By Harlan Chapman-Green
At the Watches & Wonders event in Hong Kong, Jaeger-LeCoultre unveiled this new world time watch which has a unique twist built into it.
Unless you own the world’s largest collection of world time and GMT watches you might not notice immediately the difference with this watch. To help you out, take a look at the Patek Philippe World Time watch collection and pay particular attention to the case. If you still haven’t figured out yet (which is perfectly okay, by the way) you might also want to check out the Breguet Classique Hora Mundi 5717 watch, we’re happy to wait. That’s more than enough time (probably, simply because this is text so it could take you all day to get back to us or you might well have spotted it immediately, we don’t know!), there is no button or crown on the case to adjust the world time complication.
This is because it has been built into the crown of the watch instead making this a very discreet addition that pretty much sums up Jaeger-LeCoultre’s obsessive attention to every single detail on a watch. In the normal wearing position the crown of the watch winds the movement, pull it all the way out and the hours and minutes can be adjusted. What’s most interesting on this watch, though, is the middle position of the crown. In this position, the wearer is able to move the 24-hour wheel of the watch and, therefore, set the watch ready for travelling across the globe, it will also not need to be reset while the wearer is embarking on their global quest.
To accompany this function, the movement of the watch also needs to be resilient to the bumps and scuffs of everyday life. Luckily, the new in-house made Jaeger-LeCoultre 772 calibre is more than ready for the task at hand. Like the calibre 770, the calibre 772 is equipped with the True Second system, first introduced in the Master Compressor Extreme Lab 1 watch as the Gyrolab, the True Seconds system uses a different balance wheel design which still retains the curves of a circle, but is actually an incomplete circle. This is said by Jaeger-LeCoultre to reduce air friction inside the watch and, therefore, make the watch more accurate, quite how this works I’m not sure, but I hope to get hands-on with a True Seconds Jaeger-LeCoultre watch at some point in the future, so I’ll be sure to ask. The movement is decorated with Côte de Genève stripes, this also extends to the solid gold rotor too. 
The new Geophysic Universal Time watch from Jaeger-LeCoultre will be on sale soon at $15,000 in steel and you should expect to pay around $25,000 for the watch in rose gold.
For more info, please visit jaeger-lecoultre.com
HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN – CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
A keen bass guitar player, Harlan enjoys all the perks modern watchmaking technologies the industry has to offer. Although you might catch him sampling Omegas or the odd Rolex, Harlan loves all things Haute Horology, with his three favourite brands being Breguet, A.Lange & Söhne and Vacheron Constantin. He hopes to study timekeeping more in depth someday and will never be able to thank his father enough for introducing him to the industry. You can follow him on Instagram Read his articles here
