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Lot Essay
Precise timekeeping has always been vital to navigation, but at the beginning of the past century navigational watchmaking evolved to suit the needs of a completely new category of navigators: airplane pilots. Captain Philip Van Horn Weems, U.S. Navy, who also trained the famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, is among the pioneers of this new kind of watchmaking.
One of Weems' best known inventions is the Second Setting System, designed to help aviators plot their courses more accurately. At sea, celestial sights had to be taken with the help of a hack watch, which was set to the ship's chronometer. It was difficult, however, to set the watch exactly, meaning that it differed slightly from the chronometer, which in turn differed from Greenwich Mean Time. Weems deducted that the difficulty in setting the watch came from the fact that, at the time, it was almost impossible to set the second hand exactly. However, as the second hand could not be set to match the dial perfectly, the solution was to make the dial movable, so that the dial and the second hand could be synchronized at the right time. This ingenious system was subsequently patented by Longines in 1935. Another characteristic of the "Weems" watch is its large ball-sized winding crown, allowing a pilot to rewind the movement while wearing gloves.
One of Weems' best known inventions is the Second Setting System, designed to help aviators plot their courses more accurately. At sea, celestial sights had to be taken with the help of a hack watch, which was set to the ship's chronometer. It was difficult, however, to set the watch exactly, meaning that it differed slightly from the chronometer, which in turn differed from Greenwich Mean Time. Weems deducted that the difficulty in setting the watch came from the fact that, at the time, it was almost impossible to set the second hand exactly. However, as the second hand could not be set to match the dial perfectly, the solution was to make the dial movable, so that the dial and the second hand could be synchronized at the right time. This ingenious system was subsequently patented by Longines in 1935. Another characteristic of the "Weems" watch is its large ball-sized winding crown, allowing a pilot to rewind the movement while wearing gloves.