The latest Breitling Heritage Talk took place last Thursday at their pop-up museum in Zurich – this time the history of their emblematic line and watchmaking icon, the Navitimer was in the spotlight.
The Heritage Talks have covered interesting topics since the inception of the Breitling pop-up museum in September 2023. In December, we participated the ‘Women in Time‘ roundtable discussing the role of women in the watchmaking industry.
The last week’s session was dedicated to the Navitimer, presented by Fred Mandelbaum brand historian, collector and the author of the ‘Premier Story – Breitling Premier, Duograph and Datora‘ and the ‘Breitling 140 Years 140 Stories‘ books. Fred’s wast knowledge about Breitling’s significant product line and its historical context, delivered at his modest but engaging style have captivated even the most hardcore watch aficionados.
In the lack of digital computing alternatives, Fred Mandelbaum used mechanical chronographs for his work as engineer to time intervals on production lines in the ’70s and ’80s. What started as a necessity became his hobby and he turned his attention to chronographs in general and Breitling in particular. Breitling never shared documentation of its history and therefore he decided to research it closer. The information he surfaced have not only shaped his choices when establishing his personal collection, but gave the foundation of the mentioned two books. What’s more it provided a structured input for Georges Kern and his team when taking over the company in 2017. As Fred recounted, the new co-owner and CEO called him while spending his vacation in Italy to talk about the brand’s heritage. The phone call ended up in an intensive week long co-working later that autumn immersing in the past and envisioning the future.
Air and space
In 1952, the US Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) approached Willy Breitling through his US distributor to create a new chronograph for its members. Developed from the 1942 Chronomat, the new watch included a slide rule bezel to enable calculations of climbing and average speeds and fuel consumption. The rotating bezel was surrounded by small beads to make it easier to manipulate the 41mm timepiece. The Navitimer name comes from the ‘navigation and timer’ functions. This very first Navitimer designed for the AOPA did not feature the Breitling brand name or logo on the dial, as it was only distributed to AOPA members. The line was powered by the Valjoux 72 manually wound chronograph movement. It was in production until 1955 and only 100 pieces were made, which makes these “pre-806” pieces highly coveted.
The Navitimer made its debut on the open market in 1956 under the reference 806. It featured the Breitling name above a stylized winged logo and omitting any reference to the AOPA. It also received the Venus 178 manually-wound chronograph movement.
After the skies, the timepiece conquered the space thanks to Scott Carpenter, an American naval officer and aviator, aeronautical engineer, and astronaut. He was one of the Mercury Seven astronauts selected for NASA’s Project Mercury in April 1959. Carpenter asked Bretiling to create a timepiece with a 24-hour dial, which he wore on his 1962 space flight. Upon his return Carpenter overshot his planned reentry mark and landed 400 km from the original target in the sea near Puerto Rico. The timepiece, which never intended to dive had gotten under water for more than an hour and ended up rusting badly. When it was returned to Willy Breitling, he decided to keep the exact timepiece that orbited around the Earth for its significance (below image) and delivered an identical piece to Scott Carpenter. Fred Mandelbaum shared an interesting interlude about the exchange – as the astronaut had sent back this piece to Willy Breitling as it had the subsequent commercial name “Cosmonaute” Navitimer on the dial, which was unpleasantly associated with the cold-war opponent. He received the second piece with just “Navitimer” on it.
The ‘reverse panda’ configuration with black dial and white sub-dials was introduced in 1963, offering increased legibility in low-light conditions. The new design codes have become very successful and are influential even today. Around 1965, the Navitimer received the famous twin-jet logo made of two superimposed aircraft, while some previous logos also remained in production.
Fred brought some exceptional timepieces from his collection to the talk, showcasing the different colour layouts, bezel types and logos the brand has used throughout the 70+ years of the Navitimer’s history – see a few examples in the gallery below.
In 1969, Calibre 11 the first automatic chronograph movement made in secret collaboration between Dubois Dépraz, Buren-Hamilton, Breitling and Heuer-Leonidas was installed in the Navitimer.
The Navitimer has become popular not only in the aviation world, but important figures from music or cinema have started to go for these watches. American jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis was known for wearing a Breitling Navitimer during performances, and the French singer-songwriter, actor, and director, Serge Gainsbourg wore his Navitimer 81600 with the iconic Air racer steel bracelet.
The quartz crisis hit Breitling and Willy Breitling sold it to electronics engineer and Swiss military veteran, Ernest Schneider in 1978. He launched the Navitimer also in a quartz version, the LED Navitimer, and later two models, featuring a LCD (Liquid Crystals Display) technology.
The company HQ became Gretchen in the early 80’s and the mechanical Navitimers returned with the 81600 model in 1986. In 2009, Breitling introduced the B01 automatic in-house movement which appeared in the Navitimer 01.
In 2017 the private equity firm CVC acquired the majority (80%) of Breitling SA from Theodore Schneider and later all the shares. Georges Kern, German-Swiss entrepreneur, ex-IWC CEO has been the CEO of Breitling since 2017. Building on the insights of Fred, the brand has successfully written the story of the Navitimer further. At the event, members of the Zürich boutique showcased a number of re-editions (eg. Navitimer Ref. 806 1959 Re-Edition) novelties such as the limited stainless steel Navitimer B01 Chronograph 43 Zürich with a green dial.
The next Talks will be announced soon, book your place here.
Photo credits: Loupiosity.com
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