Unique Watches: Gerald Genta

In today's Montreal Gazette is an advertisement for a Gerald Genta watch show. I was intrigued as I couldn't figure out how to read the time on the watch. The watch is the Octo Biretro by Gerald Genta pictured on the right.

Well I headed to the site to figure it out. The digit display in the top center of the watch are the hours. The minutes are indicated by the hand pointing at 0-60. So in the image on the right, the date is the time is 08:14. The date is indicated by the hand pointing at 1-31. In the image it is the 28th. Cool!



 I continued my investigation and found other unique watches by the same designer. The Octo 48-Month MP watch has a “phases of the moon” indicator at 12 o'clock. At 3 o'clock is the 48 month leap year indicator. At 9 o'clock is the weekday indicator and at 6 o'clock is the date indicator. Oh, yeah, a regular watch face with hour and minute hand gives the time. Okay so the watch on the left reads Monday the 28th of May at 10:10.

 The Octo Chrono Quattro watch features "jumping hours" displayed as digits at 12 o'clock. The minutes are displayed in the top half of the watch. A 12-hour chronograph is displayed at 9 o'clock and a 30-minute chronograph is at the 3 o'clock position. Finally the date is displayed at 6 o'clock. So the time on the image on the right is 08:10 on the 25th of the month. The chronograph is at 4 hours 25 minutes. Whew! That's a lot of functionality in one watch.

 
Finally the pièce de résistance – the Octo Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar Moon Phase World Wide Timer watch. That’s quite a mouthful! It has a “phases of the moon” indicator at 12 o'clock; a month/leap year indicator at 3 o'clock; a week day indicator at 9 o'clock; and a date indicator at 6 o'clock. It also features global time on the outer rotating bezel and a night/day indicator on the inner rotating bezel. The watch above reads 10:10 on Saturday April 17th.

[Source: Gerald Genta]

Check out the Gerald Genta watches in the webstore.