Rolex: THE GMT-MASTER

(Rolex: THE GMT-MASTER)

Pan American Airways was the first airline to make intercontinental flights with the 707 aircraft. Pan- American was worried about the effect of “Jet-Lag” on its pilots to commission a research and as a result, the company asked Rolex to develop a watch that could keep their pilots knowing their home time and the local time to which they had reached. In remarkably short order the task force produced the “G.M.T. Master” (model 6542), named after Greenwich Mean Time, the world’s standard time. The GMT Master featured a 1035 calibre movement upgraded with the addition of a supplementary 24 hour driving wheel. This new movement was called calibre 1065 powered now four hands where the new hand was complemented by a rotable 24 hour bezel. In 1976, approximately, the GMT Master started featuring the hacking second’s movement and a few years later the “quickset” attribute was also added. Finally, the sapphire crystal was added.
The second and newest model was the GMT-Master II, model 16710, featuring the new calibre 3085 movement which allowed the hour hand to be moved forward and backwards in precise one hour jumps without losing the precise accuracy which was usually the reason the watch was bought in the first place.












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