The Breitling Navitimer is a COSC-certified “Chronometer”, and it was designed originally for aviation use by professional pilots. It has automatic mechanical movement, and the Breitling 23 caliber: twenty five jewels running at almost thirty thousand vibrations per hour. 
It provides hour, minute, small seconds, date, and a chronograph with three separate counters: the fourth-second counter at the 9 o’clock, the thirty minutes counter at the 3 o’clock, and the twelve hours subdial at the six o’clock. It also has a precise tachometer with a on hundredths scale using a side-rule flange on the dual-directional bezel, a wonderfully functional feature that was added in the forties for aircraft pilots.
During the fifties and sixties, one of the Navitimers was actually sold by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association itself, showing the highest recommendation for a watch. In 1961, one of the original astronauts on the space program Mercury, named Scott Carpenter, asked Breitling to encorporate a twenty-four hour dial instead of the standard twelve-hour, because there’s no night and day in space and he wanted to keep accurate time with the world’s most reliable watch. They agreed, and produced the unique and much sought-after 24 hour Navitimer Cosmonaut watch, and Carpenter wore it during his 1962 space flight.
The gorgeous, yet masculine case of the Navitimer comes in steel, steel and gold, and pure 18 karat, butter-yellow gold. The crystal over the face is known as sapphire crystal, and reflects light as bluish purple. The back of the case has the prerequisite engraved logo, and even includes a temperature scale to convert Celsius to Farenheit and back again. The dials themselves come in silver, black, or blue, with silver or gold subdials, all decorated with delicate circular threads.
This watch is truly the pinnacle of functionally and style wound into one, with an eye for professionalism and high-tech versatility.
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