{"id":27985,"date":"2024-10-09T00:01:24","date_gmt":"2024-10-09T07:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=27985"},"modified":"2024-09-27T15:42:23","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T22:42:23","slug":"a-tale-of-two-two-tone-gmts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/10\/09\/a-tale-of-two-two-tone-gmts\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Two-Tone GMTs"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

Some time ago, we wrote a blog comparing the Casio Marlin and Rolex Sea Dweller dive watches.\u00a0 \u00a0This one is similar; it compares my nearly 40-year-old two-tone Rolex GMT II to a recently-released Seiko two-tone GMT.<\/p>\n

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Two GMT watches: The Rolex GMT Master II (left) and the Seiko two-tone GMT (right).\u00a0 in the photos here, the Rolex has a much richer appearance; in real life, the Seiko looks just as good.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A close up of my Rolex GMT Master II, purchased new in 1986 when I was still a yuppie.\u00a0 Note the cyclops lens over the date.\u00a0 It really works.\u00a0 The older I get, the better it works.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Seiko two-tone GMT, purchased a few days ago.\u00a0 The Seiko also has a cyclops lens over the date.\u00a0 It’s a cool and useful touch.\u00a0 This is a very nice watch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m a sucker for a good-looking watch.\u00a0 Many of my retired friends take pride in not wearing a watch, and many young people don’t wear watches (they’re glued to their cell phones all day; they can get the time there).\u00a0 I always wear a watch.<\/p>\n

The first watch I ever owned was a gift from my parents.\u00a0 It was an inexpensive Timex that was completely unexpected, I loved it, and I wore it for years.\u00a0 I first recognized watches as a status symbol and a cool thing to own when I was in the Army, and like all the other lieutenants overseas, I bought a Seiko chronograph at the Base Exchange.\u00a0 After the Army came the aerospace industry where a Rolex was the status symbol, and when I was back in D.C. lobbying Congress to buy Aerojet cluster bombs instead of Brand X (Honeywell was Brand X for us), a jewelry store had the Rolex GMT Master II you see here.\u00a0 I wore it full time for years after I first bought it, and then only intermittently after that.\u00a0 I felt the Rolex was pretentious around clients, and I was afraid it would reinforce a feeling that they were paying me too much (which they were).\u00a0 Now that I’m retired, the fear of being pretentious has been replaced by the fear of getting mugged, so I don’t wear it very often.<\/p>\n

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The hands of fate. The top arrow points to the bezel, which can be rotated in relation to the GMT hand (lower left arrow) to tell time on a 24-hour scale in a different time zone. The second-from-the-top red arrow points to the minute hand. The arrow on the right points to the conventional hour hand.\u00a0 If you look closely at the inverted diamond at 12:00, you can see the bezel is slightly off.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So what is a GMT watch?\u00a0 Basically, it is a watch that allows you to tell time in three time zones.\u00a0 \u00a0If you wanted to, one of the time zones could be Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is the time at the Greenwich Observatory in England.\u00a0 Most of the time, I could care less what the time is in England, but that’s where the GMT descriptor originates.<\/p>\n

Today, there are multiple approaches for time telling in different time zones, but the classic approach (and one followed by the Rolex and Seiko watches in this blog) is through the use of a third hand and a bezel with 24-hour numbering.\u00a0 The way it works is this:<\/p>\n