BREITLING - a stainless steel manual wind gentleman's 'Big Case' Navitimer chronograph wrist...

BREITLING - a stainless steel manual wind gentleman's 'Big Case' Navitimer chronograph wrist watch circa 1970, the black dial having luminous baton hour markers and Arabic twelve, silvered subsidiary minute counter, hour counter and seconds dial to three, six and nine o'clock respectively and an outer minute track, the squat tonneau shaped case, reference 0816, having a black rotating bezel with slide rule, fitted to a black leather strap with gold plated tang buckle, signed seventeen jewel Venus calibre 178 pillar wheel chronograph movement. Case width 48mm.

In the 1940's, recognising the aviation industry to be a potential growth market, Breitling released the Chronomat, the first chronograph to be fitted with a circular slide rule, allowing users to make in-flight calculations leading to a wide spread adoption by pilots. In 1952 Breitling began work on a three counter chronograph "designed and engineered to AOPA specifications" to be built especially for pilots. In the mid 1950s, this watch was officially named the Navitimer, a combination of "Navigation" and "Timer", a "navigation computer" for pilots everywhere. This example is a "Big Case" version, reference 816, fitted with a copper plated Venus calibre 178 linking it back spiritually to the previous reference 806 if not aesthetically.