By Carl Scutt
The Glashütte Original Senator Cosmopolite is a spectacular world-timer watch and like most world-timers it is quite busy in its design. The typical design would see the city disc and 24-hour indicator along the dial’s circumference to permit the reading of different time zones. This design in its very nature tends to do two things that make the design too busy to read easily, and doesn’t help the wearer read time zones that require an off set of 30 minutes less or more.
Happily, this is addressed by the Glashütte complex design. The currently displayed second timezone is visible 8 o’clock as STD or DST. At 6 o’clock a small seconds sub-dial, at 9 o’clock is the day-night indicator for the destination timezone. The sub-dial at 12 o’clock is the power reserve indicator and a home time day-night indicator.
How It Works
The crowns at 2 o’clock and at 8 o’clock are used to set the Home Time and Destination respectively, the wearer can use the 4 o’clock crown and while travelling the 4 o’clock crown can advance or retard the time to set the desired destination time against one of the apertures at 8 o’clock.
Details
The Cosmopolite is a 44mm stainless steel case houses the automatic Caliber 89-02 which can be seen through the sapphire case-back. The 63 jewel movement features 14ct gold adjustment screws, micro-rotor with oscillating weight edged with 21ct gold, running at 28,800 vph or 4Hz with 72-hour power reserve. All this still offers a modest water resistance rated at 5 Bar or 50m.
Appearance
The Cosmopolites’ appearance as a large white dial has blue printed Arabic numerals with applied blue indexes making the destination time easily readable regardless of all the information on offer, with the home time dial using black printed numerals for contrast.
Securing the piece is a blue Louisiana alligator strap with the option of a tang buckle, a standard length fold fastener, or a short fold fastener.
Final Word
This piece is an impressive design that has perfectly balanced the need of the wearer to be presented with a large amount of information on a limited piece of real estate. Unlike most world-timers the Glashütte Original Senator Cosmopolite presents as a highly sophisticated, well thought out and proportioned design.
In the final analysis, this piece is offering reliability and complexity that belies its subtle appearance and at a price of €20,700, it’s got to be a winner in its category. For more info, visit Glashütte Original online.
