My Short List Of Gallet Watches You Might Consider Adding To Your Collection 

I dare say there isn’t another site on the internet where you can find more in-depth articles about vintage Gallet watches. Following yesterday’s announcement about Breitling’s acquisition of the brand, we will briefly look at the most interesting Gallet watches ever produced.

I made an effort and counted; over the last six years, I have featured more than 20 Gallet chronographs. If we include Mike’s older stories, you will find about 30 articles devoted to individual Gallet watches. If you want to look more closely at what Breitling bought, you can start chopping through the list here.

A fine movement

I started collecting Gallet watches for multiple reasons. First, when someone says “Gallet,” I see an Excelsior Park movement — and I love it! The Valjoux 72 is a reliable workhorse, but the EP40 is a smooth operator. I don’t know of any finer movement for the price, and I adore how the pushers react under my fingers.

Wild variety

Regardless of the decade or the economic, social, or political setting, in the 1900s, Gallet and its chronographs were always there. The brand made simple yet beautiful models to please anyone alongside exceptional, specialized chronographs for pilots, sailors, engineers, doctors, and even filmmakers. Among these were a big-date chrono, a miniature chronograph, a big-diameter chrono with a slide rule, and even a rattrapante. I also won’t forget to mention the mighty Flying Officer watch, which defined worldtimer watches as we know them.

Sleeping status

The third and probably most important thing factor for me was that the Gallet universe was a great playground. Collectors had already explored Omega, Rolex, and even Breitling inside out. Everyone wanted them. The more deeply I explored Gallet, the more I wanted to know. It offered lots of stories to uncover and watches to rediscover. Let’s look at the top watches from a brand with a history spanning well over a hundred years.

Gallet Flying Officer

The most important watch in Gallet’s history used other brands’ previous unique experiments with rotating bezels in a new and completely innovative way. Produced in 1938 and first advertised in January 1939, the Gallet Flying Officer featured names of world cities, representing time zones, around the edge of the dial on a contrasting white ring. A thin bezel with hour markings allowed the owner to track times across these zones simultaneously. The fact that this simple and then-unprecedented innovation is still in use on modern watches in a more or less unchanged form confirms its importance. As RJ promised yesterday, we will look into this vital model in the next Retrospective article.

Multichron Regulator

The first relevant Gallet chronograph wristwatch dates back to 1936 and came with a highly individualistic dial. A year later, in 1937, it was first advertised as the Gallet Multichron. Powered by the Venus 140 movement, the Multichron Regulator was designed specifically for applications in which recording events took precedence over telling the time. This thoughtful configuration, with the time display in a sub-dial at 12, ensures a clear, unobstructed view of the button-activated sweeping seconds hand and the minute counter at the bottom, enhancing precision and ease of use. A variety of dials with decimal or production-unit scales clearly show the transition and inspiration from pocket stopwatches. Reading early ads helps us understand who the Multichron Regulator was for. Besides timing any sports event, the watch was ideal for aviators, radiomen, factory operators, orchestra leaders, chemists, and laboratory technicians.

​​Gallet Multichron Waterproof Clamshell

Introduced in 1939, this sought-after Gallet chronograph is easy to distinguish thanks to four screws hidden in the feet of the lugs. The bucket-like back slips inside the front piece, and all four screws in the lugs compress the two-part case when tightened. This unusual compression of lower and upper case sections provided novel protection for the dial and movement from the intrusion of water, dirt, dust, and caustic chemicals. It was patented and manufactured by Schmitz Frères under Swiss patent 189190 and utilized by other watch manufacturers, including Breitling. Read the full story here.

Gallet Multichron Commander

In 1939, movement manufacturer Jeanneret-Brehm & Cie., the predecessor of the famous Excelsior Park, announced the world’s first oval-shaped watch movement, the JB42. Just a year later, in 1940, Gallet introduced it in the United States. The JB42 is a very compact, finely designed, and reliable caliber. Gallet’s Multichron Commander marks the beginning of a prosperous partnership between Gallet and Excelsior Park that lasted for decades. Later round versions of the movement, the EP4 or the EP40 with an hour counter, were in production for 40 years and became the bedrock of Gallet’s core chronograph lineup. Click here to read the story about my Commander, which I won in a bar gamble.

Gallet Multichron Officer

This is a chronograph squeezed into a 26 × 26mm watch case. In total, I’ve only seen four examples, and each has a slightly different dial design. The Gallet Multichron Officer has one of the most simplistic cases ever, with just straight lines and right angles. If we don’t count the 1970s cushion case, the Multichron Officer is the only square chronograph by Gallet. You can read the full story here.

Gallet Multichron Navigator

A brief look at this watch will be enough not to spot that it has an additional crown at 9 o’clock, an extra red hand, and red 24-hour printing on the dial. Often mistaken as a GMT watch, the original instruction manual introduces it as the “New Gallet Chronograph #994 with Direction Indicator.” Once you turn the hour hands toward the Sun, the small red “N” hand with an arrow tip automatically shows north. For it to work, you must ensure the “north” hand is aligned correctly. It’s impossible to move this hand independently, and it makes one revolution every 24 hours. This means that if the hand setup is correct, all the hands will meet at midnight, not noon.

It also has an extra mushroom-shaped crown at 9 o’clock, sticking slightly off the case. The owner can press it down to stop the small running seconds hand and then turn it in both directions to set that hand to the desired position.

The watch was designed for paratroopers to adjust the time effectively according to a radio signal before a drop. The navigation hand would help them navigate through unknown terrain. Gallet’s involvement in the watch’s development is unknown. Since the same watch was marketed with the Zenith logo on the dial, it’s probably an innovation introduced by Excelsior Park, Gallet’s core contract manufacturer. You can read the full story here or here.

Gallet Multichron Decimal

The decimal scale usually appears on the outer edge of the dial, with numbers from 10 to 100 or 1 to 10. It was used on watches for quick calculations based on a 100-unit system instead of the traditional 60-minute and hour system. During the post-WWII industrial boom, when plant operators didn’t have iPhones, the Gallet Decimal allowed engineers to calculate productivity rates, such as units produced per hour. It also allowed the wearer to convert elapsed time into a percentage of an hour easily. For example, 42 minutes represented 70% of an hour.

While the decimal scale can be found on many other chronographs, including those from Meylan, Heuer, and Breitling, it’s predominantly connected to Gallet and Excelsior Park. Besides two-register Gallet Decimal chronographs, which are more common, there were also three-register models. So far, only four examples of Gallet Decimal 12-hour chronographs have resurfaced, one of them featuring a Gallet/EP signature dial with the so-called “coathanger 7” font style. Find out more about it here.

Gallet Multichron 12 and Multichron 12 Pilot

The Multichron 12 is one of the core watches in Gallet’s historical lineup. Two basic models came with either white or black dials, both available with radium and later tritium lume on the dial. The latest black Multichron 12 models are known for their striking minty-green “toothpaste-like” lume. Most of the Gallet Multichron 12 chronographs featured the EP40 movement, which later received a slight upgrade and the EP40-68 designation. There was also the Multichron 12 “Snow White,” which featured a clean dial without additional scales. It’s one of my favorite daily beaters from Gallet.

Valjoux 72-powered Multichron 12 models had slightly different fonts on the dials, but they were close to the EP-powered ones and also featured telemeter and tachymeter scales. In addition, there were Valjoux 72-powered Multichron 12 chronographs with bidirectional, non-clicking bezels. These watches, which had significantly smaller sub-dials, are known among collectors as Multichron 12 Pilots.

The biggest Gallet controversy

John Carlini worked for the Ford Motor Company as a carburetor technician in the 1960s. During time trials at Indianapolis in 1965, Jim Clark asked him to clock the qualifying time of his famous Ford. When Carlini told him he didn’t have a stopwatch, Clark handed him his watch and said, “Use it and keep it.”

That story led many collectors to claim that Jim Clark wore a Gallet watch. The fact is there is no conclusive evidence to support the claim. Racers wore chronographs and were photographed a lot. There are tons of pictures of them wearing Breitling Navitimers, Enicar Sherpa Graphs, and Heuer Autavias. Plenty of photos also show Jim Clark wearing Enicar and Breitling watches. Many archivists, watch collectors and motorsport enthusiasts gave their utmost effort, but no one could find a single photograph of Jim Clark wearing a Gallet Multichron 12. Well, at least it is quite a beautiful watch.

Gallet Multichron Calendar and Astronomic

The most complex Gallet chronographs, with multiple cases and dial executions, were available with black or white dials and steel or gold cases. Powered by the reliable Valjoux 72C, they appeared in Gallet catalogs in the early 1950s and were available until the mid-1970s. The rare brother with a moonphase complication, powered by the Valjoux 88, is an undeniably complex masterpiece manufactured to high standards. You can find this movement in Record, Doxa, or even more premium Heuer and Breitling watches. Only white-dial models in steel or gold cases are known to exist.

Gallet Multichron Yachting and Big Eye Yachting

There are multiple versions of the Gallet Multichron Yachting. They include earlier, slightly smaller variants and models with the Gallet name printed above 6 o’clock. You might also find the Yachting with the legendary so-called “coathanger 7” Arabic numeral. The release date is unclear and currently under investigation.

The later “Big Eye” model was smaller but more striking. Its first documented appearance dates to 1971. Unlike earlier versions with Excelsior Park movements, the Big Eye models used Landeron or Valjoux calibers. Here is the story of my Big Eye, which has seen action in many races.

Yachting models were a stable pillar of the Gallet’s watch lineup until the 1970s, even with multiple designs for pocket watches.

Gallet Excel-O-Graph

Designed for aviation, navigation, engineering, and scientific use, the Excel-O-Graph has a rotating bezel that allows basic calculations. It is similar to (and probably also inspired by) the triple-register Breitling Navitimer ref. 806. The Gallet Excel-O-Graph first appeared in 1973 catalogs and is the largest-diameter wrist chronograph Gallet ever.

Gallet Filmeter

Rarer and low-production chronograph models are often the most collectible and sought after. That’s certainly true for the Gallet Filmeter chronograph, which has a unique scale on the dial with bicolor numeric printing on the inner and outer sides to indicate the amount of film tape used in feet per second. The red scale is calibrated for 35mm film and the blue one for the 16mm size. Gallet’s Filmeter first debuted in the 1973 catalog as a Gallet “Film” Chronograph. It was also available as a pocket watch.

Gallet Big Date

In the late ’40s, the demand for cheaper chronographs grew, and Venus responded with a series of cam-operated movements. One was the Venus 210, which later got a version with a date mechanism. The date display in the Venus 211 consists of two independent discs rotating against each other. This movement counts the date from 0 to 39 instead of 1 to 31, so the wearer must correct it at the start of every month.

The Venus 211 caliber was available in watches from many brands, including Bucherer, Claude Meylan, Nivrel, Tollet, Unic, Agir Watch, and Delvina. Gallet Big Date dials were considered fake until the recent discovery of the 1958 Joseph Hagn Wholesale Merchandise Catalog, which proved that Gallet officially offered Big Date chronographs. It is one of the most exciting stories I have ever published on Fratello.

Gallet Duo-Timer Rattrapante

Last but not least is the Gallet Duo-Timer Rattrapante chronograph. I don’t own this watch, but I look at it every day as it is the background on my laptop. There are two known examples in existence. I hope I will get the third one.

Which of these Gallet watches would you like to add to your collection? Feel free to share in the comments below.