2012
LUXURY WATCH GUIDE
SPECIAL ADVERTISING FEATURE
U
NOVEMBER 2012
51
S
ince 1884, the world has
been divided into 24 main
time zones, based on a sys-
tem of longitudinal merid-
ians (with some half-hour
and some quarter-hour
zones). Because of this, it
has always been a challenge for travel-
ers to figure out precisely what time it is
in the time zone you are in, not to men-
tion where you’ve come from and where
you’re going.
Of course, time is essential to travel –
planes and trains are scheduled to the
minute, and on the traveler’s side, it’s im-
portant to know what time it is no ma er
what part of the world you are in so you
don’t miss your flight or that important
meeting. Also, you need to know what
time it is back home so you don’t call and
wake people up in the middle of the night.
Trying to do all that with an ordinary,
single time zone watch is challenging,
involving mathematics and mental gym-
nastics not so easily accomplished, espe-
cially when jet lagged.
That’s where time zone watches -- also
known as dual time, world time or GMT/
UTC watches -- come in. These watches
have a way to display at least two time
zones to make things easier on travelers;
allowing the mechanisms to do the calcu-
lations required to figure out time zones
for you. So, the hardest decision you have
to make is which watch to buy.
A LITTLE HISTORY
In Europe, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
was established in 1675 to help navigators
determine longitude at sea. The first time
zone was established in Great Britain,
based on GMT, in 1847. Interestingly, GMT
wasn’t officially adopted as the time zone
for Britain until 1880.
When travel became more common-
place, a system of standardizing time was
necessary. In 1884, an International Prime
Meridian Conference was held in Wash-
ington D.C. to standardize time and se-
lect Greenwich, England as zero degrees
longitude (the Prime Meridian), and the
conference established the 24 time zones
based on that Prime Meridian.
Although the time zones had been es-
tablished, not all countries switched im-
mediately. In China, five time zones were
being used as of 1912, though in 1949, the
People’s Republic of China decided to use
only one time zone for the entire country.
By 1929, most countries around the
world started keeping time by this sys-
tem. In 1972, the majority of the world
adopted Coordinated Universal Time
(
UTC), and now official time zones are
indicated by +/- UTC. There are, however,
some parts of the world that divide time
differently than originally conceived.
Travel Time
The IWC Portofino
Dual Time
