Closed | Important watches – Saturday 15 November 2014

Patek Philippe’s sporty wristwatch Nautilus was launched in 1976. No one really knows exactly where the name Nautilus came from, but one theory is that the watch got its name from the submarine in Jules Vernes classic “Twenty thousand leagues under the sea”. Another theory is that the name came from the first nuclear submarine in the world, the American USS Nautilus – which actually got its name from Verne’s submarine.

Nautilus was designed by Gérald Genta, a legend in the world of watches and the name behind famous watch models like Audemars Piguet’s “Royal Oak” and IWC’s “Ingenieur 1832”. In one of his last interviews, made just a couple of years before he died, he told the story about how he came up with the idea for the Nautilus. It was at the annual watch fair in Basel while having dinner in the hotel restaurant that he noticed staff from Patek Philippe. They inspired him and he asked the waiter for a napkin on which he five minutes later had drawn the first sketch of what would become the Nautilus.