About this watch

Reference 5990/1A-001 is the Nautilus asked to carry a flyback chronograph and a dual-time mechanism in the same steel case, and this is a 2015 example, from the first eighteen months of production after the 2014 launch. Early examples of a complicated Nautilus are worth attention. Two hands tell you the hour. The skeletonised one shows home time, the solid one shows local, and the pushers built into the case at nine move the local hand forward or back in single-hour steps without disturbing the minutes or the running seconds. Two apertures spell out LOCAL and HOME with a day/night indication for each, so there is never a question of which zone you are reading, and the pointer date is coupled to local time — it travels with you rather than staying behind. The flyback chronograph sits on top of all that. One press of the lower pusher resets and restarts the timing in a single action rather than the usual stop, reset, start — the difference between timing consecutive legs and missing the join. Fitting both complications inside Genta's 1976 outline without thickening it past reason is the achievement. Calibre CH 28-520 C FUS, self-winding, 370 parts and 34 jewels, beating at 4 Hz.…