Happy Tycoon

Lying on the big bed without any image, Yang Jing pressed the extremely precious watch firmly on his chest with both hands, and it took a long time to calm down the heart that almost jumped out of his throat.

Yang Jing didn't even dare to look at the watch carefully, for fear that his eyes would get stuck in it and he wouldn't be able to pull it out.

From the first sight of this watch, Yang Jing was convinced that it was definitely a Patek Philippe Platinum World Time watch, and it was personally made by Master Lewis Cotier.

Without him, you can know this just by looking at the unique shape of the second hand.

The works of Master Lewis Cotier all have a remarkable feature, that is, the unusual shape of the hands, especially the hour hands, are all completely handmade, and the hands in each watch are slightly different. This has become the signature of Master Louis Cotier which is different from other watches.

And this feature of Master Lewis Cotill is also unique in the world!

The case diameter of this precious world time watch is 39.5 mm, and the strap is black. The most important thing is that whenever Yang Jing sees the unique black and white 24-hour dial, his heart will speed up involuntarily. beat.

This is a Patek Philippe Platinum World Time watch!

Even before I discovered this watch myself, people all over the world believed that there was only one piece of this watch.

Even Master Lewis Cotill did not say that he had made a second watch of this kind during his lifetime.

But in fact, the three letterheads that appeared together with this watch proved that Master Lewis Cotill had indeed made a watch of the same model back then, and also revealed a little-known story of Master Cotill. past.

In the watch industry, when it comes to Master Lewis Cotill, everyone will say that he is a watchmaking genius beyond his time!

When mentioning this master watchmaker, one has to talk about the world clock.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the prototype of the world time was still vague. With the deepening of the second industrial revolution and the invention of trains, ships, and automobiles, human beings have become more and more capable of breaking through space constraints, making it relatively easy to travel between two cities that are far apart. At the same time, with the invention of the telegraph, instant communication around the world has become possible, which requires a unified global setting of time.

Especially in that era, on a certain day in that era, trains from two cities at different times collided due to uncoordinated timing. For this reason, Sandford Fleming, a railway engineer employed by the Canadian Pacific Railway at the time, became determined to change the status quo.

In 1876, Shingford Fleming suggested that the world time be summarized into 24, and every 15 degrees of longitude in the world is the same time zone, named after 24 of the 26 English letters except J, Y. At first, people didn't realize the importance of the world time, because after all, only the trader or workers like him need the world time. As he spared no effort to spread the word, finally at the International Meridian Conference in 1884, the concept of world time was recognized.

The world's first dual time zone pocket watch, which was born later, was called Captain's-watches (captain's watch), which was mainly used by train drivers.

As the creators of time, watchmakers have been working on exploring the secret of simultaneously displaying the time of multiple regions and even the world after the promotion of the concept of universal time.

Universal time was first applied to pocket watches, but when it comes to the originator of modern universal time watches, it is the world time zone mechanism invented by Master Cotier in 1935.

The world time watch is a kind of time zone watch, which can display the time of more than 24 cities. The world time watch is the most complicated time zone watch, and it is the well-deserved all-around king of time zone watches. By displaying 24 different time zones around the world and adjusting the main cities pointed to by the dial scale to adjust to the local time, holding the world time watch in your hand is like grasping the pulse of the world. 24 hearts beating at the same time indicate every hour of time. corner.

On September 28, 1894, Maestro Cotier was born in Carouge, Geneva, a small place belonging to Sardinia under the rule of the Bourbon dynasty.

Cotier's father Emmael was already a well-known watchmaker at that time and owned a small workshop in Rousheng-Victor, Switzerland.

Cotier grew up and studied at the Geneva School of Horology. Because he was good at repairing complex clocks, he was recommended by the famous watch historian Alfred Chapis to Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, and commissioned the restoration and maintain his collection of precious antique watches.

Facts have proved that this professional study has profoundly affected Cotill and benefited him in the following years, especially during the Great Depression. After finishing his studies, he successively worked as a technical guide in several local factories. After the economic crisis in the late 1920s, many factories were forced to reduce production, and the factories he served went bankrupt. At this time, Kotil decided to start his own personal business amid internal and external troubles.

At that time, Cotill's wife opened a stationery store in Rouvatier, a small town near Carouge, Switzerland. Cotill worked in the studio behind the stationery store for 13 years. Here he started making moulds for table clocks, pocket watches, watches and hand-made movements. Most of the watches he made were special jumping watches and rare automatic watches at that time. It was in this workshop in 1931 that Cotier manufactured the first world time zone pocket watch for a well-known watch and jewelry store called Beszanger.

After continuous design and production, Cotier gradually became an expert in world time zone watches. He designed works for many watch factories in Geneva, and these works all have the same characteristics.

His best and most stable client was Patek Philippe, which commissioned him to design and manufacture a large number of world time zone watches. Vacheron Constantin, Andre Agassi and Rolex also commissioned him to design world time zone watches, and Cotier soon became a famous person in the industry.

In 1935, Master Cotier invented the world time zone watch structure (Heures-Universelles, HU). This exquisite structure seems to have fulfilled the 24 time zones of the world previously summarized by Shingford Fleming, and the HU mechanism accommodates 24 time zones in the same dial.

In 1937, after two years of careful research and development, Cotier finally produced the world's first world timepiece for Patek Philippe - Ref.515. He installed a separation mechanism inside the movement, that is to say, when the user presses the adjustment button, the hour hand and the city outer circle advance one step in the opposite direction, but at this time the minute hand is always connected to the movement. This enables the movement to maintain accurate travel time.

In the same year, he made the world's smallest world time zone watch for Patek Philippe. From 1937 to 1938, he made a three-calendar complex function world time zone clock for Patek Philippe. This complex clock is now displayed in the Beyer Museum in Zurich.

In 1940, at the request of Patek Philippe, Cotier made a watch with both world time zone and pulsometer functions for one of the company's customers, a doctor in Paris.

In 1946, because the citizens of Geneva wanted to thank the Allied forces for their contribution to the just-concluded World War II, Cotier, designed by Wenger, made four gold world time zone watches decorated with enamel for Agassiz. The watches were given to several major military leaders at the time: Churchill, President Truman, Stalin and General de Gaulle. Cotill also built a world time zone clock for President Roosevelt's widow.

By that time, Cotier had become a famous master watchmaker, and the Patek Philippe Platinum World Time Men's Watch Ref-1415-HU, which once set a world record for watch auctions, was made by him in 1939. .

The identical Patek Philippe Platinum World Time Men's Watch Ref-1415-HU in Yang Jing's hand was made by Master Cotier in 1940, and the customer was the doctor in Paris.

All of this is on the three pieces of letterhead wrapped together with the watch.

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