Breitling Watches

The Breitling Navitimer Model

The Breitling Navitimer model was initially produced in the 1940’s and differed from their previously released models specifically by the addition of a circular slide rule to the bezel. This addition was implemented for the use of airline pilots to enable specialized flight calculations. On its release it was referred to by Breitling as a ‘navigation computer’ and had functions that enabled the calculation of airspeed, rate/time of climb/descent, flight time, distance and fuel consumption as well as other functions.

The model remained basically the same for many years until 1961 when the astronaut Scott Carpenter spoke to Breitling about the introduction of a 24 hour dial as an alternative the previous standard 12 hour dial. The reason for this was given as that space travel did not identify between day and night travel times and a 24hour system was needed. Breitling saw the benefit of this and as a result Scott Carpenter wore one of the first new designs on his 1962 space flight, quite the coup for the Breitling marketing campaigns. The result was a variation of the Navitimer model known as the Cosmonaute Navitimer