Ian Fleming’s James Bond is one of the most iconic movie characters of all time. His cool demeanor under the most dire of situations is almost laughable at moments. Some of his gadgets from “Q” – which is short for Quartermaster, a branch of the military responsible for supplies and logistics, etc.– are pretty laughable as well, especially in the pre Daniel Craig movies. Here are a few favorites: The Alligator submarine from “Octopussy”, the flamethrower bagpipes from “The World is Not Enough”, and my personal favorite, the boombox rocket launcher from “The Living Daylights”. Thankfully, we can always count on James Bond to wear a serious wrist watch. From Sean Connery’s Rolex Submariner in “Dr. No”, to Daniel Craig’s collection of Omega Seamasters, James Bond takes time very seriously. But if my line of work or hobbies consisted of continuous brushes with death, I would opt for the Breitling Emergency. A watch available to anyone, and equipped with a personal locator beacon.
The Emergency watch is made by Breitling. A Swiss watch company who have a particular talent for making chronograph watches. What is a chronograph watch? For the answer, I defer to Hespoke Style: “A chronograph watch is simply a timepiece that can be used as a stopwatch in addition to its standard display watch capabilities.” But the Emergency took that watch and asked, “What if I’m flying through mountains on my personal PJ and crash?”
Alas, I give you the The Emergency watch. The Emergency watch is a chronometer, meaning it's certified–after weeks of tests– by a board in Switzerland. What does this board test, you ask? They test watches in the most frigid and blistering conditions to see if they simply keep time within an extremely small margin of error. Second, the Emergency watch contains a personal locator beacon that can be activated at any time, anywhere in the world. Simply take off the watch, and unscrew the caps on both sides below the crown–this is where the James Bond stuff comes into play–Two antennas will pop out of the watch. One coming out the right side, and one coming out the left side. This automatically sends out a distress transmitter. This transmitter then starts to bounce off a network of satellites in Earth's lower orbit to help guide rescue teams to your location. While it's cool to nerd out about this, it’s even cooler to know it actually saves lives.
In 2012 a hunter was stranded in the Alaskan backcountry while hunting for Grizzly Bears. A scary situation, but extremely scary knowing that 2,000 people simply disappear in Alaska each year. The hunter had a hand held personal locator beacon, but it was showing his location to be four miles away from where he actually was. It wasn’t until he activated the beacon on his Breitling Emergency watch that rescue teams were able to zero in on his location and rescue him via helicopter. I think I’ll let James Bond keep the shaken martinis, Seamasters, and exploding toothpaste. If I’m ever in trouble, I want a Breitling Emergency on my wrist.
Click the video below to see how the beacon works.
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