The adventure of the pilot’s watch (I)

How can we imagine the extraordinary advances in aviation without navigation? How could these improbable machines cross the Channel or fly over oceans without mastering time? We must gauge our position in space in relation to time. If we know one, but not the other, we can only navigate by sight. Needless to say, this was a serious limitation on the new age of aviation that was taking shape in the early twentieth century. As at sea, without the ability to master time, any conquest of the air could be nothing but a vast utopia.

First flights, first icons

Leaving aside the old debate about who completed the first powered flight, Wilbur and Orville Wright were among the pioneering adventurers who took to the airs, having made their first officially recorded flights in 1903 and 1904, in the United States. The two brothers knew they couldn’t reasonably attempt their flight without an instrument to measure time. The watch Vacheron Constantin made to their design, in 1904, was the size of a pocket watch but fitted with a strap long enough to fasten around the thigh. Large Arabic numerals, a chronometer movement with small seconds, an oversized crown and easily legible openworked hands combine into what can perhaps be considered the first contemporary pilot’s watch.

The United States were not alone in this competition to have a heavier-than-air machine take off and fly. Europe had its own contender in the person of Alberto Santos Dumont. In 1906 the Franco-Brazilian aviator, who incidentally was the first to register three aeronautical patents, for a balloon, a dirigible and a plane, made the first flight to be officially verified by the Fédération Aéronautique International: a “hop, skip and a jump” of 220 metres in 21.5 seconds, giving a speed of 41.3 kph at some five metres above the ground. Santos Dumont also had his own, very clear idea about what a time-measuring instrument should look like. How was he supposed to read the time from a pocket watch when he had both hands on the controls of his plane, he complained to his friend Louis Cartier, in 1904. The pilot’s lament didn’t fall on deaf ears. Assisted by master watchmaker Edmond Jaeger, Louis Cartier came up with the solution in the form of a prototype wristwatch which, being intended for the pilot of a dirigible, had no small seconds. In 1908 the prototype became a full-fledged watch. The Cartier Santos Dumont went on sale in 1911 and an icon was born.

The pilot's watch takes form

Another of these “fathers of aviation”, Louis Blériot became the first man to cross the English Channel by plane when in 1909 he completed the distance between Calais and Dover in 36 minutes at a speed of 74 kph. Blériot made no secret of his admiration for the timepiece that accompanied him in his aeronautical exploits. “I am most satisfied with the Zenith watch of which I make regular use, and cannot recommend it too highly to anyone in need of precision,” he wrote in 1912. His 1909 Zenith already contained the DNA of every pilot’s watch to come: a large case, luminous hands and markers, oversized Arabic numerals and an oversized crown, a bimetallic balance with antimagnetic spring, and a strap that could be easily removed so that the case could be fixed to the control panel of the plane. Zenith forged a reputation for aviation watches such that its Aéronef Type 20 became standard issue for French fighter pilots on the eve of the Second World War.

In those days, watches were also fitted into the control panel, proof that a timepiece was an essential flight instrument. The British Royal Flying Corps took delivery first of the Mark IVA, in 1914, then in 1916 of the Mark V, made to the army’s exacting specifications. Pilots in the German Fliegertruppen, meanwhile, opted for a pocket watch with inverted dial which they wore attached to their flight suit by a chain. The production of pilot’s watches was becoming a serious business, and an increasingly strategic one too.