Cartier Santos Dumont Carbon Skeleton Titanium

In 1904, Santos-Dumont met his friend Louis Cartier, while celebrating his winning of the Deutsch Prize in Paris, and complained about the difficulty of checking the time on his pocket watch during flights. Louis Cartier went to work on a problem and developed a first prototype of Santos-Dumont wristwatch.

Santos-Dumont played an important role in popularizing the use of wristwatches by men. Before the early 20th century, the watches were worn only by women, and men preferred pocket watches. According to the tale, Santos-Dumont never took off his personal Cartier wristwatch.

This year, after more than a century, Cartier introduces a new skeletonized timepiece to the series of Santos-Dumont watches. The new model, Cartier Santos Dumont Carbon Skeleton Titanium, was officially revealed a couple of days ago, at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie.

The watch is crafted in titanium and bursts a fully open-worked dial. Even the Roman numerals are part of the in-house Cartier 9612 MC movement. If you pay the attention to the pictures you’ll see that the numerals are actually skeletonized bridges. The gear train and the mainspring barrel appear almost like floating above the mechanical structure.

Titanium construction is treated with ADLC – amorphous diamond-like coating, which resistant to scratching and able to provide the movement parts a low level of friction so no lubrication is necessary.

This amazing movement is manually-wound and composed of 138 individual components. It is equipped with 20 rubies and offers 72 hours of power reserve. The watch is presented in 39mm x 47mm titanium case and completed with genuine alligator leather strap.

There is yet no information about the price or whether the series will be limited.