Since 1970, when it produced its first Polar watch, the Raketa Watch Factory became famous for its mechanisms making the hour hand turn in 24 hours (instead of the usual 12 hours). Its use was later extended to Soviet submariners and cosmonauts, professions also working in extreme conditions where a 24-hour watch is needed to help them distinguish day from night.
Ludmilla Y. Voynik was part of the Soviet team of engineers that developed the 24 hour movement in 1968-69 for the Raketa Polar watch. 50 years later, she is still working at the Raketa Watch Factory, heading the “construction bureau”. As such she spearheaded the limited re-edition of the manual Soviet Polar model as well as the improvements made to Raketa’s automatic 24-hour movement to make it even more robust.
All 24 hour watches can be used as a solar compass. To do so, simply point the hour hand towards the sun: the “0” on the dial will then be pointing towards the North, “12” towards the South, “6” towards the East and “18” towards the West. If you are in a country which switched to daylight saving time (i.e. +1 hour from standard time during summer months), you have to imagine that all the cardinal marks are moved “backwards” by 1 hour; ex: the South will be at “11” instead of “12”. If you are in the Southern hemisphere, please invert all the cardinal marks; ex: South will be at “0” instead of “12”.
During the height of the space race, the Soviet cosmonautics program needed a robust watch with a 24 hour movement enabling cosmonauts to distinguish day from night: orbiting the earth approximately 16 times a day, they cannot tell day from night by simply looking through the porthole. The 24H movement was later extended to pilots of the famous supersonic bomber Tupolev “Tu-160”, to enable them to know the correct time while flying about 15 hours at stratospheric altitudes where the Earth’s curvature makes it difficult to tell day from night.
The Raketa 24H movement was specially developed in 1970 by the Raketa Watch Factory for the polar explorers of the 16th Soviet Antarctic expedition. Since this freezing continent is in perpetual daylight or darkness during consecutive periods of 6 months, this watch needed not only to be robust but also needed a special 24 hour movement that would allow to tell the time without knowing if it was day or night. The Raketa tradition of making 24H watches for Polar explorers and scientists continues to this day.
In the late 1970s, Soviet submarine crews needed a watch. Staying underwater for many months, they needed a watch with a robust 24-hour movement enabling submariners to distinguish day from night. Given its proximity to the sea, Raketa already had a strong history of making naval watches, and was naturally given the task of creating such a watch. Since then, Raketa added to its sea collection a specialized 24H watch for sailors because they need the solar compass function that is provided by 24H watches.
Russian
English
French