Lying on the big bed without any image, Yang Jing pressed this extremely precious watch on his chest with both hands, and it took a long time to calm the heart that almost jumped out of his throat.

Yang Jing didn't even dare to look at this watch attentively, for fear that his eyes would be stuck in and he wouldn't be able to pull it out.

From the first moment he saw this watch, Yang Jing was already convinced that it was definitely a Patek Philippe platinum world timer, and it was also handmade by Master Lewis Cortier.

Without him, just look at the unique shape of the second hand to know this.

One of the distinctive features of the creations of the Maestro Lewis Cortier is that the unusual shape of the hands, especially the hour hands, are entirely handmade, and the hands in each watch are subtly different. This became the "signature" of Louis Cortier that distinguished him from other timepieces.

And this characteristic of Master Lewis Kotil is also unique in the world!

With a 39.5 mm case diameter and a black strap, this precious worldtimer is the heart beating involuntarily every time Yang Jing sees the unique black and white 24-hour dial.

It's a Patek Philippe Platinum World Timer!

Even before I discovered this watch, people all over the world thought that there was only one watch.

Even Maestro Lewis Cortier did not say during his lifetime that he had ever made a second watch.

But in fact, the three letterheads that appear with this watch prove that Master Lewis Curtier did indeed make a watch of the same model back then, and also uncover a little-known past of Master Curtil.

In the watch industry, when it comes to Master Lewis Cortier, everyone will say that he was a watchmaking genius who was ahead of his time!

When it comes to this master watchmaker, we have to talk about world clocks.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the rudiments of world time were still vague. With the deepening of the Second Industrial Revolution, with the invention of trains, ships and automobiles, humanity's ability to break through the limitations of space has increased, making it relatively easy to travel between two cities far apart. At the same time, with the invention of the telegraph, instant communication on a global scale has become possible, which requires a unified global setting of time.

Especially on one day in that era, trains from two cities at different times collided due to uncoordinated timing. To that end, Sherford Fleming, a railway engineer then employed by the Canadian Pacific Railway, was determined to change the situation.

In 1876, Falford Fleming suggested that the world time should be divided into 24 times, and that the world should be named after 24 of the 26 letters excluding "J and Y" for every 15 degrees of longitude. At first, people did not realize the importance of world time, because after all, only traders or workers like him needed world time. As he spared no effort to tell each other, at the International Meridian Conference of 1884, the concept of world time was recognized.

The world's first dual-time pocket watch was then created, known as the "Captain's-watches", and was mainly used by train drivers.

As the creators of time, watchmakers have been working to discover the secrets of displaying time in multiple regions and even the world at the same time since the concept of universal time was introduced.

Universal time was first used in pocket watches, but the originator of modern worldtime watches is the world time zone mechanism invented by Master Cortier in 1935.

The world time watch is a kind of time zone watch, which can display the time in more than 24 cities, and the world time watch is the most complex time zone watch, and it is a well-deserved all-round king in the time zone watch. By displaying 24 different time zones around the world, adjusting the major cities pointed to on the dial scale, adjusting to the local time, holding the world time in your hand, it is as if you are holding the pulse of the world, and 24 simultaneous beating hearts indicate every corner of time.

On September 28, 1894, Master Cortil was born in Carouge, Geneva, a small place under the Bourbon dynasty attached to Sardinia.

Cotil's father, Emmalee, was already a sensational watchmaker and owned a small workshop in Saint-Victor, Switzerland.

Growing up at the Geneva School of Horlogerie, Cotil was recommended by the renowned watch historian Alfred Chapis to the founder of Rolex, Hans Wilsdorf, for the restoration and maintenance of his collection of precious antique watches.

This period of study proved to have had a profound impact on Kotil and benefited him in the years that followed, especially during the Great Depression. After completing his studies, he worked as a technical instructor in several local factories, many of which were forced to reduce production after the economic crisis in the late twenties, and the factories he worked for went out of business. At this time, Cortier decided to start his own personal business under internal and external troubles.

At that time, in Ruvottier, near Carouge, Switzerland. Kotil's wife opened a stationery store, and in the studio behind that stationery store, Kotil worked for 13 years. Here he began to make table clocks, pocket watches, watches and handmade movement molds. Most of his watches were special jumping watches and automatic watches, which were rare at the time. It was in this workshop that Kotil made the first pocket watch for the world time zone for a famous watch and jewelry shop called Beszanger.

Through constant design and production, Cortier has become an expert in the world's time zone watches, designing pieces for many of the Geneva Manufactures, all of which share the same characteristics.

His best and most reliable client was Patek Philippe, which commissioned him to design and manufacture a large number of world time zone watches. Vacheron Constantin, Agassi and Rolex also commissioned him to design the world time zone watch, and Curtier soon became one of the biggest names in the industry.

In 1935, Master Cortier invented the Heures-Universelles (HU). This ingenious structure is a fateful fulfillment of the 24 time zones of the world previously inducted by Shonford Fleming, with the HU mechanism accommodating the 24 time zones in a single dial.

In 1937, after two years of meticulous research and development, Cortier finally produced the world's first world's timer, the Ref.515, for Patek Philippe. He installed a separation mechanism inside the movement, which means that when the user presses the adjustment button, the hour hand moves one notch in the opposite direction to the city bezel, but the minute hand is always connected to the movement. This means that the movement is always kept in a precise manner.

In the same year, he built the world's smallest world watch for time zones for Patek Philippe. In 1937 and 1938, he created a three-calendar complication for Patek Philippe, which is now on display at the Beyer Museum in Zurich.

In 1940, at the request of Patek Philippe, Cortier built a watch for one of the company's customers, a doctor in Paris, with the functions of a world time zone and a pulsometer.

In 1946, as a result of the citizens of Geneva in gratitude for the Allied contribution to the Second World War, designed by Wenger, Cortier made four gold enamelled World Time Zone watches for Agassi, which were given to the major military leaders of the time: Churchill, President Truman, Stalin and General de Gaulle. Cortier also built a World Time Zone Table Clock for President Roosevelt's widow.

By that time, Cortier had become a renowned watchmaker, and he had made the Patek Philippe platinum World Timer men's Ref-1415-HU in 1939, which set a world record for watches at auction.

Yang Jing's identical Patek Philippe Platinum World Time Men's Watch Ref-1415-HU was made by Master Cortier in 1940, and the customer was the doctor in Paris.

All of this was on the three sheets of letterhead wrapped together with the watch......

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