A TALE OF TWO TIME ZONES

The spirit of exploration is imbued into Patek Philippe's new Calatrava Pilot Time, a watch that celebrates our travels and adventures.

- WORDS SUFFIAN HAKIM PHOTOS PATEK PHILIPPE

WE TEND TO BE CHILDREN of two worlds these days, whether because of work and business, family, or cultural affinity. Horology has sought to reflect this since air travel became widespread in the 1950s, when maisons produced the first dual time watches.

Patek Philippe was among these pioneers. In 1958, it introduced its first dual time watch, the Cross Country Reference 2597. This watch came from a collaboration with the legendary independent watchmaker Louis Cottier, who previously developed the “Heure Universelle” (World Time) complication for Patek Philippe in the 1930s. But the Cross Country was a dual time infant. Cottier devised a pusher that shifts the hour hand by an hour for quick change to new local time.

The modern dual time, with two hour hands to show local and home time, would only come three years later in 1961, with an updated version of the reference 2597. This came with a local time hour hand that could hide under the main hour hand once the wearer returned home. This formed the foundation for Patek Philippe’s modern “Travel Time” complication, and eventually, one of its novelties at this year’s Watches and Wonders Geneva, the Calatrava Pilot Time (reference 5524G-010).