No other designer has left such a mark on the industry as Gérald Genta. He was the man that gave us two of the most important stainless steel sports watches in history, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Patek Philippe Nautilus. As a true creative force, it didn't stop there, as he also worked for various other brands, designing icon after icon. A decade after his death, we get a rare glimpse into his archive as Sotheby's is auctioning one hundred of his original designs, including those of the Nautilus and the Royal Oak.

Rather than a traditional hour center hand that sweeps around the dial pointing to 12 indexes, jump hour watches use a digital display (not to be confused with modern digital watches) to indicate the current hour. This particular mechanical watch complication dates back to 1883 when Josef Pallweber patented his invention using rotating discs for hours and minutes and displayed the time numerically via a pair of windows. Over a century later, Pallweber’s innovation is still alive and well as illustrated by these three brilliant examples of jump hour watches.

Tomorrow Baselworld will open its doors once again. This year it will be a completely different animal altogether. The departure of the Swatch Group, as well as an exodus of other brands, has made the show much smaller than it was in previous years. The question that remains is if that is a bad thing?

Gérald Genta is a man to who many brands owe a great debt. As a designer, he gave Audemars Piguet the Royal Oak, Patek Philippe their Nautilus, and he worked on the Pasha for Cartier, as well as many iconic designs for other brands. What not everybody knows is that he was next to a designer also a watch manufacturer and, in fact, a pioneering one. It was already in 1969 that he founded his manufacture and as could be expected it turned out innovative watches. With the 'Gefica' did Genta introduced a bronze case before it was cool, but that was not all.