Blog | robbglow

The best worldtimer watches.

1943 'Air Map of the World'

The world timer is synonymous with world travel and the northern projection map is most compatible with the history of navigation and exploration so it's only right they be together. Considering this fact, putting city names in the opposite direction just doesn't seem to make much sense. These are the only brands that make a northern polar projection worldtimer watch with the city names lining up to the map. Let's explore some old maps to emphasize why this works.

We'll start with the

F.P. Journe

Octa UTC

as a preface to point out how it shows more than most, including land south of the equator, noting Australia. This is similar to the Azimuthal Equidistant projection which places Antarctica as a ring of ice surrounding the outside.

Second up is the

Jaquet Droz

Grande Seconde Dual Time

Australia looks significantly smaller here and seems to most resemble this map found in Japan said to be 1,000 years old, with lands beyond the southern ice wall. Without the city names, you'll need to know a bit of geography.

Here is the

Montblanc

Star Legacy Orbis Terrarum

which doesn't include parts of the map south of the equator but instead uses half of the Gott Projection. There are no maps that are 100% accurate, but The Gott Projection is the most precise version to exist.

The

Vacheron Constantin

Traditionnelle World Time

goes above and beyond in a way, displaying 37 timezones instead of 24. Using the Gott Projection as well, like this 'Global Air Map of WWII' below, showing flight routes from San Francisco to Chungking.

The

Magellan

1521 World Time

With a strong resemblance to a map showing the route Magellan took to circumnavigate the earth, The Ship Victoria’s Journey, a map by Heinrich Scherer, c. 1700.