One year on from the launch of Rolex’s stainless steel “Pepsi” bezel GMT-Master II, we take a look back at the history of the globetrotting model
By Simon de Burton
Photography by Gary Smith for QP

You may, or may not know that it was at the International Meridian Conference of 1884 held in Washington D.C. that the world was officially divided into 24 time zones, and the Greenwich Meridian ? which we British had been using to calculate time for decades ? came to be internationally recognised as the site of Greenwich Mean Time, with each 15 degree zone east or west of the meridian being decreed as representing one hour of time ahead or behind respectively.
By the 1930s, genius horologist Louis Cottier had created a wristwatch-sized version of the world time mechanism (most famously used by Patek Philippe) that showed the correct time in 24 different zones simultaneously. One might have expected Cottier or someone else to have soon devised a simpler mechanism for people who only really cared what time it was in two places but surprisingly it was to be another 20 years before a watch company created just such a watch that was simple, accurate and easy to use. That company wasn?t just any old dial name, but the mighty Rolex that had been approached by Pan-American Airlines during preparations for the first intercontinental jet passenger flights by Boeing 707.

While the dawn of the jet age promised to make the world a smaller place, it also introduced an unex...