Teddy Baldassarre
Tissot Telemeter 1938 Review
The Tissot Telemeter 1938, which joined the Swiss brand's vintage-influenced Heritage collection in summer 2022, has garnered enthusiasts' attention with its charmingly retro design, optimized chronograph movement, and enticing price-to-value ratio. We had a chance to go hands-on with both versions of the Tissot Telemeter 1938; read on for the results from our in-depth review. Overview and History By just about any historical standard, 1938 was generally a pretty dark year, marked by the lingering economic woes of the Great Depression, the violence of Kristallnacht, and the slow march to war in Europe, with Germany annexing Austria and partitioning Czechoslovakia in the ill-fated Munich pact. One of the few areas in which forward-thinking creativity and energetic optimism still prevailed in that pre-war era was the world of art and design, which was still showing the influence of the Art Deco movement that had taken root in the 1920s. Wristwatches, which had largely supplanted pocket watches as the go-to portable timekeepers for both civilian and military use, displayed this enduring design ethos while also often incorporating a useful array of functions geared toward the timing of the era’s popular sporting events, many of which involved racing - on horseback, in automobiles, and on skis. Tissot, founded in 1853 in the Swiss Jura, was one of the watchmakers that specialized in making these sport-timing instruments. One of the company’s earliest forays as an offic...
