Globalization ranks among the most important aspects of modern life. Goods and services are exchanged around the planet. Financial currents follow the opening hours of the world’s stock exchanges and flow around the world once each day. Residing in Germany, cultivating business relationships in the USA and enjoying holidays in the Seychelles: such arrangements and countless variations on them have become everyday features in modern people’s lives. But this global presence has its cost because the sun never really sets on our planet: only from the local perspective does the sun appear to sink below the horizon, while it simultaneously rises into the sky elsewhere on Earth. If an American executive goes to a business dinner in Shanghai at eight o’clock in the evening, his family will still be fast asleep in San Francisco, where the local time is five o’clock in the morning, while his colleagues at European headquarters in Paris will be returning from their lunch break. That’s why global living makes it so important to keep a sharp eye on time zones and time differences in one’s interactions with partners, friends, colleagues, loved ones and clients. One certainly wouldn’t want to needlessly awaken a loved one or a customer with an ill-timed long-distance phone call in the middle of the night. Such mishaps are the undesirable results of failure to take time differences into account.
Watches that simultaneously show the time in more than one zone are accordingly an important speciality for watchmakers. Such timepieces belong to a genre in which Montblanc has achieved several attention-getting feats. These so-called “time-zone watches” can satisfy very different requirements for globetrotters and frequent flyers. Among these functions are the simultaneous display of the times in both the user’s local and home zones or the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time +/- time zone) function, but also the ability to show all of the planet’s 24 time zones at a glance, including day/night indication for the home zone, as well as showing the date, facilitating quick and easy changes from one zone’s display to another, etc.
Montblanc combines the TimeWalker’s modern, contemporary design with technical horological competence in three different interpretations for people who love to travel. Extremely practical functions for travellers are offered in the unmistakable TimeWalker look with narrow bezel, spacious dial, unified typography for the numerals and elegantly skeletonised horns to affix the wristband.
Montblanc TimeWalker World-Time Hemispheres
The Whole World on the Wrist
Montblanc’s TimeWalker Hemispheres are a very special kind of world-time watches, which simultaneously show the different times in all 24 of the world’s time zones. The local time in the zone where the wearer is currently sojourning is shown by the hands, while the flange around the dial bears the names of 24 cities, each of which represents one of the 24 time zones into which our planet is divided. A 24-hour disc indicating the hours at the locations positioned radially opposite the disc’s markings on the flange turns at the centre of the dial. Presto! The wearer can instantly see which hour has chimed on clocks in all of the world’s time zones.
That explains the functional principle of the mechanical Montblanc TimeWalker World-Time Hemispheres watches. As an additional exclusive feature, Montblanc has enriched these timepieces with another dimension. While the time zones progress with the sun from east to west across the meridians of longitude, Montblanc’s latest creation also brings the north-south axis into play because the Montblanc TimeWalker World-Time Hemispheres is available in a northern and a southern version. The Northern Hemisphere model shows a map of the Earth as seen from the north with the North Pole at its centre; the Southern Hemisphere variant puts the South Pole in the midpoint. Logically, the ring of place names on the Northern Hemisphere model consists solely of locations in that hemisphere; the southern counterpart bears only the names of places situated south of the Equator. These different perspectives naturally affect the time displays and require corresponding adaptations in the mechanical movements. Both models have immobile rings around their dials marked with the 24 place names in the relevant hemisphere, but the 24-hour discs in the centres turn in opposite directions: the disc turns clockwise on the Northern Hemisphere watch, it bears a 24-hour scale labelled anticlockwise; the 24-hour disc on the Southern Hemisphere timepiece turns anticlockwise and bears a 24-hour scale labelled clockwise. The two TimeWalker World-Time Hemispheres models differ not only because of their different dials, but also because they’re equipped with different movements, which are necessary to rotate the 24-hour discs of the two timepieces in the proper directions.
To assure that the wearer can keep an eye on the entire planet, from east to west and from north to south, the Northern Hemisphere watch bears the southern place names on its case back and vice versa.
This spectacle is packed into a stainless steel TimeWalker case which measures 42 mm in diameter and has a very narrow bezel, thus leaving ample room for large and readily legible indicators: a time-zone ring with the 24 place names, an hour circle with the TimeWalker’s typical relief numerals and indices, a 24-hour disc in the centre (where it turns clockwise in the one model and anticlockwise in the other) and a window for the date at the “6”. To preclude potential confusion, the northern model and southern variant each has its own colour scheme. The Northern Hemisphere watch bears a silvery grey dial and is affixed to a sporty black leather strap. The wristwatch for the Southern Hemisphere has a dark anthracite-coloured dial and a stainless steel bracelet with a folding clasp.