It’s easy to forget now, but getting on an airplane was a big deal in the 1950s. Legendary modern architect Eero Saarinen was designing airports, first-class meant a steak dinner and a Manhattan at 10,000 feet, and the idea of hopping from New York to Paris for the weekend was only a step or two less incredible than a day trip to the moon. In our current era of TSA PreCheck and boarding passes on your phone, that romance might be mostly gone. But luckily not entirely. We’ve still got the Rolex GMT-Master.
The GMT-Master, which was released in 1955 and is celebrating its 70th birthday this year, was a totally new kind of travel watch. The design made the previously arduous task of tracking multiple time zones a cinch. It didn’t require any complicated mechanics nor a magnifying glass to read two dozen cities around the outer edge. (That’s how watches like Patek Philippe’s famous ref. 1415 and 2523 worked before Rolex’s invention of the GMT.) The GMT was revolutionary in its simplicity. With a second hour hand and bezel marked with all 24 hours, all the wearer needed to do was rotate that bezel to whatever the time difference was and use it along with the arrow-shaped GMT hand to read the hours in your new location. It took something fussy and made it cool, simple, and easy to appreciate. There’s a reason Pan-Am crews wore the original version and the model has remained in continuous production, mostly unchanged.
What really makes the GMT-Master special has been there for 70 years now: The watch represents the very spirit of what it means to travel. It is an instant portal to another location on planet Earth—other people, other places, other concerns—right on your wrist. It is permission to break outside the everyday and to cook up an adventure. And when you’re on those adventures, it’s a reminder of home and a link to what’s happening there. Because of why and when this watch was invented, it is inextricably linked to the dawn of commercial aviation. And that important connection to human achievement is what makes the watch so meaningful.
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