NOMOS Glashütte Tangomat watches

The Nomos Glashütte Tangomat was the first automatic watch from Nomos, the Glashütte company Roland Schwertner founded in 1990. It arrived in the summer of 2005. Nomos calls it the big brother of the Tangente, the hand-wound model from its first collection of 1992, which drew on the purist Bauhaus style: the Tangomat keeps that design but puts it in a more robust, larger case around a self-winding movement. It skips the classic 35 mm size and starts at 38.3 mm.

Nomos fits the current Tangomat with three automatic calibres: the DUW 5001 for time only, the DUW 5101 with a date, and the DUW 5201 with a world-time function. The plain Tangomat and the Tangomat Datum (602) share a 38.3 mm steel case with sapphire crystal, about 8.2 to 8.3 mm thick, and white dials. The Tangomat Ruthenium (603) and Ruthenium Datum (604) have a dial coated in ruthenium, which reads as almost black.

The Tangomat GMT (635) is the larger watch, 40 mm across and 10.85 mm thick. It keeps time in 24 time zones, each identified by a three-letter code such as NYC, BER or LON. A press of a button on the case moves the world time forward in one-hour steps, while a subdial keeps home time. The Tangomat GMT + (637) shares its 40 mm case.

The rest are editions on the 38.3 mm case. The A Century of Bauhaus trio (601.S10, 601.S11, 601.S12) comes in red, blue and yellow versions limited to 100 pieces each. The Tangomat für Ärzte ohne Grenzen (601.S13), German for Doctors Without Borders, is limited to 250; Nomos has also made Tangente and Tetra editions for the charity. The Glück Auf (641.S1) has a black dial, and there are also the Tangomat Datum Dresden International School 20 (602.DIS20) and the Tangomat Norma (629).