By Harlan Chapman-Green
Yet another day and yet more watches to look at. This time, we’re focusing on what’s perceived by many fans to be the king of wristwatch makers, Patek Philippe. In the 1940s, Patek mixed a world time and a chronograph complication in one watch, it was made for a physician of the time and is now a museum piece. They haven’t mixed these two since then, until now.
The movement of the watch is, as usual, completely hand made and is automatic winding. The chronograph module in the Reference 5930 is a column wheel vertical clutch mechanism. This means, for those that aren’t in the know, that the chronograph will work more seamlessly. Column wheel means that the chronograph doesn’t use the normal cam-based system, this means the chronograph is more reliable in the long run. A vertical clutch, as opposed to a horizontal clutch, doesn’t suffer from issues related to the chronograph running for a long time, as such, you can run this chronograph as long as you like (this is often useful as a way to open up another time zone on the watch but I don’t think that’s really necessary with this piece!). Did I mention that it’s a flyback chronograph too? That means you don’t need to perform the usual three step process to reset the chronograph: 1. Stop 2. Reset 3. Restart. Instead, you simply hit reset while the chronograph is running and it goes straight back to zero and starts again, useful if you plan on timing how long your poolside dozes are.
Once the watch is set properly it’s incredibly easy to use the world time function. The centre is at twelve, this means that when you adjust the time zone depending on your travels it’s the city at 12 O’clock which has the current time displayed by the hands, but of course, you can tell the time in any of the cities by simply visualising where the hour hand would be thanks to a 24 hour ring. Remember, if London is at the top then everything on the right of it down to 6 O’clock will be ahead of it in hours and it’s behind for everything on the other side. Pressing the adjuster at 10 O’clock will turn the hour hand and city ring forwards one step and the 24-hour disk one step counter-clockwise to adjust correctly.
The 18K white gold case measures 39.5mm in diameter and has winglet style lugs which were found on 40s and 50s world time watches from Patek. The movement is on display on the back of the case and has been exquisitely finished by hand as we’d come to expect from Patek Philippe. The automatic rotor is made of solid 21K gold and features the Patek Philippe logo while the movement itself bears the Seal of Patek Philippe, a title only bestowed to Patek watches. This watch will fetch around $73,000 when it goes on sale soon. For more info, please visit patek.com
HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN – MANAGING 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
