Vacheron Constantin

Scottish-born, Fleming moved to Canada at the age of 18 where made his mark as a railway engineer and prolific inventor.  He was instrumental in defining the beaver as Canada's national symbol when he successfully advocated for this creature to adorn Canada's first stamp and thus broke with British tradition to feature the current monarch.

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Up until the 1880s most countries had their own time zone but, in fact, many towns set their local time based on the sun.  This was most practical as anyone could easily mark high noon and adjust their watch accordingly.  Of course this meant that the local time varied from town to town, city to city.

This image of Vacheron & Constantin's iconic Tour de l'Ile from 1871 reveals three clocks for the time in Paris, Geneva, and Bern.

Tick Talk image

Alex Ghotbi takes up the story; "We could have been fine with this if it was not for the urge for mankind to travel via rail (the 1st official railroad was inaugurated in 1825). In fact this didn’t seem too much of an issue at first as the distances were short, but the mapping out of Canada's first long-distance railway lines which fell to Scottish-born engineer, Sir Sandford Fleming posed whole new problems. In 1880, Canada embarked on the construction of the future Canadian Pacific Railway, and Sir Sandford observed that keeping track of time over such a great distance was nothing if not confusing (there are now six time zones from Newfoundland to the Pacific), making it virtually impossible to draw up reliable timetables and most importantly to prevent collisions between trains. Fleming was not the first to recognize that this dilemma, stemming from the ever-increasing number of trains crucial to feeding the industrial revolution, was a problem, but Sir Sandford would be the first to do something about it. 

Legend has it that it was in 1876 after missing a train in Ireland that Fleming began to look for a way to standardize time. Speaking before the Royal Canadian Institute in Toronto in 1879, he proposed to divide the Earth into 24 time zones of 15° one hour apart with a universal time for each individual zone. 

However, as with most revelations that threaten to change the world, his idea was met with considerable resistance from the governments and the scientific communities. At last, Fleming’s persistence paid off and his idea was finally adopted in 1884 in Washington, when the 25 nations taking part in the International Meridian Conference decided that the prime meridian of 0° longitude would pass through Greenwich, England. 

But why Greenwich, which is after all nothing more than a London suburb? Firstly, because the town had long been in possession of a renowned observatory, and secondly, because this was a time when Britannia ruled an Empire over which the sun would never set and the laws of the British Empire were observed all around the world. 

Obviously les français could not accept to have the laws of a population with such bad eating habits apply to them and until 1891 French towns continued to calculate their own time based on the position of the sun at noon, or solar time. Except that the sun rises 50 minutes earlier in Strasbourg than in Brest which, in the railroad era, proved slightly inconvenient. In 1891 the French government therefore adopted Paris time for the whole country, despite a difference of 9 minutes and 21 seconds with the time in the majority of western States. 

Legend has it that the British lead the French to believe that if they adopted the GMT standard in return they would adopt the Metric system… a French invention of the late 18th Century! The British didn’t adopt the Metric system and France continued to refer to Paris time for 20 years before finally passing a law that adopted international time zones in 1911.

One bizarre quality associated with the original GMT standard was that according to British tradition hour zero started at noon and not midnight. This changed in 1925 so that a new day would start at midnight, at the same time the term GMT was replaced by Universal Time.

Fleming’s contribution to the creation of the World Time watch does not stop with the creation of the world’s first system of standardized time, Sir Sandford went further than that. In 1880, Fleming commissioned a watch manufacturer in London to construct a unique pocket watch that would accurately reflect his proposal, and so was born the “Cosmic Time” pocket watch. The times for each of the 24 “zones” in Fleming’s system were depicted on a single dial, making his “Cosmic Time” pocket watch the world’s first World Time watch as we know it."

The mobile city ring continued to be used with the Reference 6382 pocket watch introduced in 1960.

In 1992 the Reference 48200 was introduced in the Phidias line, available in yellow gold or two-tone gold and steel.  This version was discontinued in 1996 to be replaced in 2001 with the Reference 48250 Evasion watch, exclusive to the Japanese market in 100 pieces and followed in 2003 with a further 100 pieces in rose gold.  These watches did not follow the Cottier system as the home city had to be set manually by rotating the outer bezel and the inner 24-hour rotating disc adjusted accordingly.  These were much simplified in comparison with previous world time watches; sort of Cottier Light...

Leap forward to 2011 and Vacheron Constantin launches the Patrimony Traditionnelle World Time, now featuring half and quarter-hour time zone deviations for 37 time zones.  Added to the traditional list of locations were Tehran, Delhi, Kabul, Yangoon, Eucla, Adelaide, Caracas, Kingston, Marqueseas, Waitangi, L. Howe St. John's, and Nepal.

The movement was three years in development to create a system of pawls which follow a toothed outer ring to determine if a chosen time zone is a full hour or a partially-offset time zone.  To accommodate the possibility of future changes in political time zones, both the toothed ring and cities disc on the dial can be changed out.

This new movement has been designated Calibre 2460 WT and all indications are adjusted by the crown, without use of additional push pieces.  The user selects their reference time and places it opposite the black triangle at 6 o'clock.  The time in the reference location can then be read off the hour and minute hands while time in the other zones is also simultaneously readable.

At photos credit Vacheron Constantin unless otherwise noted.

References:

• It's A Small World: The story behind Vacheron Constantin's World Timers by Alex Ghotbi, Vacheron Constantin Community & Social Media Manager, The Hour Lounge internet forum 7 April 2011.