The launch of the GMT-Master in 1955 came at a point when people were beginning to move around the world faster and distances were becoming shorter. On land, at sea and in the skies, the relationship between time and travel was fundamentally shifting. Long-haul flights allowed voyagers to cross from one continent to another without a stopover. The GMT-Master accompanied the major transformations of its era.

The GMT-Master carries its function in its name. ‘GMT’ stands for Greenwich Mean Time, which indicates the mean solar time as measured at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. Since 1884, it has been the prime meridian used to determine the 24 different time zones around the world. The GMT-Master II, launched in 1982, fulfils the same function as its predecessor. The watch’s triangle-tipped 24-hour hand and 24-hour graduated bidirectional rotatable bezel enable the wearer to read the time in another time zone. The difference in the two models lies in the adjustment of the local hour hand. On the GMT-Master II, it is adjusted in one-hour increments – independently of the other hands and without stopping the watch.