As the leading producer of custom rubber watch straps, Rubber B consistently strives to innovate and improve on our existing product catalog, which features custom rubber watch straps for watches from leading watchmakers around the globe, such as Rolex, Tudor, Panerai, and Audemars Piguet. A question that we have frequently been asked about in the past, but have never really previously covered in other blog posts, is how to use a GMT watch, so we decided to correct this oversight by putting together this guide that more thoroughly explains how to use a GMT watch.
Before we even go into explaining how to use a GMT watch, however, it is worth first answering a more pertinent question that directly relates to that one – what, exactly, is a GMT watch in the first place?
What is a GMT Watch?
GMT watches are an interesting piece of technology, in that even if you are a seasoned watch collector, it is still entirely possible to have never come across one before. Because of that, there are a lot of people, both inside the watchmaking community and out of it, who are completely unfamiliar with this term.
GMT is an abbreviation that stands for “Greenwich Mean Time.” To fully understand what, exactly, that is, however, requires something of a history lesson in order to fully comprehend it.
Greenwich is a city in England that is home to a rather famous scientific observatory. As the Renaissance fully continued to blossom during the 15th and 16th centuries, science became very important to everyday people and politicians alike in a way that it had not previously been before.
The result of that is that countries around the world began to want to share scientific information with one another, and to adopt some form of a uniform time standard. Thus, in 1884, an International Meridian Conference was held at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, and 24 different time zones were established for different regions around the world based on GMT. These time zones are the very same ones that we still use today, although the introduction of atomic clocks caused GMT to be replaced by Universal Time Coordinated, or UTC, in many places around the world.
Why Would Someone Use a GMT Watch?
GMT watches are a somewhat unique artifact in the world of horology because they allow you to see the time in two different time zones at the same time. Because of this, they remain popular among people who frequently travel between different time zones, such as pilots or businesspeople.
How Do You Read a GMT Watch?
Before we explain how to read a GMT watch, it is important to note a couple of important distinctions which sometimes confuse people as to what constitutes a GMT watch which is inaccurate.
A watch that has a 24-hour face is not, inherently, a GMT watch. Neither is a watch that has either 12 or 24-hour functionality. It is also very important to note that watches that show military time are not inherently GMT watches – this is something that seems to frequently confuse people who are just learning about these watches for the first time.
What does distinguish a GMT watch is its additional hand. Most timepieces have three hands on the face for the hour, minute, and second, respectively. A GMT watch has an additional fourth hand that rotates once around the face every four hours and corresponds directly to Greenwich Mean Time.
In order to read a GMT watch, you will have to have a passing familiarity with time zones, or at least be able to look them up on the internet. By knowing what time zone you are starting in and what time zone the city you need to look up is in, you can very quickly figure out the time by rotating the bezel on the watch. Below is a quick example to help you further demonstrate this principle.
For our purposes, we will hypothetically state that you are in St. Louis and want to talk to a relative in London, and it’s 10 AM your time. You quickly look up a time zone chart online and realize that London is six hours ahead of St. Louis, so after setting the home time on your watch to 10 AM, you adjust the bezel six clicks until the GMT hand reads 4 PM, which is the correct time in London.
While it would be easy enough to simply look up the time in question online, there is a very simple reason that these watches remain so popular among international travelers and frequent fliers. As you may remember, you are not supposed to use your phone during the course of an airline flight, which would likely explain why these watches continue to have a small but persistent group of people who continue to use them on a regular basis.
Are There Any Famous GMT Watches?
There are a small handful of these timepieces that are available on the market, but the most immediately recognizable one for most people will be some variant of the Rolex GMT, which has been around for decades and was one of the first watches to popularize the GMT concept in wristwatch form for the everyday consumer.
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If you need more information about any of our products, shipping policies, pricing, or have questions about our custom rubber watch straps, simply visit the Rubber B website today for more information.
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