A. Lange & Söhne
Introducing the Lange 1 Time Zone “25th Anniversary” Edition
Of course, there are a variety of time zone watches by other brands. But A. Lange & Söhne has achieved this complication with the highest standards in precision watchmaking, embodied in the iconic Lange 1 design.
The Lange 1’s recipe for optimal readability doesn’t lie in passively utilising the whole dial face or having the largest numerals that will fit. Instead, the main off-centered subsidiary dial actively draws your eyes towards it. Following this, your eyes naturally move on to the outsize-date because of how we’re conditioned by habit from an early age to read from left to right.
“The Lange 1 remains outstanding. With an outsize-date executed on a wristwatch with an off-centre time display, legibility became the most important aspect. Also, the size of the watch was a novelty for 1994, when watches for men were normally between 35-36mm. The Lange 1 was 38.8mm from the start.”
According to Schmid, the final dial design of the Lange 1 Time Zone largely fell into place on its own. “The moment you realize these are the fundamentals that you must not touch, you have to start being very creative. Dual time [by simply adding an additional hour/GMT hand] would have been of limited practical value. It was pretty clear that we would have to use the outer-edge of the dial for the city ring and that the subsidiary dial for the small running seconds would have to give way for the second time zone display. All that became quite clear at a very early stage.”
Home time on the largest dial draws the eye first, with its own subsidiary running seconds and day/night indicator. Simultaneously, the outsize-date for home time registers from the upper right, before the eye settles on local time below, with the day/night display, pulling double duty in pointing out the time zones on the city ring. As in the Lange 1, activating the pusher at ‘10’ advances the outsize-date, while the pusher at ‘8’ advances the city ring and local time by one hour as one crosses time zones from West to East. Family resemblance with the Lange 1 Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar is uncanny, naturally since both timepieces share the same parent.
Now, on the occasion of the Lange 1’s 25th anniversary, A. Lange & Söhne is releasing a 25-piece special edition of the Lange 1 Time Zone in a 41.9mm white gold case. Resplendent in the signature decoration executed on the regular Time Zone — screwed gold chatons, elaborately hand-engraved intermediate wheel and balance cock — the Time Zone “25th Anniversary” is distinguished by its blue inscriptions on the dial and blued hands. On the back, the balance cock features a discreet blue line engraving of ‘25’ in the typography of the outsize-date display.