Seiko

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

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