Lot 352

Longines

Weems Hour Angle Sidereal Time

An aviator's rare, oversized vintage wristwatch with centre seconds and Weems second setting system - according to the Longines extract from the archives the watch was invoiced on 2 February 1945 to Longines-Wittnauer Company, which was at that time the Longines agent for the USA. This watch was serviced at Longines in July 2022 - with Longines extract from the archives and service card

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During the early years of aviation between 1920 and 1930 the majority of pilots wore watches by Longines - at the time Longines was far ahead of other companies when it came to technical innovation.
Exact timekeeping was crucial for the progress in aviation and in the late 1920 an era of revolutionary developments in the navigation sector was set in motion. A pioneer in this field was US Navy Captain Philip Van Horn Weems, who was a teacher of the famous Charles A. Lindbergh. He invented a second-setting mechanism which allowed the pilots to set their watches to the closest second - Weems created a mobile dial for synchronising the second with the radio time signal. Longines patented this brilliant system in 1935.