Cartier’s Revived Tank à Guichets Is Making an Old-School Design Feel New Again

In 1883, Austrian watchmaker Josef Pallweber designed a unique timepiece display mechanism that he subsequently licensed to the International Watch Company. Rather than use conventional watch hands, his system featured rotating discs inscribed with the minutes and hours, which were hidden beneath the watch’s main dial. As the time progressed and the discs revolved, the appropriate hour and minutes were revealed via small cutout windows. However, rather than slowly advancing to the following minute or hour, the discs “jumped” into place. This combination of windows and jumping discs—which debuted in a series of I.W.C. pocket watches in 1885—constituted one of the earliest “jump hour” (or “digital”) watches, and one of the earliest “guichet” watches.

“Guichet,” French for the type of window at a ticket counter in, say, a train station or bank, also describes an aperture in a watch dial through which the time is read. Though this type of timepiece never proliferated to the extent that it posed any type of legitimate competition to the conventional setup with hours, minutes, and seconds hands, its relative rarity has made it a collectable commodity and a source of fascination for collectors. To wit: Cartier’s wildly covetable Tank à Guichets—perhaps the most notable guichet watch of them all—debuted in 1928 in a small production run. Worn by the likes of no less an august personality than Duke Ellington, it featured a steel dial through which the hours were read via a small aperture at 12 o’clock and the minutes via a larger cutaway in an arc at 6 o’clock.

If you’re wondering why there’s such a renewed focus on this rare horological novelty, well, that’s Cartier’s doing. At Watches and Wonders 2025, the French watch and jewelry maker reintroduced its Tank à Guichets in four references. Three of them (in yellow gold, rose gold, and platinum) pay homage to the original. But a fourth model in a platinum case—limited to just 200 examples—offers a slanted take on the 1928 design: Its hours window sits at 10 o’clock, and its minutes window is at 6 o’clock.

This “digital” watch—the product of the fertile, creative culture of early-20th-century Cartier—has subsequently been released in limited series to much fanfare over the decades. (Ironically, with its stark steel dial, it looks perhaps even more “armored” than the Tank Normale of the First World War, the design of which was inspired by an early Renault armored fighting vehicle.) The Tank à Guichet is also notable for being Cartier’s first timepiece with jumping hours, a feature that often goes hand-in-hand with guichet watches. Indeed, the terminology concerning these types of timepieces often becomes blurred, but if we were to speak more technically:

Guichet: French for “ticket window” or “small window,” a “guichet” is a small aperture in a watch through which the time (hours or minutes) is read. (Technically, an “outsize” date display is often read through this type of aperture, but watches with outsize dates and conventional time displays aren’t generally referred to as “guichet” watches.)

Jump Hour: A type of “digital” hour display in which a disc inscribed with the hours rotates behind an aperture on the watch dial. Rather than slowly transitioning from one hour to the next, an impulse within the movement causes the hour to “jump” cleanly from one to the other.

Outsize Date: A type of date display in which the date is viewed via a large aperture on the dial rather than a small one at 3 or 6 o’clock. Often—though not always—this type of display uses two apertures and two rotating discs to create its “digital” appearance. Sometimes, these discs “jump” in the manner of jump hour displays.

Digital Display: Not to be confused with the LCD or LED readout on a quartz-powered watch, this type of display describes one that is read via a numerical readout rather than with conventional watch hands. (For example, a jump hour aperture, which uses numerals to show the hour, is a type of digital display.)

Watchmakers large and small continue to iterate upon the guichet concept, turning out compelling designs that challenge the concept of the “window” display. From the playful Horological Machines of MB&F to the classically inspired reissues from Cartier, these guichet timepieces offer an inventive and unconventional rendering of time in a thought-provoking manner. Though these types of watches will always be rare (and thus expensive), this is part of the charm that accompanies the out-of-the-box thinking of the intrepid creatives behind their design. Here, a look at the most notable models worth hunting for right now.

Credit: robbreport.com