His design, developed in 1931, was first used on a pocket watch by Beszanger, a local jeweler in Carouge, near Geneva. But most notably Patek Philippe used this design, though Rolex and Vacheron Constantin, among others, developed models based on Cottier’s information, according to Osvaldo Patrizzi, writing in the Antiquorum magazine Vox.
It was as a Patek Philippe world timer, made in 1946 from Cottier’s design, that fetched the all-time world-record price ($4 million) for a wristwatch at auction in 2002. The watch, first sold in 1950, indicates the names and times of forty-one cities, countries and regions on its rotating bezel.
Like that watch, most of these world timers were relatively exclusive. It took Tissot, in 1953, to develop the Navigator, a more affordable world timer. That design was a success and Tissot continues to offer new versions of the watch.
 
Bezels and Buttons
 
One common type of world timer places twenty-four cities spaced along an outer or inner bezel that can be rotated by the user. A 24-hour internal bezel rotates once a day, and on it are the twenty-four hour markers. By placing the user’s current location and hour reading at the top of the dial, he or she can then read the names of the cities and their respective times around the bezel, as indicated in 24-hour time. Typically the indicator also shows day/night indication, an important factor when considering global time.
This involves two different gear trains. One operates the 12-hour hand and the other controls the 24-hour chapter ring. It’s a complication usually built onto a base caliber, says Donald Loke, a watchmaker and the distributor of Vogard (a world timer) and globe watch Megellan.
A more simplistic method involves placing the home city on the hour hand of the watch. Here, look to the bezel indicator for the name of the appropriate city to determine how many hours it is ahead or behind the local time.
A newer world timer, by Vogard, allows the wearer to simply turn the bezel to set the desired city at the top of the dial. The hour and minute hands now read the time in that city and a smaller 24-hour hand indicates whether that time is am or pm.
Of course, many other brands have developed their own world timers, and we’ve placed a few of the better-known models, both quartz and mechanical, on the following pages. Because there are so many multiple-time zone watches, and many GMT watches, we’ve narrowed it down to only those watches that place cities to reference on the dial or case.