Porsche Design’s 1919 Globetimer UTC makes it very easy for frequent travelers not to lose a moment of precious time. The local time can be conveniently set with the aid of the ergonomically shaped, optimally positioned pusher. Each press of this button causes the short, local-time hour hand to advance clockwise one position.
When flying east, each press of the “+” button advances the second time zone by an interval of one hour. When flying west, pressing the “–” button causes the UTC hands to move in the opposite direction. All the while, the UTC hands automatically move, remaining in synchrony. To assure this occurs at midnight and not at noon, the time needs to be set correctly just once. A circular window on the left-hand side of the dial facilitates this task: a white dot appears here during the daytime hours, but the aperture remains black at night. Porsche Design has also taken into account the reference time, for which a second and clearly distinguishable hour hand with a distinctive luminous tip is responsible. This hand turns once every twenty-four hours, showing at a glance whether it is reasonable to phone home, or if it is already too late (or too early) to wake one’s family.
Nothing has been left to chance with the operation of the 1919 Globetimer UTC. The pushers, each with a precisely defined pressure point, dispatch the switching operations with speed and precision, designed and built with the chronographic competence amassed by Porsche since 1972. The well-conceived push-button control ensures intuitive operation, even while seated behind the wheel of a car. There is no need to unscrew the crown or sense its first detent position for independent adjustment of the local-time hour hand, thus eliminating a potential source of human error.
To intuitively display the time from any viewing angle, the dial’s radius has been made as large as possible, while the titanium case was designed to be uncommonly slim. Well-balanced styling imbues this watch with a unique lightness, further enhanced by the handsomely shaped wristband. Color contrasts, distinctive hands, indices and numerals combine with the generous use of nonradioactive Super-LumiNova luminous material to minimize the chance of misreading, even in conditions characterized by poor visibility. In addition, a sevenfold antireflective coating and an extra hard-coated treatment protect the sapphire crystal.
