Hello all,

While researching Helvetia watches for my site about them (https://www.helvetiahistory.co.uk/) I came across a patent, applied for in 1950, for a 'Universal Timepiece'.

I was reading the thread on World Timers here and thought I'd ask if anyone has seen anything like this before. I don't know if it was ever actually manufactured, I've never seen a watch that works this way from anyone.

First the drawing and I'll try to explain below how it works.



Reading the patent it seems to work like this:

The cities around the outside are fixed.
The second hand (8) and minute hand (5) work on a central, fixed, minute track as normal.
There is no hour pointer, instead the 24 hour track rotates with the time so in theory you always know the time at all of the time zones at once. You read the hour next to the city you want and the minutes and seconds from the hands. With a standard world timer, if I understand them correctly, the hands tell you the time in the zone you are in and there is a separate, usually outer, display to tell the time in the different time zones.
You would use the triangle marked 11 to highlight the zone you are in, or use most often, for ease of viewing but the watch equally tells the time in all other zones as well.

I have never seen this before. It is a subtle difference and I can see if you regularly need to know the time in several different zones this would be easier than a regular world timer but I expect it makes just telling the time more difficult to pick out!

Has anyone seen any other implementation of this?

Thanks. Carl.

 

Not precisely the same, but close. And for me, the best designed of the vintage world timers.

 

Hello Tony.

I agree that is the best looking, and probably easiest to read, implementation of a world timer I've seen.

The main difference is that you tell the local time from the hands and the outer bezel and different time zones from the inner bezel and time zone ring. I agree this is a good design and makes it easy to read the current time in the zone you are in. The difference in the patent is that it doesn't show the local time using a separate display but treats all the time zones 'equally' if you see what I mean.

 

Interesting. Thanks Carl.

I also like this Angelus solution, though not on my wrist.

 

That's really nice. Ideal for your 60s international businessman's desk!

 

Thanks. And believe it or not, it was designed as a travel clock, and was introduced in the 1940s! In other words, a high-end luxury good that was introduced and originally sold during one of the most depressed economic periods of the past 100 years. Wild.

 

Very interesting thread!

 

I really like the Tissot shown, are there Watches today using this patent?

 

Well, although the movement is different, presumably Tissot continues to renew the WT function patent, as they use it on their homage:

https://wornandwound.com/review/tissot-heritage-navigator-160th-anniversary-review/

 

@Tony C. thank you very much for your answer! I never had that one on my radar, I really like the look, but the size is probably to big for me. I will definitly going to try it out!

 

You're welcome, and let us know if you end up getting one!

 

Hello,

Still haven't seen any 'Universal Timer' using anything like the original patent I posted but I was browsing Mikrolisk and saw that Helvetia had registered the name 'Univertime' so maybe there are some out there!

Thanks. Carl.