WT_2006_06: LONGINES HOUR ANGLE

LONGINES HOUR ANGLE
with a way to shave minutes off the process. It
was a watch that could, in effect, convert time
into distance with a few quick turns of the
crown.
It was called the Hour Angle watch. Longines
introduced it in the early 1930s. The
watch is among the most famous Longines has
ever made, thanks both to its celebrity provenance
and its unusual technical features.
From time to time, Longines has issued
replicas or near-replicas of the watch. One was
introduced in 1987, in honor of the 60th anniversary
of Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight; another
in 1990; and another in 2002, to mark
the crossing’s 75th anniversary. Now, on the
eve of its 80th anniversary, Longines has come
out with a replica in the same 47.5-mm size as
the original and with an automatic movement,
the ETA A07.111, a member of the company’s
new family of Valgranges movements. (The
106 WatchTime December 2006
1987 and 1990 replicas were smaller; the 2002
version was a manual-wind.) The watch has
the same big onion crown (the easier to grip
while wearing gloves), the same white lacquer
dial, and the same impressive array of numerical
scales, in the same old-time typeface, as the
original. The suggested retail price is $4,100.
High and Mighty
The story of the Hour Angle begins during
World War I, when Longines emerged as the
preeminent manufacturer of aviation timepieces.
Founded in St. Imier in 1832 (the brand
name Longines dates to 1867), the company
made clocks and chronographs for use on the
dashboards of military aircraft. By the 1920s, it
was making pilots’ wristwatches. In 1928, A.
Wittnauer, the U.S. distributor of Longines
watches (the company also marketed its own
Lindbergh designed the watch to simplify the time-consuming
task of determining one’s longitude.
brand of watches, manufactured in Switzerland),
introduced its well-known All-Proof, a
water-resistant, shock-resistant, anti-magnetic
watch worn by many aviators. (Wittnauer is
now owned by Bulova Corp.)
So dominant were Longines and Wittnauer
in the field of aviation timepieces that Marvin
Whitney, author of what is regarded as the
bible on military timepieces, gave Longines-
Wittnauer its own chapter, an honor he awarded
no other company. In that book, Military
Timepieces, he wrote: “I felt that no one company
has been involved in the design and production
of so many different types of navigational
timepieces and been involved in so many
history-making expeditions as Longines. Longines
created more than 100 special timepieces
for air and sea navigation.”
Longines’s prominence in the aviation field
was thanks largely to one man, John P.V. Heinmuller.
A German-born watchmaker, Heinmuller
began working for Longines in Switzerland
as a teenager, and in 1912, at age 19, was
transferred to the A. Wittnauer firm in New
York. He eventually became the company’s
president. But horology was just one of his interests;
he was an airplane enthusiast extraordinaire
who became the chief timer for the National
Aeronautic Association. (People called
him “Aero I” in honor of his great passion.)
While there, he timed many of the famous
flights of the 1920s, including Lindbergh’s: he
was at Le Bourget field when the 25-year-old
pilot landed there on May 21. Heinmuller
wrote about many of the notable flights in aviation’s
early days, including those he had witnessed
himself, in the book, Man’s Fight to Fly,
published in 1944. He designed many aviation
timepieces and instruments for A. Wittnauer,
and often consulted with well-known pilots
about them. Among these aviators was Admiral
Richard Byrd, who brought dozens of the
company’s timepieces on his three trips to
Antarctica in the late 1920s and early ’30s.
A New Angle
Heinmuller’s aviation-world acquaintances
also included Philip Van Horn Weems, the most
Charles Lindbergh’s original sketch for the Hour Angle watch Continued on page 110