1967 Breitling Top Time 2008 gold plated 36.8 x 36.8mm.case, manual winding cal. Valjoux 7730, tachymeter dial.

The Breitling Top Time 2008 was conceived in the early 60s as a cheaper entry level range of Breitling chronographs; one of the highlights here is the stunning dials which make it a popular choice. Top-Time is very much the same as the early Carreras, at a fraction of the cost!

A Breitling Top Time 2008 remains near the top of virtually every vintage watch collectors wish list.

Jerry Seinfeld, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, Miles Davis all wear (or wore) a vintage Breitling.

The Breitling chosen as the official timepiece of AOPA, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Something which Breitling has traded on ever since.

A 24-hour dial version, the Cosmonaute, was also produced in the early 60s.

The first generation Navitimer 806 came in the early 50s, they had Arabic numerals, black dials and sub-dials.

The second generation shows silver sub-dials and index instead of numbers.

Many early Navitimers didn’t have the Breitling logo, but the AOPA wing on the dial.

Some rare dials show the AOPA wings and the letter B instead of the Breitling logo.

Breitling has been a leading innovator in high quality stopwatches and chronographs and helped define how chronographs look and function until today.

Breitling launched the first wrist chronograph with a pusher at 2:00 in 1915.

Presented in 1933 as the first dual pusher wrist chronograph with pushers at 2:00 and 4:00 o’clock.

Breitling was one of the first manufacturers to recognize the need of early aviators for wrist watches incorporating such devices.

In 1942 Breitling introduced the Chronomat, the worlds first Smart Watch, a chronograph with a rotating logarithmic slide rule that allowed complex calculations with the turn of your fingers.

Throughout the 1930s to 50s, Breitling continued creating chronographs with different scales to suit different professions, such as tachometers for production engineers and drivers, and pulsometers for doctors.

A tachymeter scale measures how fast an object is moving. The scale can be found either on the dial or in the bezel. Most tachymeters start at 400 and end at 60, but some models can show different numbers.