This time we're back to vintage, and while by no means have I exhausted all my Accutron-Bulova-Caravelle holdings, I thought it was time to venture elsewhere. This is a Zodiac Aerospace Jet from, I believe, the mid-1960s. They didn't date-code them the way Bulova did, but a couple of minutes of searching on the web seems to confirm my assumption.
You probably noticed that the watch has a 24-hour dial, because it has a 24-hour movement, meaning the hour hand goes around the dial only once per day. In the picture above, the watch is showing 8:10 PM. As you might imagine, telling time with this watch takes a little getting used to. I made a reference to this in the Accutron post last month, but other companies made such movements too. They were popular with pilots and military personnel. I tend to gravitate to watches that do things that have nothing to do with my boring life, but that's because those are the watches that tend to be the most interesting looking.
The watch doesn't do anything other than tell time--no date, no chronograph functions, no alarm. I guess Zodiac figured telling the time on it was tricky enough. As far as I can tell, it's completely original too: it has the correct case back with Zodiac markings, and the crown is marked with that little cross-in-circle symbol that's on the dial. I added the strap, my standard black leather with white stitching. This is one time when I'm not unhappy with the strap; in fact, I bought three of these from The Watch Prince.
Zodiac has always been a below-the-radar brand, and they still are. It's very European, and I don't even know who carries them--maybe Tourneau? Consequently a watch like this is not especially valuable compared to other Swiss brands, but it's rare and cool, and that makes it valuable to me.
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