Breitling Navitimer watches

The Breitling Navitimer is a pilot's chronograph with a circular slide-rule bezel, made for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) in the early 1950s; Breitling dates the commission to 1952, other accounts to 1954. At first it went only to AOPA members, with the association's logo on the dial, and from 1956 it was sold publicly with Breitling's winged B. Breitling had patented a circular slide-rule chronograph in 1941, and the bezel works out airspeed, fuel consumption, rate of climb and unit conversions.

In 1961 astronaut Scott Carpenter asked Breitling for a 24-hour dial, since space travel has no day and night, and wore the result on his 1962 flight; Breitling then sold a commercial version as the Cosmonaute. The first automatic Navitimer chronograph followed in 1969, its movement developed by Breitling with Dubois-Depraz, Heuer and Hamilton. Breitling's flagship calibre today is the in-house Manufacture Caliber 01, a COSC-certified chronometer with a column wheel, a vertical clutch and about 70 hours of power reserve.

Two families share the slide rule. The chronographs run from 41 to 48 mm: the Navitimer 01 and Navitimer 1 B01 Chronograph at 43 and 46 mm, the B01 Chronograph at 41, 43 and 46 mm and a little slimmer at about 13.6 mm against 14.2 to 14.5 mm, the 45 mm Rattrapante, the 46 mm World and Navitimer 1 Chronograph GMT, and the 48 mm GMT and 1461. The Navitimer 1 Automatic at 35 and 38 mm and the Automatic 41 keep the bezel in cases about 10 mm thick, against 13.4 to 15.8 mm for the chronographs.

Cases are mostly steel, with red gold across most lines. The Ref. 806 1959 Re-Edition revisits the 806 at 43 mm under an acrylic crystal, in steel, in red gold limited to 159 pieces and in platinum limited to 59; the vintage 806 and the 48 mm 816 have acrylic crystals too. The Cosmonaute comes at 41.5 and 43 mm, and the B02 Chronograph 41 Cosmonaute in steel and platinum.