SIGNED MONTRE HAMADIE, BREVETÉE INVENTÉE PAR MR. C. D’J. RAFFAELLI, DEPOT CHEZ MR. J. TOLAYAN, CONSTANTINOPLE, CIRCA 1880

The present timepiece is a very unusual and rare pocket watch featuring an enamel dial made in three concentric parts comprising a fixed central dial with Roman numerals, an outer rotating dial for hours with Arabic numerals and an outermost dial for the minutes. The outer dials can be rotated by the crown in the case band at 2 o’clock to display the time in a second time zone.

Another very similar watch but with Turkish numerals and signed 'MONTRE HAMIDIE brevetée N°11978 inventée par C.d'J Raffaelli, exécutée par E.Legrand, PARIS Horloger de la Marine PARIS, Dépôt chez A.Kun CONSTANTINOPLE'. Is in the Musée du Temps, Besançon. That watch was made for the Sultan of Turkey, Sultan Abdul-Hamid II.

The present timepiece is a very early example of a dual time zone watch. In the 1880s, when this watch was almost certainly made, the establishment of time zones was still in its very beginning. During the International Meridian Conference in Washington D.C. on 1st November 1884, it was agreed to establish international zones according to the same system. GMT, Greenwich Mean Time, was considered the 'time zero' and the twenty-four standard meridians marked the centers of the zones. The International Dateline was placed along the 180-degree meridian in the Pacific Ocean. Around the world, clocks were reset to adapt to the new system of timekeeping.