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Seiko World Timers, Part I
As regulars in this forum realize, Seiko produces and sells many, many products. Among these products are "WORLD TIME" watches and clocks. Prompted by a recent post by reintitan, I did some research on the Seiko site and scanned through 800 eBay listings (no, I didn't buy any, yet). I would like to introduce the watches in this post and the clocks in another.
In color:
and in black and white:
In pairs
with GMT & country flags
A WORLD TIME watch is generally thought of as one that shows the names of cities around the bezel, and at a glance you can see your local time AND the time in other cities. To do this, the manufacturer often chooses to display city names, a revolving ring with hours that line up with those cities, and perhaps a GMT hand and/or date. I'll include a few non-Seiko samples, for your viewing pleasure.
and in black and white:
In pairs
OK, introduction over - let's move on and see some of the watches Seiko provides for the World Time watch lover.
AUTOMATIC MOVEMENT, MANUAL ADJUSTMENT
BATTERY POWER, QUARTZ MOVEMENT, MANUAL ADJUSTMENT, ANALOG DISPLAY
(by manual adjustment, I mean the user has to set the time and zone he's in)
With GMT and alarm
with perpetual calendar
with GMT & country flags
BATTERY POWER, QUARTZ MOVEMENT, MANUAL ADJUSTMENT, DIGITAL DISPLAY
BATTERY POWER, QUARTZ MOVEMENT, MANUAL ADJUSTMENT, ANA-DIGI DISPLAY
KINETIC POWER, QUARTZ MOVEMENT, MANUAL ADJUSTMENT
SOLAR POWER, QUARTZ MOVEMENT, MANUAL ADJUSTMENT
With GMT & Chrono
SOLAR POWER, QUARTZ MOVEMENT, RADIO WAVE TRANSMISSION ADJUSTMENT
Women's world timer
with day of the week
SOLAR POWER, QUARTZ MOVEMENT, GPS SATELLITE ADJUSTMENT
GPS, SOLAR, DUAL TIME, GMT, Day of the Week, WORLD TIME, DIVER (everything but the kitchen sink)
Questions? Comments?
Cazalea
PS - Please come back for part II where we explore Seiko world clocks
If Seiko brought back their classic mechanical 6117 or 6217 World Timers
They would give the Swiss brands a run for their money. I'm really surprised that Grand Seiko hasn't produced their own WT watch yet.
It’s complicated
I don’t think World Timer fits the GS profile. Remember even a small seconds subdial seems too fussy for GS.
As you probably know, the mechanical watches come from the North SII studio, and all the spring drive and quartz and Credor come from the West Seiko/Epson plant where a great deal of research and pride have been invested into Astron which is a GPS-set solar world timer.
Mike
As you probably know, the mechanical watches come from the North SII studio, and all the spring drive and quartz and Credor come from the West Seiko/Epson plant where a great deal of research and pride have been invested into Astron which is a GPS-set solar world timer.
Mike
Its always good to be reminded of the variety of watches that Seiko make.
definitely some interesting pies - does rekindle the interest in a world time watch.
Not that I really need one mind!
Cheers
JML
Seiko has unfortunately never made a proper worldtimer with a mechanical movement
What Seiko introduced 1964 for the Tokyo Olympics at the then high price of 12'000 yen was a watch with an additional hand making one full turn in 24 hours. The corresponding scale allowed to read "world time" with the help of a inner city bezel to be manually rotated.
This 1st series "World Time" has the automatic caliber 6217. The separate 24 hour hand is driven by a pinion mounted on the minute wheel. This 24 hour hand cannot be set separately, but is rather connected to the 12 hour based main display. With the crown pushed in, the city ring can be turned (there are no locks to let it jump from one reference city to the next).
While the adverts of Seiko were correct (you can read the time in 24 time zones by aligning the city on the bezel with your current zone time on the 24 hour scale), from today's view it could be judged as misleading, because we are used to proper world time displays, with a 24 hour ring connected to the movement and allowing to set this time display independent of the main time.
Seiko offered at the time a promotion card which was as functional as the watch itself: You have to turn a disk manually to read times in different zones from it!
When Seiko introduced the 2nd series of the "World Time" model in 1967 with a modernised case, nothing changed regarding the functionality. Though, they changed to the 6117A movement; it is the 6105A movement with the addition of a 24 hour wheel, now driven by date driving wheel.
The choice of dials was much expanded. This model was offered by Seiko until the mid-1970s.
For the Seiko 5 the manually turning reference city bezel was no longer under glass. With this model there is not even a separate 24 hour hand offered, so the "world time" device is further reduced in functionality. You have now fitted to the watch what was in the 1960s/1970s offered by many retailers and radio companies in form of a promotional cardboard "worldtimer".
Seiko developed also a standalone world time device for travellers, replacing the printed cardboard with electronics...
When you enter the quartz era, Seiko offered a lot of different time zone watches, including one for the USA.
In 1978 Seiko Corporation acquired the Pulsar brand. Trying to present all "world time" models including all quartz variants would possibly get out of hand.
Collecting primarily mechanical world time watches, Orient as a brand is much more interesting to me. Seiko has a 52% majority in Orient. So I wonder a bit, why the really interesting and fully functional world time movements (comparable to those of the samples from Chopard etc. presented to introduce the post) have always been left to the "daughter" by Seiko.
Thanks, Mike, for bringing up the theme!
Björn
Thanks for sharing this information
Yes, it is a mystery why they call certain of the watches "World Timer" when they might only have added a bezel with city names printed on it. But then who are we to argue with Seiko's marketing department? 
If they say so, it must be so ... we will find the same thing when examining the World Time Clocks!
Mike
If they say so, it must be so ... we will find the same thing when examining the World Time Clocks!Mike
After reviewing all these watches, I like this SSG015 best
It has that no-nonsense military look that I like in some watches. It's a chronograph with 1/5th second stopwatch and one hour scale at 6 (stops automatically at 6 hours), GMT at 3, and small running seconds at 9.
By pressing the button at 8, the central chrono second hand moves and can point to a selected time zone. The hour hand moves to show you the time in that city.
HOWEVER, after reading through the 65-page instruction manual for the 8B92 movement, I am losing interest. How can it be so complicated to set a watch that is supposed to set itself?
World Time just isn't simple!
MIke
