History of Pilot Watches
The groundwork for the making of wrist watches was laid by Cartier. Albert Santos Dumont, a Brazilian pilot and close friends of Cartier propelled the need for hands free watches. This was the drive that made Cartier develop his first ‘pilot’ watches.
Important Features
One of the main specialties of Pilots watches are that they have been provided with the additional functionality of a stopwatch. This feature made the watches suitable aerial chronographs.
The other important criterions that Pilots watches have to work in accordance with are the various environmental factors like variation in pressure, temperature and magnetic forces. Moreover, these watches need to provide accurate readings as they will be used in important calculations by pilots.
Working of Pilot Watches
As discussed above, Pilots watches are vied for their accuracy and this one feature makes them so important in the aviation industry. So, naturally, the question arises as to how do the watches offer such precise timing?
Every Pilot Watch remains connected through a radio to an extremely accurate clock that remains installed at the base. On the basis of its readings, minutes are sounded off to the pilot. The pilots have the provision of adjusting their seconds display with that of the base clock as the minutes and hours display remained separated from the seconds display. This made synchronizing the time easier without having to handle the other mechanical readings of the pilot watch. This made sure that when air-borne, pilots had accurate timings and could make important calculations on its basis. “Hacking” was the term used to explain the process of regulating the seconds. “Hack seconds” refers to the seconds displayed in the earlier versions of Pilot watches.
