder of elapsed time. Since this model is marked from 1 to 11 (again with the triangle at 12), it was designed to be used by aviators to mark the next turn using the hour hand. Count-down bezels are uncommon today but they remain an interesting variation on the theme.

The Slide Rule Bezel

The slide rule (“règle à calcul” in French) was invented by English mathematician and clergyman Reverend William Oughtred and others in the 17th century, utilizing the mathematical concept of logarithms discovered by John Napier. Logarithms exploit the relationship between two scales to perform various calculations, especially multiplication and division. Slide rules were the most convenient and accurate mathematical tool until the creation of electronic calculators and computers in the 1960s.

The straight slide rule is most familiar but the circular slide rule has existed since the 19th century. In 1905, Emile Alexandre Moret of France received a patent for a mechanical calculator that used geared hands to perform logarithmic calculations using circular disks. Moret recognized that a circular slide rule could be packaged as a clock or watch, calling his invention a “montre à calcul”, but it did not include a timekeeping function.

Zénith, the famous Le Locle watchmaking firm, received a patent for a mechanical slide rule calculator in a pocket watch case in 1918. Once again, although this resembled a watch it was actually a pocket calculator without any timekeeping capability.

Importantly, both of these designs appeared before the Harwood Perpetual watch popularized the concept of a rotating bezel. It was only a matter of time before someone moved the circular slide rule to the bezel of a watch.

Graef & Cie, Fabrique Mimo, was one of the most innovative watchmaking companies in the first half of the 20th century, introducing many firsts between 1930 and 1941: The first wristwatch with a calendar, a double-barrel 8-day movement, a digital jump-hour display, and even a quick-change strap. So it is no surprise that Mimo was also the first company to produce a wristwatch with a slide rule bezel.

The Mimo-Loga was the first watch to feature a freely-rotating bezel, and it included classic slide rule markings. The July 27, 1940 patent eloquently describes that, “in addition to the chronometric and chronograph devices, includes at least two conjugate logarithmic scales, at least one of which is mounted on a rotating member concentric with the dial that carries the other.”

The Mimo-Loga was introduced in early 1941, just before Mimo founder Otto Graef retired. He left his sons in control of Mimo to his sons, but they were more interested in re-establishing the famous Girard-Perregaux brand, which the family acquired in 1928. Despite its history of innovation, the Mimo brand soon disappeared.

One watch comes to mind when we think of the slide rule bezel today: The Breitling Navitimer. Although Breitling is correctly credited with making the slide rule bezel famous, it was introduced with the Chronomat, not the Navitimer, and just a few months after the Mimo-Loga! Let’s set the record straight.

Most contemporary accounts claim that Breitling introduced the Chronomat in 1942, but primary sources include advertisements for “Le Chronomat” in September 1941. Although the watch may not have entered production this early, it was clearly a focus for the company at this time. Like the Mimo-Loga, the Chronomat had slide rule markings on the rotating bezel. But Breitling’s watch used a chronograph movement, and this allowed the wearer to perform many more useful calculations.

Breitling produced a companion booklet to help buyers make the most of the Chronomat’s capabilities. The dial also included red reference markings to assist in measuring seconds, fifths, minutes, and hours as well as a telemeter indicator. The Chronomat was specifically designed as a tachymeter, telemeter, pulsometer, and metronome, and the scale could perform standard mathematical calculations like previous circular slide rules. Breitling even produced a cardboard cutout model, available to retailers to help demonstrate these functions.

The Chronomat name combined these capabilities, “chronograph” and “mathematics”, but this did not last long. An automatic Chronomat without a chronograph function was introduced by 1954 and the famous Chronomatic movement further muddied the waters. Today the Chronomat line includes many chronographs but not one has a slide rule bezel.

This brings us to the most famous slide rule watch, the Breitling Navitimer. Today, the company claims that this watch was created in 1952 and released in 1954 with AOPA branding, and we have no reason to doubt their internal records. But the earliest public references to the Navitimer appear in 1955, and the trademark for the name was received on January 22 of that year. The Navitimer is a specialized watch, originally exclusively available to pilots, and may not have been publicized or even named until 1955.

While the Chronomat had indicators for various capabilities, the Navitimer was designed specifically to perform specialized calculations related to air travel: Ground speed, distance per minute, fuel consumption, rate and distance of climb or descent, and nautical and statute mile conversion. These scales and indices made for a very busy dial despite the hefty 41 mm case. Breitling’s current lineup includes a variety of beautiful and colorful interpretations of the classic Navitimer.

Incredibly, it is this specialized tool watch design that has become dominant in the public consciousness. Today there are numerous “Navitimer” style watches made by brands like Casio, Citizen, Hamilton, Seiko, and Victorinox. The Sinn 903 also deserves special mention: They bought up the remaining Navitimer stock from Breitling in 1979 and continued to sell these original watches as their Navigation Timer into the 1980s. This has remained in production today, with the Model 903 II released in March of 2024.

Rolex: Turn-o-Graph, Submariner, and GMT-Master

When the Swiss Industries Fair in Basel opened on May 8, 1954, visitors to the Rolex stand were treated to three new product releases: Explorer, Submariner, and Turn-o-Graph. These watches marked a transition for Rolex and ultimately the entire watch industry. All three were tool watches with modern Oyster cases and Perpetual movements, and two were defined by their distinctive rotating bezels.

The Turn-o-Graph name is not well-remembered today, but it was a staple of the Rolex lineup (on and off) until 2011. It was a simple time-only watch with a rotating bezel designed to calculate elapsed time. The Rolex rotating bezel was mostly flat, with a sharp knurled edge. In the Turn-o-Graph it was marked with four dots then a stick or numerals at 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. A triangle with a luminous dot was placed at the top. This design reflected the dial, which used dots on the hour, sticks at 3, 6, and 9, and a triangle at 12, all with luminous paint. The Turn-o-Graph was thus the most harmonious of the trio.

The Submariner was very similar to the Turn-o-Graph but was rated to 200 meters. Rolex had a long history of producing waterproof watches, but the Submariner was altogether more elegant and refined. The bezel was wide and flat, lacking the dots of the Turn-o-Graph, with stick markers alternating between numerals on the 10s. Although a true icon today, this original Submariner looked like nothing else on the market at the time. The look was soon copied by the entire industry, making the simple flat rotating bezel a sports watch staple. And the Submariner is undoubtedly one of the most in-demand watches globally to this day.

On March 22, 1956, Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf gathered friends and industry figures to the Hôtel des Bergues in Geneva to celebrate his 75th birthday and the success of the company. Along with the “Stick-o-Matic”, presented to him by the factory, the crowd was able to see a brand new Rolex model.

The GMT-Master was developed with the needs of pilots in mind, though Rolex did not go to the same extremes as the Breitling Navitimer. It was the first Rolex to feature a 24 hour hand, though it was not adjustable until the 1983 GMT-Master II. And it also included a date window under a magnifying glass bubble at 3 on the dial. But it is the rotating bezel that we will focus on, since that is the subject of this article.

Mechanically quite similar to the Submariner bezel, the GMT-Master featured alternating dots and numerals from 2 to 22, indicating the hours for the central 24 hour hand. In this way, it could be used to show the time in a second time zone by rotating the bezel ahead or behind the fixed hand. This too would become an iconic design, copied by many other firms in the coming decades. And it remains a favorite Rolex model today.

From Complex to Simple, With Many Variations

There is far more we could say about the rotating bezel, but perhaps this is enough to prove my point: Invention often proceeds from complex to simple. What was once an integrated mechanism to set the alarm or time became a simple alternate time scale. But there is subtlety to the rotating bezel! While most count up, some count down. While most are marked at 60 minute intervals, others are marked at 12. And some function as slide rules or perform complicated calculations specific to navigation. The simple bezel is far from simple, and many different companies and inventors were involved in its evolution!

The Backward Evolution of the Rotating Bezel

Not everything gets more complicated as it evolves. The bezel, once a simple frame around the glass of a watch, became an integrated mechanism before it evolved into a simple numeric scale. From alarm clocks, navigational computers, and slide rules it became the most-recognized feature of the most iconic watches. Let’s consider the history of the rotating bezel.

From Complex to Simple

We tend to think that innovation starts with simple ideas and becomes more complex over time. Surprisingly, the opposite is usually true. Lacking a clear use case, inventors tend to start with a complex concept before stripping away less-useful elements. Consider the Apple Newton, a full-featured handheld computer with dozens of innovative ideas that inspired simpler PDAs before morphing into the modern smartphone. My 2017 BMW i3 electric is truly an exotic car, built like a carbon fiber science project and entirely unlike the conventional 2027 i3 sedan.

The same is true in watchmaking, and this brings us to the humble rotating bezel. Nearly every brand has a dive watch styled after the Rolex Submariner with a bold black knurled rotating bezel marked with triangles, sticks, and numerals. Most buyers never give these a second look, let alone turn them to time a drive, let alone a dive. Some brands also make a watch styled after the Breitling Navitimer with a busy two-part bezel marked with confusing aeronautical indications of speed and fuel load. Rolex even created a functional rotating bezel for the 2012 Sky-Dweller, used to select different functions.

A bit of research reveals that the history of the humble rotating bezel runs exactly counter to expectation, beginning with functional complications before proceeding to obscure slide rules before being stripped down to a basic hour indicator. It took 50 years for the rotating bezel to be simplified enough to enter the public consciousness and that long again before Rolex invented the Sky-Dweller’s ring command. Like so many innovations, there’s a lot to learn if you look into the rotating bezel!

The Functional Bezel

The bezel itself was an innovation. Most early clocks and watches were “open faced”, but by the 17th century some included a glass to protect the dial and hands. This was mounted in a frame of metal called a bezel, which was often attached to the case with a hinge. Thus, the first bezel was a functional part of the case, if not the watch movement.

Watches in the 19th century adopted setting and winding using a crown and often had a fixed glass over the dial, since the hands no longer needed to be manually manipulated. The glass was set directly into the rounded case without a separate bezel. This gave the watch a smooth curving contour that felt in the hand like a bar of soap (“savonnette” in French). Some watches still featured a bezel around the glass, notably the screw-on bezel and back produced by Keystone and others in America.

Winding and setting functions were not unified in a single crown until the 20th century. Earlier watches often had keys for winding or were set manually by rotating the hands. Pendant winding using a crown became widespread in the 19th century, and inventors were constantly working to enable hand setting by rotating the crown as well. These often involved levers or buttons, but some involved a rotating knurled bezel very similar in concept to the modern Sky-Dweller.

As alarm watches became popular in the early 20th century, a question arose about how to set this additional function. Attention again turned to the bezel, which could be rotated to set the time of the alarm. This must have been fairly common, as 1907 coverage of a new alarm watch from F. Schweizer & Cie discusses the limitations of bezel-set alarms (reliability and accuracy).

This was notably used by Eterna on their innovative if unsuccessful 1914 Cal. 68, the first alarm wristwatch. This 13 ligne movement was offered in a small pocket watch, a wristwatch, and a convertible watch that could be mounted on the steering wheel of a car. Although the wristwatch didn’t sell well, Eterna used the same movement in a line of successful travel alarm clocks, and these inspired the entire industry to adopt this mechanism.

Soon, most alarm clocks used a rotating bezel to set the time, often with an indicator on the bezel to show the current setting. This complicated mechanism was the first widely-used rotating bezel, pre-dating the dive watch craze by three decades.

A similar system was employed by John Harwood to set the time his Perpetual, the first self-winding wristwatch. The primary driver for his invention was the need to prevent dust and moisture from damaging the movement, a common issue on the battlefields of World War I. Since sealed crowns and stems had not yet been developed, Harwood’s goal was to create a sealed case with no crown, and he was inspired by the alarm clock setting mechanism created by Eterna to use a rotating bezel to set the time.

The Harwood Perpetual was a global sensation, even if it ultimately did not find many buyers. And the knurled or fluted bezel became a common look in the 1930s, adopted by other waterproof watch cases like the Rolex Oyster. Although not a rotating bezel in the strictest sense, many of these could be unscrewed to access the hands, dial, and movement during assembly and servicing.

It is easy to see how the Harwood Perpetual inspired the legendary Rolex Oyster Perpetual, and Rolex agreed: They specifically cited Harwood along with Abraham-Louis Perrelet as inspiration for their Oyster Perpetual in a series of advertisements in the 1950s. And it wasn’t just the Perpetual name or centrally-rotating winding: Rolex popularized the rotating bezel in this same time period, introducing the Turn-o-Graph, Submariner, and GMT-Master, as we will discuss in a moment. All of these feature a bezel that strongly resembles the Harwood Perpetual.

Lindbergh, Longines, and Weems

The idea that a rotating bezel could serve as an indicator of information rather than a mechanism to set the time originates with American aviator Philip Van Horn Weems. He developed a simplified navigational system for aircraft while serving in the American Navy in the 1920s and early 1930s. His system relied on a so-called “second-setting watch” featured a rotating inner dial that could be set to a time signal over the radio. This was based on Longines’ 1918 Touran pocket watch, which was designed to be re-set to zero at sunset to approximate the Alla Turca timekeeping system of the Ottoman Empire.

A close collaboration between Weems, aviation pioneer Charles Lindburgh, Longines-Wittnauer director John P.V. Heinmuller, and the Longines and Fluckiger factories in Saint-Imier resulted in a revolutionary watch that allowed pilots to determine their location using markings on a rotating bezel. This began with a specially-modified version of the Touran watch with an outer chapter scale showing units of arc, delivered in 1930. In 1931 Longines added a rotating bezel marked with units of arc in red and green. This bezel would be pre-positioned according to the equation of time table to instantly perform the calculation needed to determine the Greenwich Hour Angle of the Sun.

Once Longines developed a stop-seconds flyback movement the inner rotating dial component was no longer needed, allowing all calculations to be performed using the rotating bezel. Later versions even dispensed with the units of arc markings on the bezel, using a simple scale with units marked 10 through 60. These were no longer Hour Angle watches at all, but they were some of the first watches with a rotating bezel. In later decades Longines produced faithful reproductions of the Lindbergh Hour Angle watch, including a lovely limited edition in 2018.

The Evolving Chronograph Bezel

As the world industrialized in the early 20th century, a need for time measurement appeared. Businesses were more interested in tracking efficiency, and aviators needed to record and note time of travel. Watchmakers struggled to develop affordable and reliable chronograph mechanisms in the 1930s and 1940s, and this a fascinating area of study. This was the era when the old monopusher gave way to the Compax, flyback, and chronostop.

The alarm time indicators of previous decades gave innovators a new idea: A rotating bezel could set an indicator to measure elapsed time. In 1935 Heuer introduced a new chronograph for aviators that featured a knurled rotating bezel attached to a white triangular indicator “to mark the departure time or any other observation.” It is unclear if this is the first chronograph watch with a rotating bezel, but it is the earliest our research has uncovered.

Breitling produced a similar-looking aviation watch with a rotating bezel in early 1936. Unlike the Heuer chronograph, the Breitling model has no minute totalizer, only chronograph seconds. As noted in Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie, the bezel indicator would “serve as the minute totalizer”, synchronized with the running minutes hand for timing flight operations.

Fortis also produced a chronostop watch with a rotating bezel in 1936. This movement had a stop and reset function for the central chronograph seconds hand using a pusher in the crown. The Fortis chronostop was the first watch we’ve seen with a full set of 60 markers on the rotating bezel, complete with numerals from 5 to 60. The design also departed from the classic rounded screw-on bezel look: It has a flat bezel that aligns with the dial along with a sharp vertical knurled edge.

The 1938 Damas Ref. 2452 dispensed with the expensive chronograph movement entirely, relying solely on a rotating bezel and central running seconds hand to record elapsed time. This watch advanced the bezel markings in a significant way: It features a triangle at the top rather than 0 or 60. This is a common design today, combining the Heuer and Breitling bezel indicator with the full minute track and vertical edge seen on the Fortis chronostop.

The next major advancement in bezel design came from Invicta, then a respected maker of complicated watches in La Chaux-de-Fonds. They introduced two models for 1940 with a deeply-grooved 12-hour bezel: The Secontrol had a chronostop movement and telemeter and tachymeter scales on the dial, while the Time-Log used a start-stop chronograph movement with three pushers. The new bezel served as an hour counter for these watches, which would be much more useful in association with the minute totalizer subdial on the Time-Log. It is unclear exactly how the 12-hour bezel would be useful on the Secontrol.

The next important advance in simple bezel design came in 1949 with the Minerva Ref. 1527, which features numerals that count down rather than up. This is useful as a reminder for future events rather than a recorder of elapsed time. Since this model is marked from 1 to 11 (again with the triangle at 12), it was designed to be used by aviators to mark the next turn using the hour hand. Count-down bezels are uncommon today but they remain an interesting variation on the theme.

The Slide Rule Bezel

The slide rule (“règle à calcul” in French) was invented by English mathematician and clergyman Reverend William Oughtred and others in the 17th century, utilizing the mathematical concept of logarithms discovered by John Napier. Logarithms exploit the relationship between two scales to perform various calculations, especially multiplication and division. Slide rules were the most convenient and accurate mathematical tool until the creation of electronic calculators and computers in the 1960s.

The straight slide rule is most familiar but the circular slide rule has existed since the 19th century. In 1905, Emile Alexandre Moret of France received a patent for a mechanical calculator that used geared hands to perform logarithmic calculations using circular disks. Moret recognized that a circular slide rule could be packaged as a clock or watch, calling his invention a “montre à calcul”, but it did not include a timekeeping function.

Zénith, the famous Le Locle watchmaking firm, received a patent for a mechanical slide rule calculator in a pocket watch case in 1918. Once again, although this resembled a watch it was actually a pocket calculator without any timekeeping capability.

Importantly, both of these designs appeared before the Harwood Perpetual watch popularized the concept of a rotating bezel. It was only a matter of time before someone moved the circular slide rule to the bezel of a watch.

Graef & Cie, Fabrique Mimo, was one of the most innovative watchmaking companies in the first half of the 20th century, introducing many firsts between 1930 and 1941: The first wristwatch with a calendar, a double-barrel 8-day movement, a digital jump-hour display, and even a quick-change strap. So it is no surprise that Mimo was also the first company to produce a wristwatch with a slide rule bezel.

The Mimo-Loga was the first watch to feature a freely-rotating bezel, and it included classic slide rule markings. The July 27, 1940 patent eloquently describes that, “in addition to the chronometric and chronograph devices, includes at least two conjugate logarithmic scales, at least one of which is mounted on a rotating member concentric with the dial that carries the other.”

The Mimo-Loga was introduced in early 1941, just before Mimo founder Otto Graef retired. He left his sons in control of Mimo to his sons, but they were more interested in re-establishing the famous Girard-Perregaux brand, which the family acquired in 1928. Despite its history of innovation, the Mimo brand soon disappeared.

One watch comes to mind when we think of the slide rule bezel today: The Breitling Navitimer. Although Breitling is correctly credited with making the slide rule bezel famous, it was introduced with the Chronomat, not the Navitimer, and just a few months after the Mimo-Loga! Let’s set the record straight.

Most contemporary accounts claim that Breitling introduced the Chronomat in 1942, but primary sources include advertisements for “Le Chronomat” in September 1941. Although the watch may not have entered production this early, it was clearly a focus for the company at this time. Like the Mimo-Loga, the Chronomat had slide rule markings on the rotating bezel. But Breitling’s watch used a chronograph movement, and this allowed the wearer to perform many more useful calculations.

Breitling produced a companion booklet to help buyers make the most of the Chronomat’s capabilities. The dial also included red reference markings to assist in measuring seconds, fifths, minutes, and hours as well as a telemeter indicator. The Chronomat was specifically designed as a tachymeter, telemeter, pulsometer, and metronome, and the scale could perform standard mathematical calculations like previous circular slide rules. Breitling even produced a cardboard cutout model, available to retailers to help demonstrate these functions.

The Chronomat name combined these capabilities, “chronograph” and “mathematics”, but this did not last long. An automatic Chronomat without a chronograph function was introduced by 1954 and the famous Chronomatic movement further muddied the waters. Today the Chronomat line includes many chronographs but not one has a slide rule bezel.

This brings us to the most famous slide rule watch, the Breitling Navitimer. Today, the company claims that this watch was created in 1952 and released in 1954 with AOPA branding, and we have no reason to doubt their internal records. But the earliest public references to the Navitimer appear in 1955, and the trademark for the name was received on January 22 of that year. The Navitimer is a specialized watch, originally exclusively available to pilots, and may not have been publicized or even named until 1955.

While the Chronomat had indicators for various capabilities, the Navitimer was designed specifically to perform specialized calculations related to air travel: Ground speed, distance per minute, fuel consumption, rate and distance of climb or descent, and nautical and statute mile conversion. These scales and indices made for a very busy dial despite the hefty 41 mm case. Breitling’s current lineup includes a variety of beautiful and colorful interpretations of the classic Navitimer.

Incredibly, it is this specialized tool watch design that has become dominant in the public consciousness. Today there are numerous “Navitimer” style watches made by brands like Casio, Citizen, Hamilton, Seiko, and Victorinox. The Sinn 903 also deserves special mention: They bought up the remaining Navitimer stock from Breitling in 1979 and continued to sell these original watches as their Navigation Timer into the 1980s. This has remained in production today, with the Model 903 II released in March of 2024.

Rolex: Turn-o-Graph, Submariner, and GMT-Master

When the Swiss Industries Fair in Basel opened on May 8, 1954, visitors to the Rolex stand were treated to three new product releases: Explorer, Submariner, and Turn-o-Graph. These watches marked a transition for Rolex and ultimately the entire watch industry. All three were tool watches with modern Oyster cases and Perpetual movements, and two were defined by their distinctive rotating bezels.

The Turn-o-Graph name is not well-remembered today, but it was a staple of the Rolex lineup (on and off) until 2011. It was a simple time-only watch with a rotating bezel designed to calculate elapsed time. The Rolex rotating bezel was mostly flat, with a sharp knurled edge. In the Turn-o-Graph it was marked with four dots then a stick or numerals at 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. A triangle with a luminous dot was placed at the top. This design reflected the dial, which used dots on the hour, sticks at 3, 6, and 9, and a triangle at 12, all with luminous paint. The Turn-o-Graph was thus the most harmonious of the trio.

The Submariner was very similar to the Turn-o-Graph but was rated to 200 meters. Rolex had a long history of producing waterproof watches, but the Submariner was altogether more elegant and refined. The bezel was wide and flat, lacking the dots of the Turn-o-Graph, with stick markers alternating between numerals on the 10s. Although a true icon today, this original Submariner looked like nothing else on the market at the time. The look was soon copied by the entire industry, making the simple flat rotating bezel a sports watch staple. And the Submariner is undoubtedly one of the most in-demand watches globally to this day.

On March 22, 1956, Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf gathered friends and industry figures to the Hôtel des Bergues in Geneva to celebrate his 75th birthday and the success of the company. Along with the “Stick-o-Matic”, presented to him by the factory, the crowd was able to see a brand new Rolex model.

The GMT-Master was developed with the needs of pilots in mind, though Rolex did not go to the same extremes as the Breitling Navitimer. It was the first Rolex to feature a 24 hour hand, though it was not adjustable until the 1983 GMT-Master II. And it also included a date window under a magnifying glass bubble at 3 on the dial. But it is the rotating bezel that we will focus on, since that is the subject of this article.

Mechanically quite similar to the Submariner bezel, the GMT-Master featured alternating dots and numerals from 2 to 22, indicating the hours for the central 24 hour hand. In this way, it could be used to show the time in a second time zone by rotating the bezel ahead or behind the fixed hand. This too would become an iconic design, copied by many other firms in the coming decades. And it remains a favorite Rolex model today.

From Complex to Simple, With Many Variations

There is far more we could say about the rotating bezel, but perhaps this is enough to prove my point: Invention often proceeds from complex to simple. What was once an integrated mechanism to set the alarm or time became a simple alternate time scale. But there is subtlety to the rotating bezel! While most count up, some count down. While most are marked at 60 minute intervals, others are marked at 12. And some function as slide rules or perform complicated calculations specific to navigation. The simple bezel is far from simple, and many different companies and inventors were involved in its evolution!

The Backward Evolution of the Rotating Bezel

Not everything gets more complicated as it evolves. The bezel, once a simple frame around the glass of a watch, became an integrated mechanism before it evolved into a simple numeric scale. From alarm clocks, navigational computers, and slide rules it became the most-recognized feature of the most iconic watches. Let’s consider the history of the rotating bezel.

From Complex to Simple

We tend to think that innovation starts with simple ideas and becomes more complex over time. Surprisingly, the opposite is usually true. Lacking a clear use case, inventors tend to start with a complex concept before stripping away less-useful elements. Consider the Apple Newton, a full-featured handheld computer with dozens of innovative ideas that inspired simpler PDAs before morphing into the modern smartphone. My 2017 BMW i3 electric is truly an exotic car, built like a carbon fiber science project and entirely unlike the conventional 2027 i3 sedan.

The same is true in watchmaking, and this brings us to the humble rotating bezel. Nearly every brand has a dive watch styled after the Rolex Submariner with a bold black knurled rotating bezel marked with triangles, sticks, and numerals. Most buyers never give these a second look, let alone turn them to time a drive, let alone a dive. Some brands also make a watch styled after the Breitling Navitimer with a busy two-part bezel marked with confusing aeronautical indications of speed and fuel load. Rolex even created a functional rotating bezel for the 2012 Sky-Dweller, used to select different functions.

A bit of research reveals that the history of the humble rotating bezel runs exactly counter to expectation, beginning with functional complications before proceeding to obscure slide rules before being stripped down to a basic hour indicator. It took 50 years for the rotating bezel to be simplified enough to enter the public consciousness and that long again before Rolex invented the Sky-Dweller’s ring command. Like so many innovations, there’s a lot to learn if you look into the rotating bezel!

The Functional Bezel

The bezel itself was an innovation. Most early clocks and watches were “open faced”, but by the 17th century some included a glass to protect the dial and hands. This was mounted in a frame of metal called a bezel, which was often attached to the case with a hinge. Thus, the first bezel was a functional part of the case, if not the watch movement.

Watches in the 19th century adopted setting and winding using a crown and often had a fixed glass over the dial, since the hands no longer needed to be manually manipulated. The glass was set directly into the rounded case without a separate bezel. This gave the watch a smooth curving contour that felt in the hand like a bar of soap (“savonnette” in French). Some watches still featured a bezel around the glass, notably the screw-on bezel and back produced by Keystone and others in America.

Winding and setting functions were not unified in a single crown until the 20th century. Earlier watches often had keys for winding or were set manually by rotating the hands. Pendant winding using a crown became widespread in the 19th century, and inventors were constantly working to enable hand setting by rotating the crown as well. These often involved levers or buttons, but some involved a rotating knurled bezel very similar in concept to the modern Sky-Dweller.

As alarm watches became popular in the early 20th century, a question arose about how to set this additional function. Attention again turned to the bezel, which could be rotated to set the time of the alarm. This must have been fairly common, as 1907 coverage of a new alarm watch from F. Schweizer & Cie discusses the limitations of bezel-set alarms (reliability and accuracy).

This was notably used by Eterna on their innovative if unsuccessful 1914 Cal. 68, the first alarm wristwatch. This 13 ligne movement was offered in a small pocket watch, a wristwatch, and a convertible watch that could be mounted on the steering wheel of a car. Although the wristwatch didn’t sell well, Eterna used the same movement in a line of successful travel alarm clocks, and these inspired the entire industry to adopt this mechanism.

Soon, most alarm clocks used a rotating bezel to set the time, often with an indicator on the bezel to show the current setting. This complicated mechanism was the first widely-used rotating bezel, pre-dating the dive watch craze by three decades.

A similar system was employed by John Harwood to set the time his Perpetual, the first self-winding wristwatch. The primary driver for his invention was the need to prevent dust and moisture from damaging the movement, a common issue on the battlefields of World War I. Since sealed crowns and stems had not yet been developed, Harwood’s goal was to create a sealed case with no crown, and he was inspired by the alarm clock setting mechanism created by Eterna to use a rotating bezel to set the time.

The Harwood Perpetual was a global sensation, even if it ultimately did not find many buyers. And the knurled or fluted bezel became a common look in the 1930s, adopted by other waterproof watch cases like the Rolex Oyster. Although not a rotating bezel in the strictest sense, many of these could be unscrewed to access the hands, dial, and movement during assembly and servicing.

It is easy to see how the Harwood Perpetual inspired the legendary Rolex Oyster Perpetual, and Rolex agreed: They specifically cited Harwood along with Abraham-Louis Perrelet as inspiration for their Oyster Perpetual in a series of advertisements in the 1950s. And it wasn’t just the Perpetual name or centrally-rotating winding: Rolex popularized the rotating bezel in this same time period, introducing the Turn-o-Graph, Submariner, and GMT-Master, as we will discuss in a moment. All of these feature a bezel that strongly resembles the Harwood Perpetual.

Lindbergh, Longines, and Weems

The idea that a rotating bezel could serve as an indicator of information rather than a mechanism to set the time originates with American aviator Philip Van Horn Weems. He developed a simplified navigational system for aircraft while serving in the American Navy in the 1920s and early 1930s. His system relied on a so-called “second-setting watch” featured a rotating inner dial that could be set to a time signal over the radio. This was based on Longines’ 1918 Touran pocket watch, which was designed to be re-set to zero at sunset to approximate the Alla Turca timekeeping system of the Ottoman Empire.

A close collaboration between Weems, aviation pioneer Charles Lindburgh, Longines-Wittnauer director John P.V. Heinmuller, and the Longines and Fluckiger factories in Saint-Imier resulted in a revolutionary watch that allowed pilots to determine their location using markings on a rotating bezel. This began with a specially-modified version of the Touran watch with an outer chapter scale showing units of arc, delivered in 1930. In 1931 Longines added a rotating bezel marked with units of arc in red and green. This bezel would be pre-positioned according to the equation of time table to instantly perform the calculation needed to determine the Greenwich Hour Angle of the Sun.

Once Longines developed a stop-seconds flyback movement the inner rotating dial component was no longer needed, allowing all calculations to be performed using the rotating bezel. Later versions even dispensed with the units of arc markings on the bezel, using a simple scale with units marked 10 through 60. These were no longer Hour Angle watches at all, but they were some of the first watches with a rotating bezel. In later decades Longines produced faithful reproductions of the Lindbergh Hour Angle watch, including a lovely limited edition in 2018.

The Evolving Chronograph Bezel

As the world industrialized in the early 20th century, a need for time measurement appeared. Businesses were more interested in tracking efficiency, and aviators needed to record and note time of travel. Watchmakers struggled to develop affordable and reliable chronograph mechanisms in the 1930s and 1940s, and this a fascinating area of study. This was the era when the old monopusher gave way to the Compax, flyback, and chronostop.

The alarm time indicators of previous decades gave innovators a new idea: A rotating bezel could set an indicator to measure elapsed time. In 1935 Heuer introduced a new chronograph for aviators that featured a knurled rotating bezel attached to a white triangular indicator “to mark the departure time or any other observation.” It is unclear if this is the first chronograph watch with a rotating bezel, but it is the earliest our research has uncovered.

Breitling produced a similar-looking aviation watch with a rotating bezel in early 1936. Unlike the Heuer chronograph, the Breitling model has no minute totalizer, only chronograph seconds. As noted in Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie, the bezel indicator would “serve as the minute totalizer”, synchronized with the running minutes hand for timing flight operations.

Fortis also produced a chronostop watch with a rotating bezel in 1936. This movement had a stop and reset function for the central chronograph seconds hand using a pusher in the crown. The Fortis chronostop was the first watch we’ve seen with a full set of 60 markers on the rotating bezel, complete with numerals from 5 to 60. The design also departed from the classic rounded screw-on bezel look: It has a flat bezel that aligns with the dial along with a sharp vertical knurled edge.

The 1938 Damas Ref. 2452 dispensed with the expensive chronograph movement entirely, relying solely on a rotating bezel and central running seconds hand to record elapsed time. This watch advanced the bezel markings in a significant way: It features a triangle at the top rather than 0 or 60. This is a common design today, combining the Heuer and Breitling bezel indicator with the full minute track and vertical edge seen on the Fortis chronostop.

The next major advancement in bezel design came from Invicta, then a respected maker of complicated watches in La Chaux-de-Fonds. They introduced two models for 1940 with a deeply-grooved 12-hour bezel: The Secontrol had a chronostop movement and telemeter and tachymeter scales on the dial, while the Time-Log used a start-stop chronograph movement with three pushers. The new bezel served as an hour counter for these watches, which would be much more useful in association with the minute totalizer subdial on the Time-Log. It is unclear exactly how the 12-hour bezel would be useful on the Secontrol.

The next important advance in simple bezel design came in 1949 with the Minerva Ref. 1527, which features numerals that count down rather than up. This is useful as a reminder for future events rather than a recorder of elapsed time. Since this model is marked from 1 to 11 (again with the triangle at 12), it was designed to be used by aviators to mark the next turn using the hour hand. Count-down bezels are uncommon today but they remain an interesting variation on the theme.

The Slide Rule Bezel

The slide rule (“règle à calcul” in French) was invented by English mathematician and clergyman Reverend William Oughtred and others in the 17th century, utilizing the mathematical concept of logarithms discovered by John Napier. Logarithms exploit the relationship between two scales to perform various calculations, especially multiplication and division. Slide rules were the most convenient and accurate mathematical tool until the creation of electronic calculators and computers in the 1960s.

The straight slide rule is most familiar but the circular slide rule has existed since the 19th century. In 1905, Emile Alexandre Moret of France received a patent for a mechanical calculator that used geared hands to perform logarithmic calculations using circular disks. Moret recognized that a circular slide rule could be packaged as a clock or watch, calling his invention a “montre à calcul”, but it did not include a timekeeping function.

Zénith, the famous Le Locle watchmaking firm, received a patent for a mechanical slide rule calculator in a pocket watch case in 1918. Once again, although this resembled a watch it was actually a pocket calculator without any timekeeping capability.

Importantly, both of these designs appeared before the Harwood Perpetual watch popularized the concept of a rotating bezel. It was only a matter of time before someone moved the circular slide rule to the bezel of a watch.

Graef & Cie, Fabrique Mimo, was one of the most innovative watchmaking companies in the first half of the 20th century, introducing many firsts between 1930 and 1941: The first wristwatch with a calendar, a double-barrel 8-day movement, a digital jump-hour display, and even a quick-change strap. So it is no surprise that Mimo was also the first company to produce a wristwatch with a slide rule bezel.

The Mimo-Loga was the first watch to feature a freely-rotating bezel, and it included classic slide rule markings. The July 27, 1940 patent eloquently describes that, “in addition to the chronometric and chronograph devices, includes at least two conjugate logarithmic scales, at least one of which is mounted on a rotating member concentric with the dial that carries the other.”

The Mimo-Loga was introduced in early 1941, just before Mimo founder Otto Graef retired. He left his sons in control of Mimo to his sons, but they were more interested in re-establishing the famous Girard-Perregaux brand, which the family acquired in 1928. Despite its history of innovation, the Mimo brand soon disappeared.

One watch comes to mind when we think of the slide rule bezel today: The Breitling Navitimer. Although Breitling is correctly credited with making the slide rule bezel famous, it was introduced with the Chronomat, not the Navitimer, and just a few months after the Mimo-Loga! Let’s set the record straight.

Most contemporary accounts claim that Breitling introduced the Chronomat in 1942, but primary sources include advertisements for “Le Chronomat” in September 1941. Although the watch may not have entered production this early, it was clearly a focus for the company at this time. Like the Mimo-Loga, the Chronomat had slide rule markings on the rotating bezel. But Breitling’s watch used a chronograph movement, and this allowed the wearer to perform many more useful calculations.

Breitling produced a companion booklet to help buyers make the most of the Chronomat’s capabilities. The dial also included red reference markings to assist in measuring seconds, fifths, minutes, and hours as well as a telemeter indicator. The Chronomat was specifically designed as a tachymeter, telemeter, pulsometer, and metronome, and the scale could perform standard mathematical calculations like previous circular slide rules. Breitling even produced a cardboard cutout model, available to retailers to help demonstrate these functions.

The Chronomat name combined these capabilities, “chronograph” and “mathematics”, but this did not last long. An automatic Chronomat without a chronograph function was introduced by 1954 and the famous Chronomatic movement further muddied the waters. Today the Chronomat line includes many chronographs but not one has a slide rule bezel.

This brings us to the most famous slide rule watch, the Breitling Navitimer. Today, the company claims that this watch was created in 1952 and released in 1954 with AOPA branding, and we have no reason to doubt their internal records. But the earliest public references to the Navitimer appear in 1955, and the trademark for the name was received on January 22 of that year. The Navitimer is a specialized watch, originally exclusively available to pilots, and may not have been publicized or even named until 1955.

While the Chronomat had indicators for various capabilities, the Navitimer was designed specifically to perform specialized calculations related to air travel: Ground speed, distance per minute, fuel consumption, rate and distance of climb or descent, and nautical and statute mile conversion. These scales and indices made for a very busy dial despite the hefty 41 mm case. Breitling’s current lineup includes a variety of beautiful and colorful interpretations of the classic Navitimer.

Incredibly, it is this specialized tool watch design that has become dominant in the public consciousness. Today there are numerous “Navitimer” style watches made by brands like Casio, Citizen, Hamilton, Seiko, and Victorinox. The Sinn 903 also deserves special mention: They bought up the remaining Navitimer stock from Breitling in 1979 and continued to sell these original watches as their Navigation Timer into the 1980s. This has remained in production today, with the Model 903 II released in March of 2024.

Rolex: Turn-o-Graph, Submariner, and GMT-Master

When the Swiss Industries Fair in Basel opened on May 8, 1954, visitors to the Rolex stand were treated to three new product releases: Explorer, Submariner, and Turn-o-Graph. These watches marked a transition for Rolex and ultimately the entire watch industry. All three were tool watches with modern Oyster cases and Perpetual movements, and two were defined by their distinctive rotating bezels.

The Turn-o-Graph name is not well-remembered today, but it was a staple of the Rolex lineup (on and off) until 2011. It was a simple time-only watch with a rotating bezel designed to calculate elapsed time. The Rolex rotating bezel was mostly flat, with a sharp knurled edge. In the Turn-o-Graph it was marked with four dots then a stick or numerals at 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. A triangle with a luminous dot was placed at the top. This design reflected the dial, which used dots on the hour, sticks at 3, 6, and 9, and a triangle at 12, all with luminous paint. The Turn-o-Graph was thus the most harmonious of the trio.

The Submariner was very similar to the Turn-o-Graph but was rated to 200 meters. Rolex had a long history of producing waterproof watches, but the Submariner was altogether more elegant and refined. The bezel was wide and flat, lacking the dots of the Turn-o-Graph, with stick markers alternating between numerals on the 10s. Although a true icon today, this original Submariner looked like nothing else on the market at the time. The look was soon copied by the entire industry, making the simple flat rotating bezel a sports watch staple. And the Submariner is undoubtedly one of the most in-demand watches globally to this day.

On March 22, 1956, Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf gathered friends and industry figures to the Hôtel des Bergues in Geneva to celebrate his 75th birthday and the success of the company. Along with the “Stick-o-Matic”, presented to him by the factory, the crowd was able to see a brand new Rolex model.

The GMT-Master was developed with the needs of pilots in mind, though Rolex did not go to the same extremes as the Breitling Navitimer. It was the first Rolex to feature a 24 hour hand, though it was not adjustable until the 1983 GMT-Master II. And it also included a date window under a magnifying glass bubble at 3 on the dial. But it is the rotating bezel that we will focus on, since that is the subject of this article.

Mechanically quite similar to the Submariner bezel, the GMT-Master featured alternating dots and numerals from 2 to 22, indicating the hours for the central 24 hour hand. In this way, it could be used to show the time in a second time zone by rotating the bezel ahead or behind the fixed hand. This too would become an iconic design, copied by many other firms in the coming decades. And it remains a favorite Rolex model today.

From Complex to Simple, With Many Variations

There is far more we could say about the rotating bezel, but perhaps this is enough to prove my point: Invention often proceeds from complex to simple. What was once an integrated mechanism to set the alarm or time became a simple alternate time scale. But there is subtlety to the rotating bezel! While most count up, some count down. While most are marked at 60 minute intervals, others are marked at 12. And some function as slide rules or perform complicated calculations specific to navigation. The simple bezel is far from simple, and many different companies and inventors were involved in its evolution!

The Backward Evolution of the Rotating Bezel

Not everything gets more complicated as it evolves. The bezel, once a simple frame around the glass of a watch, became an integrated mechanism before it evolved into a simple numeric scale. From alarm clocks, navigational computers, and slide rules it became the most-recognized feature of the most iconic watches. Let’s consider the history of the rotating bezel.

From Complex to Simple

We tend to think that innovation starts with simple ideas and becomes more complex over time. Surprisingly, the opposite is usually true. Lacking a clear use case, inventors tend to start with a complex concept before stripping away less-useful elements. Consider the Apple Newton, a full-featured handheld computer with dozens of innovative ideas that inspired simpler PDAs before morphing into the modern smartphone. My 2017 BMW i3 electric is truly an exotic car, built like a carbon fiber science project and entirely unlike the conventional 2027 i3 sedan.

The same is true in watchmaking, and this brings us to the humble rotating bezel. Nearly every brand has a dive watch styled after the Rolex Submariner with a bold black knurled rotating bezel marked with triangles, sticks, and numerals. Most buyers never give these a second look, let alone turn them to time a drive, let alone a dive. Some brands also make a watch styled after the Breitling Navitimer with a busy two-part bezel marked with confusing aeronautical indications of speed and fuel load. Rolex even created a functional rotating bezel for the 2012 Sky-Dweller, used to select different functions.

A bit of research reveals that the history of the humble rotating bezel runs exactly counter to expectation, beginning with functional complications before proceeding to obscure slide rules before being stripped down to a basic hour indicator. It took 50 years for the rotating bezel to be simplified enough to enter the public consciousness and that long again before Rolex invented the Sky-Dweller’s ring command. Like so many innovations, there’s a lot to learn if you look into the rotating bezel!

The Functional Bezel

The bezel itself was an innovation. Most early clocks and watches were “open faced”, but by the 17th century some included a glass to protect the dial and hands. This was mounted in a frame of metal called a bezel, which was often attached to the case with a hinge. Thus, the first bezel was a functional part of the case, if not the watch movement.

Watches in the 19th century adopted setting and winding using a crown and often had a fixed glass over the dial, since the hands no longer needed to be manually manipulated. The glass was set directly into the rounded case without a separate bezel. This gave the watch a smooth curving contour that felt in the hand like a bar of soap (“savonnette” in French). Some watches still featured a bezel around the glass, notably the screw-on bezel and back produced by Keystone and others in America.

Winding and setting functions were not unified in a single crown until the 20th century. Earlier watches often had keys for winding or were set manually by rotating the hands. Pendant winding using a crown became widespread in the 19th century, and inventors were constantly working to enable hand setting by rotating the crown as well. These often involved levers or buttons, but some involved a rotating knurled bezel very similar in concept to the modern Sky-Dweller.

As alarm watches became popular in the early 20th century, a question arose about how to set this additional function. Attention again turned to the bezel, which could be rotated to set the time of the alarm. This must have been fairly common, as 1907 coverage of a new alarm watch from F. Schweizer & Cie discusses the limitations of bezel-set alarms (reliability and accuracy).

This was notably used by Eterna on their innovative if unsuccessful 1914 Cal. 68, the first alarm wristwatch. This 13 ligne movement was offered in a small pocket watch, a wristwatch, and a convertible watch that could be mounted on the steering wheel of a car. Although the wristwatch didn’t sell well, Eterna used the same movement in a line of successful travel alarm clocks, and these inspired the entire industry to adopt this mechanism.

Soon, most alarm clocks used a rotating bezel to set the time, often with an indicator on the bezel to show the current setting. This complicated mechanism was the first widely-used rotating bezel, pre-dating the dive watch craze by three decades.

A similar system was employed by John Harwood to set the time his Perpetual, the first self-winding wristwatch. The primary driver for his invention was the need to prevent dust and moisture from damaging the movement, a common issue on the battlefields of World War I. Since sealed crowns and stems had not yet been developed, Harwood’s goal was to create a sealed case with no crown, and he was inspired by the alarm clock setting mechanism created by Eterna to use a rotating bezel to set the time.

The Harwood Perpetual was a global sensation, even if it ultimately did not find many buyers. And the knurled or fluted bezel became a common look in the 1930s, adopted by other waterproof watch cases like the Rolex Oyster. Although not a rotating bezel in the strictest sense, many of these could be unscrewed to access the hands, dial, and movement during assembly and servicing.

It is easy to see how the Harwood Perpetual inspired the legendary Rolex Oyster Perpetual, and Rolex agreed: They specifically cited Harwood along with Abraham-Louis Perrelet as inspiration for their Oyster Perpetual in a series of advertisements in the 1950s. And it wasn’t just the Perpetual name or centrally-rotating winding: Rolex popularized the rotating bezel in this same time period, introducing the Turn-o-Graph, Submariner, and GMT-Master, as we will discuss in a moment. All of these feature a bezel that strongly resembles the Harwood Perpetual.

Lindbergh, Longines, and Weems

The idea that a rotating bezel could serve as an indicator of information rather than a mechanism to set the time originates with American aviator Philip Van Horn Weems. He developed a simplified navigational system for aircraft while serving in the American Navy in the 1920s and early 1930s. His system relied on a so-called “second-setting watch” featured a rotating inner dial that could be set to a time signal over the radio. This was based on Longines’ 1918 Touran pocket watch, which was designed to be re-set to zero at sunset to approximate the Alla Turca timekeeping system of the Ottoman Empire.

A close collaboration between Weems, aviation pioneer Charles Lindburgh, Longines-Wittnauer director John P.V. Heinmuller, and the Longines and Fluckiger factories in Saint-Imier resulted in a revolutionary watch that allowed pilots to determine their location using markings on a rotating bezel. This began with a specially-modified version of the Touran watch with an outer chapter scale showing units of arc, delivered in 1930. In 1931 Longines added a rotating bezel marked with units of arc in red and green. This bezel would be pre-positioned according to the equation of time table to instantly perform the calculation needed to determine the Greenwich Hour Angle of the Sun.

Once Longines developed a stop-seconds flyback movement the inner rotating dial component was no longer needed, allowing all calculations to be performed using the rotating bezel. Later versions even dispensed with the units of arc markings on the bezel, using a simple scale with units marked 10 through 60. These were no longer Hour Angle watches at all, but they were some of the first watches with a rotating bezel. In later decades Longines produced faithful reproductions of the Lindbergh Hour Angle watch, including a lovely limited edition in 2018.

The Evolving Chronograph Bezel

As the world industrialized in the early 20th century, a need for time measurement appeared. Businesses were more interested in tracking efficiency, and aviators needed to record and note time of travel. Watchmakers struggled to develop affordable and reliable chronograph mechanisms in the 1930s and 1940s, and this a fascinating area of study. This was the era when the old monopusher gave way to the Compax, flyback, and chronostop.

The alarm time indicators of previous decades gave innovators a new idea: A rotating bezel could set an indicator to measure elapsed time. In 1935 Heuer introduced a new chronograph for aviators that featured a knurled rotating bezel attached to a white triangular indicator “to mark the departure time or any other observation.” It is unclear if this is the first chronograph watch with a rotating bezel, but it is the earliest our research has uncovered.

Breitling produced a similar-looking aviation watch with a rotating bezel in early 1936. Unlike the Heuer chronograph, the Breitling model has no minute totalizer, only chronograph seconds. As noted in Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie, the bezel indicator would “serve as the minute totalizer”, synchronized with the running minutes hand for timing flight operations.

Fortis also produced a chronostop watch with a rotating bezel in 1936. This movement had a stop and reset function for the central chronograph seconds hand using a pusher in the crown. The Fortis chronostop was the first watch we’ve seen with a full set of 60 markers on the rotating bezel, complete with numerals from 5 to 60. The design also departed from the classic rounded screw-on bezel look: It has a flat bezel that aligns with the dial along with a sharp vertical knurled edge.

The 1938 Damas Ref. 2452 dispensed with the expensive chronograph movement entirely, relying solely on a rotating bezel and central running seconds hand to record elapsed time. This watch advanced the bezel markings in a significant way: It features a triangle at the top rather than 0 or 60. This is a common design today, combining the Heuer and Breitling bezel indicator with the full minute track and vertical edge seen on the Fortis chronostop.

The next major advancement in bezel design came from Invicta, then a respected maker of complicated watches in La Chaux-de-Fonds. They introduced two models for 1940 with a deeply-grooved 12-hour bezel: The Secontrol had a chronostop movement and telemeter and tachymeter scales on the dial, while the Time-Log used a start-stop chronograph movement with three pushers. The new bezel served as an hour counter for these watches, which would be much more useful in association with the minute totalizer subdial on the Time-Log. It is unclear exactly how the 12-hour bezel would be useful on the Secontrol.

The next important advance in simple bezel design came in 1949 with the Minerva Ref. 1527, which features numerals that count down rather than up. This is useful as a reminder for future events rather than a recorder of elapsed time. Since this model is marked from 1 to 11 (again with the triangle at 12), it was designed to be used by aviators to mark the next turn using the hour hand. Count-down bezels are uncommon today but they remain an interesting variation on the theme.

The Slide Rule Bezel

The slide rule (“règle à calcul” in French) was invented by English mathematician and clergyman Reverend William Oughtred and others in the 17th century, utilizing the mathematical concept of logarithms discovered by John Napier. Logarithms exploit the relationship between two scales to perform various calculations, especially multiplication and division. Slide rules were the most convenient and accurate mathematical tool until the creation of electronic calculators and computers in the 1960s.

The straight slide rule is most familiar but the circular slide rule has existed since the 19th century. In 1905, Emile Alexandre Moret of France received a patent for a mechanical calculator that used geared hands to perform logarithmic calculations using circular disks. Moret recognized that a circular slide rule could be packaged as a clock or watch, calling his invention a “montre à calcul”, but it did not include a timekeeping function.

Zénith, the famous Le Locle watchmaking firm, received a patent for a mechanical slide rule calculator in a pocket watch case in 1918. Once again, although this resembled a watch it was actually a pocket calculator without any timekeeping capability.

Importantly, both of these designs appeared before the Harwood Perpetual watch popularized the concept of a rotating bezel. It was only a matter of time before someone moved the circular slide rule to the bezel of a watch.

Graef & Cie, Fabrique Mimo, was one of the most innovative watchmaking companies in the first half of the 20th century, introducing many firsts between 1930 and 1941: The first wristwatch with a calendar, a double-barrel 8-day movement, a digital jump-hour display, and even a quick-change strap. So it is no surprise that Mimo was also the first company to produce a wristwatch with a slide rule bezel.

The Mimo-Loga was the first watch to feature a freely-rotating bezel, and it included classic slide rule markings. The July 27, 1940 patent eloquently describes that, “in addition to the chronometric and chronograph devices, includes at least two conjugate logarithmic scales, at least one of which is mounted on a rotating member concentric with the dial that carries the other.”

The Mimo-Loga was introduced in early 1941, just before Mimo founder Otto Graef retired. He left his sons in control of Mimo to his sons, but they were more interested in re-establishing the famous Girard-Perregaux brand, which the family acquired in 1928. Despite its history of innovation, the Mimo brand soon disappeared.

One watch comes to mind when we think of the slide rule bezel today: The Breitling Navitimer. Although Breitling is correctly credited with making the slide rule bezel famous, it was introduced with the Chronomat, not the Navitimer, and just a few months after the Mimo-Loga! Let’s set the record straight.

Most contemporary accounts claim that Breitling introduced the Chronomat in 1942, but primary sources include advertisements for “Le Chronomat” in September 1941. Although the watch may not have entered production this early, it was clearly a focus for the company at this time. Like the Mimo-Loga, the Chronomat had slide rule markings on the rotating bezel. But Breitling’s watch used a chronograph movement, and this allowed the wearer to perform many more useful calculations.

Breitling produced a companion booklet to help buyers make the most of the Chronomat’s capabilities. The dial also included red reference markings to assist in measuring seconds, fifths, minutes, and hours as well as a telemeter indicator. The Chronomat was specifically designed as a tachymeter, telemeter, pulsometer, and metronome, and the scale could perform standard mathematical calculations like previous circular slide rules. Breitling even produced a cardboard cutout model, available to retailers to help demonstrate these functions.

The Chronomat name combined these capabilities, “chronograph” and “mathematics”, but this did not last long. An automatic Chronomat without a chronograph function was introduced by 1954 and the famous Chronomatic movement further muddied the waters. Today the Chronomat line includes many chronographs but not one has a slide rule bezel.

This brings us to the most famous slide rule watch, the Breitling Navitimer. Today, the company claims that this watch was created in 1952 and released in 1954 with AOPA branding, and we have no reason to doubt their internal records. But the earliest public references to the Navitimer appear in 1955, and the trademark for the name was received on January 22 of that year. The Navitimer is a specialized watch, originally exclusively available to pilots, and may not have been publicized or even named until 1955.

While the Chronomat had indicators for various capabilities, the Navitimer was designed specifically to perform specialized calculations related to air travel: Ground speed, distance per minute, fuel consumption, rate and distance of climb or descent, and nautical and statute mile conversion. These scales and indices made for a very busy dial despite the hefty 41 mm case. Breitling’s current lineup includes a variety of beautiful and colorful interpretations of the classic Navitimer.

Incredibly, it is this specialized tool watch design that has become dominant in the public consciousness. Today there are numerous “Navitimer” style watches made by brands like Casio, Citizen, Hamilton, Seiko, and Victorinox. The Sinn 903 also deserves special mention: They bought up the remaining Navitimer stock from Breitling in 1979 and continued to sell these original watches as their Navigation Timer into the 1980s. This has remained in production today, with the Model 903 II released in March of 2024.

Rolex: Turn-o-Graph, Submariner, and GMT-Master

When the Swiss Industries Fair in Basel opened on May 8, 1954, visitors to the Rolex stand were treated to three new product releases: Explorer, Submariner, and Turn-o-Graph. These watches marked a transition for Rolex and ultimately the entire watch industry. All three were tool watches with modern Oyster cases and Perpetual movements, and two were defined by their distinctive rotating bezels.

The Turn-o-Graph name is not well-remembered today, but it was a staple of the Rolex lineup (on and off) until 2011. It was a simple time-only watch with a rotating bezel designed to calculate elapsed time. The Rolex rotating bezel was mostly flat, with a sharp knurled edge. In the Turn-o-Graph it was marked with four dots then a stick or numerals at 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. A triangle with a luminous dot was placed at the top. This design reflected the dial, which used dots on the hour, sticks at 3, 6, and 9, and a triangle at 12, all with luminous paint. The Turn-o-Graph was thus the most harmonious of the trio.

The Submariner was very similar to the Turn-o-Graph but was rated to 200 meters. Rolex had a long history of producing waterproof watches, but the Submariner was altogether more elegant and refined. The bezel was wide and flat, lacking the dots of the Turn-o-Graph, with stick markers alternating between numerals on the 10s. Although a true icon today, this original Submariner looked like nothing else on the market at the time. The look was soon copied by the entire industry, making the simple flat rotating bezel a sports watch staple. And the Submariner is undoubtedly one of the most in-demand watches globally to this day.

On March 22, 1956, Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf gathered friends and industry figures to the Hôtel des Bergues in Geneva to celebrate his 75th birthday and the success of the company. Along with the “Stick-o-Matic”, presented to him by the factory, the crowd was able to see a brand new Rolex model.

The GMT-Master was developed with the needs of pilots in mind, though Rolex did not go to the same extremes as the Breitling Navitimer. It was the first Rolex to feature a 24 hour hand, though it was not adjustable until the 1983 GMT-Master II. And it also included a date window under a magnifying glass bubble at 3 on the dial. But it is the rotating bezel that we will focus on, since that is the subject of this article.

Mechanically quite similar to the Submariner bezel, the GMT-Master featured alternating dots and numerals from 2 to 22, indicating the hours for the central 24 hour hand. In this way, it could be used to show the time in a second time zone by rotating the bezel ahead or behind the fixed hand. This too would become an iconic design, copied by many other firms in the coming decades. And it remains a favorite Rolex model today.

From Complex to Simple, With Many Variations

There is far more we could say about the rotating bezel, but perhaps this is enough to prove my point: Invention often proceeds from complex to simple. What was once an integrated mechanism to set the alarm or time became a simple alternate time scale. But there is subtlety to the rotating bezel! While most count up, some count down. While most are marked at 60 minute intervals, others are marked at 12. And some function as slide rules or perform complicated calculations specific to navigation. The simple bezel is far from simple, and many different companies and inventors were involved in its evolution!

Time for coffee and Cuteness! ☕️🐱 #watch #coffee #hellokitty #luxurywatch #morningvibes #style #accessories #fashion #cute #kawaii #sanrio #longines #primaluna #watchoftheday #jewelry #handbag #glam #elegant #chic #moments

Time for coffee and Cuteness! ☕️🐱 #watch #coffee #hellokitty #luxurywatch #morningvibes #style #accessories #fashion #cute #kawaii #sanrio #longines #primaluna #watchoftheday #jewelry #handbag #glam #elegant #chic #moments

Time for coffee and Cuteness! ☕️🐱 #watch #coffee #hellokitty #luxurywatch #morningvibes #style #accessories #fashion #cute #kawaii #sanrio #longines #primaluna #watchoftheday #jewelry #handbag #glam #elegant #chic #moments

Time for coffee and Cuteness! ☕️🐱 #watch #coffee #hellokitty #luxurywatch #morningvibes #style #accessories #fashion #cute #kawaii #sanrio #longines #primaluna #watchoftheday #jewelry #handbag #glam #elegant #chic #moments

Henry Cavill Joins Longines as Ambassador of Elegance
Longines welcomes Henry Cavill as its Ambassador of Elegance, embodying timeless sophistication, craftsmanship, and authenticity in every detail.
https://thailandeventguide.com/ambassador-of-elegance/
#Celebs #Tech #AmbassadorOfElegance #Craftsmanship #EleganceRedefined #HenryCavill #Longines #LuxuryTimepieces #SwissWatch #TimelessSophistication