It was in 2013 that Richard Mille first tried its hand at world time with the RM 58-01, able to display the time simultaneously in the 24 official time zones – and more besides. The mechanical marvel also featured a tourbillon escapement with a carriage located at 9 o’clock, with the superb demonstration of skill involved making such a lasting impression that this most divisive of watchmakers was never going to stop there.
The birth of the RM 63-02
In 2015 it was the turn of the RM 63-02 to see the light of day. Presented at Mexico City’s Salón Internacional Alta Relojería (SIAR), this second in-house worldtimer created just as much of a stir, featuring the same multi-time-reading system as was first unveiled two years earlier; the latter is disconcertingly simple in terms of both use and readability. Here, instead of a tourbillon and carriage, the new self-winding CRMA4 movement features breathtaking skeleton work and powers a large date display at 12 o’clock.
Simplicity underpinned by ingenuity
When it came to reading off world time, specialists instantly noticed that the watch had no dedicated pusher for that purpose. Instead, the bidirectional rotating bezel (mounted on ball bearings to allow it to rotate smoothly) is used to select the appropriate time zone. When one’s nearest city is placed at 12 o’clock, the RM 63-02 displays both local time and the time in 23 other cities around the world using the flange (divided up into 24 hours segments) and a disc on which the 24 reference cities corresponding to the 24 time zones are marked.
The flange is blue and white, instantly distinguishing daytime from night-time. The quest for simplicity on which Richard Mille embarked here resulted in a noteworthy piece of mechanical progress enabling the bezel to interact with the heart of the movement – in this instance, the CRMA4 calibre, assembled on a titanium plate and with the tiniest detail of each component manufactured by hand.
Indeed, each part of the movement called for countless hours of work: polishing the edges, straight-graining the rims, making circular decorations on the gears, shotblasting the bridges, rhodium-plating certain surfaces and cutting away the metal wherever possible, all in order to sublimate the feat of skeletonization. The result offers connoisseurs a captivating sight, both on the dial side where the mechanical finery is framed by five outsize Arabic numerals arrayed on a sapphire crystal dial; and on the reverse, through a sapphire crystal caseback revealing a red gold oscillating weight resembling a spider’s web. It’s every inch a work of art, crowned by Richard Mille’s technical hallmark: the brand’s cherished function selector.
This icing on the cake (so to speak) allows the wearer to choose from one of three functions simply by pressing the pusher on the crown guard at 4 o’clock to wind the watch, set the time, or put it in neutral position to ensure they never make the wrong adjustment at the wrong time and have to send the piece back to the manufacture for after-sales servicing. After all, if you’re lucky enough to wear a Richard Mille, it’s not much fun to have to do without it…
The RM 63-02 WorldTimer demonstrated the brand’s talent for successfully combining sophisticated mechanisms, functionality, and cutting-edge styling. That’s still as true today as it was back then in 2015 – explanation enough for the resounding success of the Manufacture that first created the concept of love-it-or-hate-it watchmaking, since taken up by plenty of other industry players.
Indeed, why pass up the idea of the century? Richard Mille has created a concept, started a trend and sparked imitations, all to satisfy the needs of lovers of fine watchmaking and other collectors who feared they might end up with nothing new, walled in as they were by the bounds of traditional watchmaking.
RM 63-02 WorldTimer
Case: polished, brushed grade 5 titanium; bidirectional rotating bezel; sapphire caseback; assembled using 12 grade 5 titanium spline screws; water resistant to 30m
Dimensions: 47mm diameter; 13.85mm thick
Movement: skeletonised self-winding mechanical movement; CRMA4 calibre; 28,800vph; approx. 50-hour power reserve
Functions: hours, minutes, date, world time
Dial: 0.40mm thick sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on both faces
Strap: rubber, grade 5 titanium clasp
Launch year: 2015
This year, GMT Magazine and WorldTempus have embarked on an ambitious project: summarising GMT and Worldtimer watches since 2000 in The Millennium Watch Book - Travel Watches, a beautifully laid-out coffee table book. This article is an excerpt of the book. The Millennium Watch Book - Travel Watches is available for preorder in both French and English here.
