Cartier Tank & Tank Solo, An Icon Of Elegance

Cartier Tank & Tank Solo

One of the oldest and most renowned watchmaking houses is undoubtedly Cartier, being the creator of the first wristwatch in history, which saw the light in 1904 by the hand of Louis Cartier, which was created as a gift for his aviator friend, Santos Dumont.

Before this, the military used pocket watches with a weld to “hug” the wrist, with Cartier being the first to design a watch to be worn on the circumference anterior to the hand.

This watch, christened Santos, was the first wristwatch in history and was the predecessor to the iconic Tank, which was designed by Louis Cartier in 1917, making it undoubtedly one of the most legendary watches in history.

An unmistakable design of The Cartier Tank

Since its inception, just over a century ago, Cartier has been very careful to maintain the original design, although they have created models with slight changes, at first glance they are identified as a Tank, even by those who do not have as much time as lovers. of the clocks.

The design of the Tank was inspired precisely by the armored tanks used during the First World War, hence its name, and although it saw the light in 1917, it was commercialized until 1919, given the war conflict of the time, the prototype was awarded as a gift to General John Pershing, commander of the US Expeditionary Force in Europe, becoming the first person in history to carry a Cartier Tank.

The design of this piece of art has four unmistakable features, although there are models in which they omit some, without a doubt its remaining characteristics allow you to immediately identify that it is a Cartier Tank. The first and perhaps most important is the shape of its case, which is rectangular, complemented by the Roman numerals and its railroad index, and lastly, the cabochon made of sapphire on its crown.

The Cartier Tank Solo

As we mentioned before, Cartier has managed to preserve its essence for more than a century, however, the Cartier Tank Solo, both in its Quartz and Automatic versions, managed to give a touch of modernity to a classic. The Tank Solo Quartz version is found in two sizes, 24.4 millimeters by 31 or 27 millimeters by 34.8mm, while the version with Automatic movement only comes in 31 millimeters by 40.85.

Both models use the classic Roman numerals, one of the characteristics of the Tank, but only the automatic version has a window with a date stamp, where the number 6 should appear.

The visible design also presents slight changes, the dial is shown in white and is covered with sapphire crystal, in this case, the hands have a blued steel sword finish, and we can find them with cases in stainless steel, rose gold or yellow, and by the way, it is a model with which we can immerse ourselves, as it has a water resistance of up to 3 bars (30 meters).

It is a fact, you cannot call yourself a watch collector if you do not have a Cartier Tank among your watchmaking pieces, but how much should we invest to obtain one? Well, although we already mentioned that this watch has presented multiple variants throughout A century, you can find a Cartier Tank from $ 2,290 to $ 40,700.

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