Glycine Airman GMT Owner Review : Unavoidable, innovative and accomplished

Glycine launched its first GMT watch in 1953, one year before Rolex and its GMT. The first watch to feature a 24-hour rotating bezel—that sets the scene! For the first three years, the dials were off-white or champagne, then black. Mine is from 1956 and is the first model to feature a mechanical stop-seconds function with a thread (as thin as a hair) that literally pops out of the dial when you pull the crown out at 3 o'clock. This filament acts as a stop, halting the seconds hand at 24 hours. At the time, this was the only way to synchronize these watches, which saw action in the Vietnam and Indochina Wars. The watch is a 24-hour timepiece; the hour hand rotates only once every 24 hours—that alone sets it apart. Radium hands... Oh, and I almost forgot, the second crown is used to lock the bezel in place once you've aligned it with the hour hand to indicate your second time zone. 36mm of pure joy, it wears beautifully. The lugs are long relative to the diameter, giving it a more substantial presence on the wrist. It has a real adventurer's look, but you have to get used to reading the 24 on the dial, even though that's actually the most obvious part! Dialicious video here on my watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eta81fmcQbM&t=1230s