First Class: The Patek Philippe 5110 World Timer
A modern milestone in the evolution of a signature complication.
There are any number of watches which use some form of the world time complication, and in addition to its classic form, there are all sorts of hybrids which offer dual or multiple timezone complications which often bear a cosmetic resemblance to a real world time complication, but which don’t offer its full functionality. The classic form, as you might call it, began with the invention of the world time complication for watches in 1931, when the Genevan watchmaker Louis Cottier produced his first world time watch – a pocket watch – for a retailer named Baszanger (Baszanger was based in Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, which is where Cottier had his workshop). Patek Philippe’s production of world time watches, like all true world timers, is based on the Cottier system but when Patek launched the reference 5110 in the year 2000, it was with an update to the design that was totally original to Patek and which no one had ever seen before.
The 5110 was the first watch in the history of the complication to have a pusher at 10:00 to update all indications easily and simultaneously.
The First World Time Watches
The basic configuration of the world timer as Cottier produced it, consisted of a watch with an hour and minute hand, which was surrounded by a 24 hour disk which rotated once per day. Outside that disk was a ring of cities corresponding to the different timezones around the world. The hands and the 24 hour ring ran together, and once you set the time, you could see both your own local time as well as the time – AM or PM – in all the reference cities.
The first few Cottier watches had city rings which could not be moved except by a watchmaker but by the late 1930s, Cottier had updated the original design, giving the owner the ability to change the reference city (in Cottier world timers, the reference city is the city corresponding to the local time shown by the hands and is always at the 12:00 position on the dial). This made the Cottier design more suitable for travel – if you changed time zones, you would reset the local time, and then change the reference city at 12:00 to correspond to the new local time zone. The city disk could be rotated either by turning a knurled bezel or by using a second crown, located at 9:00 on the case. The system was still a little fussy as you had to reset the local time and change the reference city in two separate operations, but it was sufficient for the needs of the time and that system was the only game in town, right up until Patek – and everybody else – stopped introducing new world time models in the late 1950s.
Time stood still for the world timer you might say, until the year 2000. That was the year Patek introduced the first true modern world time complication, which is the watch we’ve got today for A Watch A Week – it’s the Patek Philippe ref. 5110 (this particular reference is the 5110J-001, in yellow gold).
A World Time Complication For The Jet Age
The 5110 was the first world timer from Patek or indeed from anyone else, which used a pusher at 10:00 in the case to automatically change the hour, 24 hour ring, and reference city all at the same time. The system is so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness that it can come as something of a surprise, to say nothing of a shock, to find out that it didn’t appear until the turn of the century.
Like so many really inspired ideas it seems obvious in retrospect, but Cottier despite the debt we all owe him, he missed the most important update to his original invention by several decades (he passed away in Carouge at the age of 72, in 1966). The Patek 5110 took what was an aesthetically extremely satisfying watch – some of the most beautiful watches ever made were Patek’s world timers, both wrist and pocket watches, produced from about 1937 up until 1957 and they were often vehicles for the display of beautiful fired enamel motifs – and transformed it into a truly practical modern traveler’s timepiece.
In 1957, which was the year Patek produced its last pre-2000s world timer, the reference 2523-1, Boeing’s first jetliner, the 707, went into service (it had been preceded by the de Havilland Comet, which went into service in 1952 but which had a major design flaw that led to three catastrophic accidents, in which the aircraft disintegrated in flight). It is perhaps happenstance, but the fact that the last world timer to be produced in the 20th century debuted the year jet travel became really practical for the first time, seems to reflect the sense that the complication had become somewhat outmoded.
The set up for the 5110 is so intuitive that as Wei Koh remarks in his comprehensive survey of Patek’s repeater production (published in 2021, when nobody was traveling) you almost don’t need the manual. The pusher at 10:00 is used to set the correct local time city (always situated at 12:00). Then you set the local time with the crown, making sure that the 24 hour disk, which moves in sync with the hands, shows the correct AM or PM for your local time zone. And that’s it – you basically don’t ever need to touch the crown again (the movement, caliber 240 HU, is automatic).
If you change time zones, all you have to do is press the pusher until the correct reference city for your new time zone is at 12:00, and the hour hand and 24 hour disk will advance automatically to show the correct time. And, of course, you can see the time in all 24 time zones with full hour offsets from GMT simultaneously.
The 5110 is well known and highly regarded among Patek Philippe enthusiasts and since its introduction, Patek has gone on to produce a series of variations on the basic design which have included some really exotic complications, including a minute repeater version which always chimes local time. The 5110, however, is by now a modern classic of watchmaking, and the first really meaningful technical update to Louis Cottier’s design as originally produced by Patek in 1937. If the GMT complication is a pragmatic exercise in practicality, the world time complication at Patek Philippe is an example of seamlessly integrating high grade, practically oriented watchmaking with artistry.
The world time complication is undeniably useful but the 5110 and its descendants also reflect a god’s eye view of time on Earth which goes all the way back to Louis Cottier’s original invention from the 1930s, and that integration of aesthetics, mechanics, and even a philosophical perspective on the nature of time – as well as its essential place in the history of watchmaking – is what makes the 5110 stand alone.