Isn't most of India GMT +5.5 hours? Might add some confusion/complication.

 

The common Indian timezone is half an hour off, and unrepresentative of most other places at those longitudes (not that there are that many of those where people often go). The cities on the dial need to actually use the time implied by their longitude, because they are surrogates for other places at those longitudes. And since most watches do not accommodate half and quarter-hour time zones, they can't represent the time in India in any case.

There are reasons why India chose to be half an hour off, one presumes, but being left off hour-centered world clocks is a consequence.

Rick "it's not done to disparage India, if that's what you are thinking" Denney

 

Thank you...much appreciated.

The common Indian timezone is half an hour off, and unrepresentative of most other places at those longitudes (not that there are that many of those where people often go). The cities on the dial need to actually use the time implied by their longitude, because they are surrogates for other places at those longitudes. And since most watches do not accommodate half and quarter-hour time zones, they can't represent the time in India in any case.

There are reasons why India chose to be half an hour off, one presumes, but being left off hour-centered world clocks is a consequence.

Rick "it's not done to disparage India, if that's what you are thinking" Denney

 

The solution is to Buy a Casio.

All the watches previously shown in this thread are not really "modern" but are based on old mechanicals.

Casio are modern watches with 30 timezones including Delhi and many other "off-hour" timezones:

As a ship's officer, I wear this old beater at sea:

 

Those G-Shocks look so cool. Wish I had seen some of these before I bought mine last year.

 

Plus some of those watches are pretty crowded already. I wouldn't fancy sitting on the committee that decided which city to take off so Mumbai could be added.

 

You can get the VC world timer which if I recall has all those weird off hour time zones like Iran, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Australia's weird little Eucla patch of desert, and Newfoundland. I don't think it had North Korea. I think those and a few islands in the Indian and Pacific are the only off hour time zones.

 

There is a lot of good discussion on this topic in the world timer watch thread: https://www.watchuseek.com/f2/best-looking-worldtimers-4335586-6.html#post41943178

Historically, Calcutta and Bombay were included because they were at different time zones. But India chose its prime meridian to be a midpoint, so watchmakers ended up choosing Dhaka and Karachi instead.

I do think that it doesn't make sense to ignore a country of over a billion people, but what's the market for world timers in India?

 

I do think that it doesn't make sense to ignore a country of over a billion people, but what's the market for world timers in India?

Many people in the west do business with India - so it's not just the Indian market per se.

 

A unique World Timer is one with all 96 timezones at 15 minute intervals on the Gavox Aurora analog watch with it's proprietary ETA movement.

"The Aurora is the world's first multifunction quartz watch that handles all geographical and political time zones. It allows to keep track of a reference time and display a local time by increments of 15 minutes, in order to handle non-standard time zones with a difference of 15, 30 or 45 minutes."

Aurora | gavox watches

 

But.... But... Theyre all trooooo GMTeeeees!!

Funny how that tired old WIS cliché forgets about the half hour thing. Actually maybe not that funny after all.

 

But.... But... Theyre all trooooo GMTeeeees!!

Funny how that tired old WIS cliché forgets about the half hour thing. Actually maybe not that funny after all.

Use a Casio. The World Time versions have DEL as in Delhi timezone.

 

Well, I don't care about time in New Delhi.............but do care very much for time in that paradise that is part of India (Goa).
Since Goa will never show in any mechanical World timer................I just went with this instead.............(I really don't care about health apps, got this just so I can have the time in paradise):

 

\but do care very much for time in that paradise that is part of India (Goa).

The Rock is like Harry Potter to Goa's Vernon Dursley... someday, Hagrid will free us.

Back to the watches - even if you have Delhi on the dial, you cant really read the time directly from it, because worldtimers and GMTs only have an hour-hand offset, not a minute hand offset.

Now, dual-time-zone watch like the JLC Master Geographic, where rotating the city disk automatically changes the second time, or the Reversos (where there is an entirely different minute and hour hand for the second time zone) should allow 30' offsets.

 

Just saw this in the "Best looking worldtimers" thread... mechanical and has 36 time zones (I believe there are 38 different ones in total around the world) :

 

I do think that it doesn't make sense to ignore a country of over a billion people, but what's the market for world timers in India?

The problem is that the mechanism of most world time watches literally can't do the "between" time in India -- the movement can't handle the half-step. Even taking another city or time zone off the dial wouldn't allow the gear to stop between teeth or to know which teeth to skip for zones that don't exist. It takes a meaningfully more sophisticated and expensive movement to handle that.

 

Exactly.

This is why only a truly modern watch can fill the requirements.

 

The one place I misspell your name and you find it? ;-)

 

Don't forget - India is just one instance of a country with half hour offset being ignored. You have many countries in the Indian sub-continent (Sri Lanka, Myanmar), Iran, North Korea, French Polynesia, Newfoundland in Canada, and entire swathes of Australian territories that have half-hour offsets. And to complicate this even further, Nepal and parts of Australia and New Zealand also have 45 minute offsets.

You're rather missing the point. This isn't about the existence or relevance of offset times zones. Mechanical watches have to have an actual mechanism to identify those offsets. If you have a time-zone mechanism in one-hour increments, there is literally nowhere to put those time zones. If you have a time-zone mechanism in 30-minute (or even 15-minute) increments, you now need an additional mechanism to skip over the time zones that do not exist. Watches that do this are out there, but it requires a more elaborate and expensive movement. Consumers therefore have a choice -- they can spend less and get a world timer that handles only standard time zones, or they can spend more and get something that can deal with the offsets. That's just a reality of manufacturing watches, and opinions about geopolitical validity are only tangentially involved in that process.

 

Honestly, as someone born in Karachi it makes me quite proud to see "my city" on a watch, I won't complain

 

I posted this yesterday in the other worldtimer thread we have going. Thought it might also be of interest here, as well...

**************

Just received the GO Catalogue in the mail yesterday, and was instantly drawn to the Grande Cosmopolite Tourbillon. Thought it certainly deserved a mention here...



Here is part of the description from the catalogue:

"This exquisitely complicated wonder enables the world traveler to track the time of day or night at home and on the road simultaneously, in any two of 37 world time zones, while accounting correctly for Daylight Saving or Standard Time and for travel ahead in time (to the East) or back in time (to the West). All destination time and date changes are governed by a Perpetual Calendar geared to register changes in both directions, forwards and backwards in time, with no need for manual adjustment." The selection of 37 time zones includes 1/2-hour and 3/4-hour differences.

The price is "available on request." Translation = "not in my lifetime."

A rather remarkable timepiece, I think.

 

I posted this yesterday in the other worldtimer thread we have going. Thought it might also be of interest here, as well...

**************

Just received the GO Catalogue in the mail yesterday, and was instantly drawn to the Grande Cosmopolite Tourbillon. Thought it certainly deserved a mention here...



Here is part of the description from the catalogue:

"This exquisitely complicated wonder enables the world traveler to track the time of day or night at home and on the road simultaneously, in any two of 37 world time zones, while accounting correctly for Daylight Saving or Standard Time and for travel ahead in time (to the East) or back in time (to the West). All destination time and date changes are governed by a Perpetual Calendar geared to register changes in both directions, forwards and backwards in time, with no need for manual adjustment." The selection of 37 time zones includes 1/2-hour and 3/4-hour differences.

The price is "available on request." Translation = "not in my lifetime."

A rather remarkable timepiece, I think.

I am sure that whatever they have for a retail price is way short of what it is actually worth to allow its owner to travel both ahead and back in time... this is invaluable...!! Plus, you have the capability of wearing it on your wrist... think about that for a second. The portability is such that you don't need to climb in and out of some machine and can literally carry it with you on your wrist! This adds a whole new dimension to time travel.

Literally... priceless!!

 

I think it is quite obvious and rather the "elephant in the room"... watch manufacturers are prejudiced against them. Besides they don't purchase many watches anyway...

 

Hmmmm. The Swiss industry has a history of cooperative relationships with the Indian market. Leuba (of Favre-Leuba) lived there, made some watches there, and sold buckets of them. That's one reason it's so hard to find an old Favre-Leuba Twinpower without a bad case of Mumbaitis. They also sold many Zeniths in India, and that company supported a stronger marketing presence there than in the USA. Those are the examples I know about, but I bet there are others.

I'll bet they don't sell many watches in Pakistan, and I can't imagine any prejudice against India wouldn't be shared by Pakistan, but Karachi is still the only identifiable city in the +5 time zone.

The elephant may be a vaporous apparition.

Rick "wondering if India is at +5.5 simply to avoid the time zones used by Pakistan and Bangladesh" Denney

 

India chose it's unique zone to have the the entire country under one zone, a noble purpose.

And once they decided the large country had to be all one zone, Geography and the Sun dictated the actual time difference from UTC.

 

...the entire country under one zone, a noble purpose...

Noble?

 

Cubex, how much is the Patek Philipe in your first post? (the first watch)

As an Australian I think it is nice that they featured two Australian cities, Sydney and Brisbane (though I would have thought that Sydney and Perth at either end of the continent would be more appropriate). What I find strange in this day and age of easy internet checking is they have Brisbane and Sydney set 1 hour apart - they are in the same time zone. The only difference is Brisbane doesn't observe daylight saving but Sydney does, so I suppose it is right for half the year - unless Brisbane (the state of Queensland) change to observing daylight savings. A mistake you would more expect from a company with less resources and at a lower pricepoint.

 

Got no idea how much that Patek is for,
My estimate would be "not in my lifetime".

 

https://www.timeanddate.com/time/time-zones-interesting.html

Don't blame the watches, there are some ludicrous time zones with even a 45 minute offset.

How about the idiots in charge of certain nations' timekeeping learn the definition of an integer?

Surely, it doesn't hurt to round off to the nearest hour.

 

Ah, yes. Hindsight.

If you look at India, it spanned two time zones - Calcutta at GMT +6 and Bombay at GMT +5. At the time of independence, the newly formed government erred on the side of simplicity, and chose a single prime meridian that was halfway between (nearer to the capital, New Delhi).

We must remember the circumstances - India had just ended 400 years of brutal colonialism; British India had split into India and Pakistan (which would later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh); many other countries in the sub-continent also became independent (Ceylon, now Sri Lanka; Burma, now Myanmar; Bhutan; Nepal had been independent since 1923, but in 1951, the king consolidated all the power and proclaimed Nepal to be a constitutional monarchy). It was towards the end of World War II, and millions had died -- fighting as soldiers in a war of the western powers. Millions more died in the wars of independence and partition, and that is not including famines and disease.

We had giants walking the earth, the likes of Gandhi, Nehru (of the jacket fame, of course), and Jinnah. And the whole world was being redrawn, with Israel being formed shortly thereafter.

So, in the grand scheme of things, everything else faded in comparison to nation states' fight for survival and independence. Simplicity and convenience for a suffering and recently emancipated population was probably on top of mind rather than whether or not some watch snobs generations later would complain about the fractional time zone.

 

It always annoys me that my home town isn't on any world timer watches. Stupid London :-(

 

mda clarke, maybe purchase one of the nine in Cubex's first post -every single one of the nine list London, not one list Greenwich Mean Time. There is a range of price ranges.

Cubex, not in mine either

 

If you borrow that amount for 10 years at reasonable interest, you could get it for less than $300/month. ;-)

 

So take home messages:

1. if you want an Indian city on your world timer, you just need to spend about $30k.
2. if you're finance savvy, not only can you can get $20 off but you can have it for less than $300 a month.

 

Just came across this on Govberg's site -- the GP "Bombay Limited Edition" (250 pieces). To accommodate the half-hour offset in terms of dial real estate, GP dispensed with cities for two of the 24 longitudinal time zones. It's yours for considerably less than $30K...;-)

 

I have it on good authority that the center dial print is an acronym for Forgot the curry.