Longines Soars With New Spirit Flyback Titanium
Longines & SHARP
The image of a winged hourglass was chosen as the age of aviation (it was registered in the brand’s trademark in 1889), but it proved a prescient choice. Since as early as 1911, when Longines created one of the world’s first wrist-worn chronographs for pilots, the brand has been renowned for using the latest advances in horological technology to craft precision flight instruments. The new Longines Spirit Flyback Titanium, the latest addition to the growing Spirit family of vintage-inspired sports watches, pays tribute to this legacy of aviation firsts with a distinctly modern design.
By the numbers, the Spirit Flyback Titanium is a quintessential contemporary chronograph, with a 42 mm case that’s water-resistant to 100 metres, a COSC-certified automatic movement featuring a monocrystalline silicon balance-spring, and a 68-hour power reserve.
The contrast of a flyback chronograph and a Grade 5 titanium case, however, speaks to the Spirit Flyback Titanium’s balance of vintage inspiration and modern engineering. The flyback chronograph movement, which is unique among chronographs for its ability to stop, reset, and restart with the single press of a pusher, has been a Longines signature for almost a century. The first wrist chronograph equipped with a flyback function was made by Longines in 1925, and was prized by pilots for its ability to assist with precise navigation calculations in an age before onboard computers. Longines would go on to patent the technology in 1936 with the release of the calibre 13ZN, the first serialized flyback chronograph and the most advanced of its era.
This was far from the only major innovation from Longines in the early days of aviation. In 1925, the legendary “Zulu Time” watch became the first wrist-worn timepiece to indicate a second time zone, a feature that helped maritime radio operators convert local time to universal world time (also known as Zulu Time). In 1928, Longines collaborated with Philip Van Horn Weems of the U.S. Navy to create the Longines Weems Second Setting Watch, which featured an innovative rotating inner dial to help navigators synchronize their watches to a radio time signal.
In 1931, inspired by Charles Lindbergh’s pioneering transatlantic flight, Longines produced the Lindbergh Hour Angle Watch, which — when utilized in conjunction with a sextant and nautical almanac — could help pilots plot their locations while in the air. Longines was also along for the ride in 1931 when Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon made their historic flight across the Pacific from Japan to the United States. Flying without shoes or landing gear to save weight, the two trusted their Longines watches to navigate throughout the daring flight, and pronounced them “absolutely accurate,” following their journey.
Watches have changed significantly since those days, and modern elements including a ceramic bezel, a sapphire crystal over the case back and dial, and bright Super-LumiNova lume give the new Longines Spirit Flyback Titanium the performance and durability demanded of a 21st-century watch. Other details, however, recognize Longines’ prominent place in the early days of aviation. The design of the dial is decidedly vintage-inspired, from its 1930s-style Arabic numerals and diamond-shaped applied hour markers, to the five stars applied on the dial, a symbol of quality and accuracy found on Longines watches from the mid-20th century. Then, of course, there’s the winged hourglass logo beneath the 12 o’clock numeral, a subtle tribute to Longines’ long history of precision timing and flight.
