Helmut Sinn
1916 – 2018
Flight instructor, rally driver, watch pioneer
Many people know the stories of "Quick Helmut", who always watched airplanes as a little boy. Whenever they were in the sky, he dreamed of flying - until he realized his dream. This dream lives on in his watches.
Helmut Sinn was born on September 3rd, 1916 in Metz, Lorraine. He and his parents were forced to move from Lorraine to Rhineland-Palatinate. After finishing school, he applied to be a pilot candidate and was drafted into the Air Force in 1935, where he was deployed as a pilot of large and reconnaissance aircraft in various countries during the Second World War. In Posen, he was also trained as a blind flight instructor.
After the war, like so many others, he had to start from scratch, but with no prospect of being able to practice his profession - pilot. Helmut Sinn had already recognized the need for precise time measurement during the war and had opened up time measurement technology as a new professional field for himself. At the end of the 1940s, he founded his first watch shop in Frankfurt am Main. Since then and until his well-deserved retirement in 2014, Mr. Sinn worked with watches without any significant interruptions - primarily easy-to-read instrument watches.
Helmut Sinn had a very long collaboration with Guinand - since founding his second company in the early 1960s, Guinand had been the producer of almost all of his watches. In his second creative phase from the mid-1990s, when he was now the owner of his former supplier Guinand, the watch models described below were created.
Source: Article from Chronos Spezial Sportuhren, 2006
Our Helmut Sinn anniversary watches
HS100
Guinand special edition for the 100th birthday
HS101
Guinand special edition for the 101st birthday
HS102
Guinand special edition for the 102nd birthday
HS103
Guinand special edition for the 103rd birthday
HS104
Guinand special edition for the 104th birthday
HS106
Guinand special edition for the 106th birthday
HS108
Guinand special edition for the 108th birthday
Helmut Sinn's legendary watch models
After Helmut Sinn took over Guinand in the mid-1990s, further watch milestones were created such as the WZU, the Series 31 with second lock, the Flying Officer and, last but not least, the J41. Even after the last generation change in 2014/2015, we continued this tradition with models such as the ASFlieger or the HS100.
We will continue this tradition...
Chronosport 41.J-02
When Helmut Sinn started his business again in the mid-1990s with his new company "Jubilar Uhren Helmut Sinn", pilot's chronographs were among the watches produced right from the start.
Mr. Sinn launched the J41 model family (J for Jubilar) under the brand name "Chronosport". The Tricompax version 41-J-02 was probably the best-known model in this series. The model is very reminiscent of the Heuer Bundeswehr chronographs, which were offered by Jubilar Uhren under the name Military 1550.
One-Hand Watch
In 1996, Helmut Sinn developed the HS81 caliber based on the very rare Unitas 6503 movement. The main features were the indirect central second and a technically elegantly designed seconds stop. The movement was expanded again for the one-hand watch - but the display was reduced to make an unusual wristwatch possible. The central hour hand shows the time to the minute on the 24-hour dial. The second disc in the middle disc discreetly signals whether the hand-wound movement is running.
Regulator
As early as the mid-1990s, Guinand was able to present a Regulator – a watch with separate positioning of the hour and minute hands. A few years later, the successor model, the Regulator 2, came onto the market. Hand-made and blued hands in front of a high-quality silver-plated dial made this model one of the most elegant models in the Guinand collection at the time.
Büren12
In 1965, the Swiss companies G. Leon Breitling S.A. in Geneva, Heuer-Leonidas S.A. in Biel and Dubois Depraz S.A. in Le Lieu joined forces to launch the world's first automatic chronograph.
The company Buren S.A. in Büren an der Aare was commissioned to develop the automatic movement; Dubois Depraz supplied the chronograph mechanism, completely mounted on a plate. The first prototypes were available in the spring of 1968; they were named Caliber 11 and given the name CHRONOMATIC.
The position of the three operating elements became the external trademark of the first commercially available automatic watch with chronograph and is still a clear identifying feature of the legendary caliber today.
Towards the end of 2007, this interesting chronograph was reissued by Guinand in a limited edition of 100 pieces.
WZU - Weltzeituhr
Helmut Sinn's new launch in 2004 set standards: As the world's only mechanical watch with only one movement, the new GUINAND WZU-5 world time watch displayed four time zones on 24-hour dials in addition to the local time.
Flying Officer
Developed by GUINAND in the 1960s for pilots and navigators on long-distance flights; at the time it was fitted with the Valjoux 7733 calibre. To avoid confusion, it was fitted with a 24-hour display and set to GMT. This meant that people all over the world had a direct reference to the reference time used in international air traffic.