Patek Philippe Nautilus Watches

The decade was being ruled by the Quartz and led to a crisis in the Swiss part of the watch industry. Patek Philippe was suffering but its contemporary and competitor Audemars Piguet was winning with the introduction of the AP Royal Oak – a luxury sports watch. The former had to do something about it and that is when the Patek Philippe Nautilus came into being. It was a novelty in PP watch collection because they had never created a watch which could be termed as a sports watch – all that they had created was either a chronograph watch or a time-only watch.

The Patek Philippe Nautilus was a beauty which was made out of stainless steel and had a large case to flaunt. Such a bold design called for people to flock towards it – to have a look at what an amazing creation it was. The name of the Patek Philippe watch was derived out of inspiration – the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea featured Captain Nemo's vessel by the name Nautilus. Well, the portholes of this vessel were depicted to have an oval shape; the watch makes an attempt to display a similar oval shape. However, it does not take an eagle's eye to understand that the case of the Patek Philippe watch is a smoothened octagon and the two ears which can be observed on the Nautilus watch case is synonymous to the hinges of the windows on the ship.

Well, now that you are aware of the shape of the Patek Philippe Nautilus watch – you might also want to know its size. For the year that it was introduced in – the size of the case was too large 42 mm. It is now that we get to see watches that are these huge; thus, it was inevitable that this Patek Philippe watch was bound to contract "Jumbo" as its nickname. On the other hand, speaking of the thickness of the Nautilus watch – it was pretty thin. Even though the watchmakers had made an attempt to increase the length of the case, its height was confined to 7.6 mm. This made sure that while the sporty feeling of the Patek Philippe watch was kept alive, the elegance was not compromised upon owing to the captivating nature of the dial of the Patek Philippe watch – just what was expected of the brand.

As a corollary to the discussion about the dial, it was precisely the dial which turned the Patek Philippe Nautilus watch into a luxury because it was built out of solid gold. The hands of the Patek Philippe Nautilus watch were filled with tritium – to make it easier to gauge the time even when it got extremely dark. The overall display of the dial is simple but the thing that immediately catches the eye of the onlooker is the horizontal grooves. To increase the utility that is conferred the watch, PP had made it a point that there was a display for the date.

When introduced, it was easy to observe that the PP Nautilus watch can account for a pure sports watch; however, its delicate movement worked in contrast with its appearance. Well, this dissimilarity is just what attracted people all the more towards the Patek Philippe Nautilus watch. On lines of the movement of this Patek Philippe sports watch, it was named calibre 28-255 C and it is considered to be the thinnest automatic movement combined with a central rotor. Why was it called the thinnest? Because it was just 3.05mm in height. Isn't that something unexpected for the year that it was established in.

The production of the Patek Philippe watch was brought about to hold in the year 1990. However, PP was waiting for a breakthrough and on the 30th anniversary of the Nautilus, the brand introduced the Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711. How was it different from the previous edition? On closer look, it can be observed that the newer version was a little more polished and brushed as compared to its ancestor. Moreover, it saw the introduction of a new movement known as the self-winding movement accompanied by an increase in the size and the height of the Patek Philippe 5711 watch.

The year 2014 saw another revolution in PP’s history with the introduction of the Patek Philippe Nautilus 5990 which replaced the stainless steel version of the Patek Philippe Nautilus 5980. With time, the dial of the watch became bold and added a travel time complication. The display of the watch was a mixture of the Nautilus 5980 edition as well as the PP Aquanaut. This Patek Philippe Nautilus 5990 watch saw the introduction of pushers in it which changed the overall look of the watch but did not sacrifice on the original design on the watch. Our personal favourite comes out to be the Patek Philippe Nautilus rose gold because of its utility as well as amazing aesthetics. No matter what the price of this Patek Philippe watch is, it is amazing because it was designed to be just that.