In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth, the aide-de-camp to General Simon Bolivar, Jose Palacios is described as wearing two pocket watches on his jacket as if they were medals bestowed by a horological executive power. Such a regal man can be said to have had time at his command and makes for a telling contrast with his master, the dying liberator of northern South America, Bolivar.
Given that the narrative of the story spans at least two time zones in South America, having two watches is also highly practical. If the story was set in contemporary times, Palacios may have used an MP3 player and a cell phone as his timekeepers.
The art of capturing time and bending it to the will of a mechanism is somewhat less magical today than it was in the first half of the 19th century, the period depicted in Marquez's book. In the first part of the 20th century, advances in horology allowed just one watch to show the time in multiple locations – thanks to the invention of the world time mechanism – even as global travel was about to become a possibility.
At that time, keeping time on one's wrist was just as romantic a notion as getting on a plane for a trip to another continent. Today, the traffic on the way to the airport – to say nothing of constrictive all-new safety regulations – has taken the shine off jet-setting.
As we recounted in our story on traveler’s watches last year (one of which is the previous version of the UTC pictured on this page), the hazards of contemporary air travel are almost enough to convince watch lovers to keep their most precious mechanical watches at home. Nevertheless, the appeal of having a well-crafted tool serve up both home time and local time (time at one’s destination) is undiminished. As a bonus, mechanical watches are not subject to commercial aviation rules that limit or bar the use of digital devices.
With this in mind, we decided to revisit the traveler's watch, this time with an emphasis on the most iconic and important of the most recent fine mechanical watches. Before we get to that though, it is important to note the distinguishing characteristics of the two types of traveler's watches: the GMT watch and the World Time watch.
