Polerouter. Genta's first great journey
Gérald Genta was twenty-three when he designed it for Universal Genève. Behind the Polerouter's twisted lugs lie a SAS polar route, an unusually useful dial ring and a rather small rotor.
Read the story02 / Origins
There is always someone behind the watch.
Where a house or a reference actually came from — with the facts behind the legend.
12 stories
Cartier Crash: not a melted watch, but a changing city
A car-crash legend, two London designers and a watch that was harder to make than to draw. The Cartier Crash story, from 1967 to today’s skeleton movements.
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The Dirty Dozen
Twelve makers, black dials and three letters on the case back. Britain's W.W.W. watches reveal what happens when legibility matters more to the customer than the name on the dial.
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The spy’s two lives
On screen, James Bond wears a watch. Off screen, we sometimes buy a story. Omega’s 007 editions begin with an anniversary Seamaster and now extend to the other side: Spectre.
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Eleven in the date window
The date is still legible on Todd Beamer's damaged Rolex. The watch of a Flight 93 passenger traces the passage from personal possession to historical remembrance.
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The president's watch that was not designed for a president
Eisenhower wore a gold Rolex, but it was not a Day-Date. Lyndon B. Johnson, a distinctive bracelet and carefully framed advertising turned the model into the President.
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The square watch nobody wanted at first
The Heuer Monaco arrived in 1969 with a water-resistant square case, an automatic chronograph and its crown on the left. It failed, disappeared, then returned as Steve McQueen’s watch.
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The watch that started the quartz revolution on Christmas Day
On Christmas Day 1969, Seiko released a gold watch that cost as much as a car. The Quartz Astron still changed the entire watch industry.
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Not the best watch, and yet I keep coming back to it
The Frederique Constant Worldtimer wins no spec race. What it carries instead is the stubbornness of a Dutch couple, and it handles the whole planet from a single crown.
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The man who put watches on men's wrists
Alberto Santos-Dumont flew around the Eiffel Tower, built the world's first series-produced aeroplane, and patented none of it. Along the way he asked a friend to devise something that would let him keep both hands on the controls.
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Never made for space: the true story of the Omega Speedmaster
The most famous space watch was never made for space: in 1957 it was a racing chronograph. NASA did not commission it either, but chose it through brutal testing, and the first watch on the Moon was not even Armstrong's.
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It wasn't a Genta: the true story of the Vacheron Constantin 222
The 1970s wave of steel luxury sports watches produced three great names. The third, the Vacheron 222, is the least known, and its story is even more interesting than its name.
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