Tissot Telemeter 1938 T142.462.16.032.00

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The storyWhy this reference matters

Tissot's history as a sports timekeeper has a date and a name attached. In 1938 Vital Thiébaud used a Tissot to time a ski race at Villars-sur-Ollon, in the Vaud Alps. That monopusher chronograph, loaded with scales, is the watch Tissot brought back in 2022 as the Telemeter 1938. The brand has since timed the NBA, the Tour de France and MotoGP, but the whole line starts on a Swiss snow run with one man holding a watch.

The name comes from the least understood scale in watchmaking. A telemeter measures distance by exploiting the fact that light arrives before sound: start the chronograph at the flash, stop it at the bang, and read off how many kilometres away it happened. It was born for artillery and stayed on for thunderstorms. Here it is the blue scale around the edge, sharing the dial with a red tachymeter spiralling inwards for average speeds and a black minute track graduated in quarter-seconds.

Inside sits the Valjoux A05.231, from the 7750 family, with twenty-nine jewels, 4 Hz and sixty-eight hours of reserve courtesy of a Nivachron hairspring and a variable-inertia balance. The sapphire crystal is box-shaped, copying the curve of period acrylic, and it bends the edges of the dial exactly as the original did. That is the sort of detail that separates a properly made homage from an old dial simply reprinted.

SpecificationsThe numbers, in one table

IdentificationHow to tell it apart

Forty-two millimetres by 13.85 thick, brushed and polished steel, 22 mm lugs, a display back and a fluted crown. Two subdials — running seconds and a thirty-minute counter — with railway-track rings, and three scales stacked on top of each other: the red tachymeter spiralling through the centre, the black minute track, and the blue telemeter out at the edge.

There are two dials in the collection and they are easy to mix up. This reference, T142.462.16.032.00, is the two-tone silver one with blued hands and a dark brown leather strap. The other, T142.462.16.052.00, has a black gilt-look dial with gold furniture and hands on a light brown strap. Same case, same calibre; only the face changes.

Watch the water resistance, which is where this watch shows its vintage streak: 30 metres and no more. It is not a watch for swimming, and that figure on the spec sheet doubles as a way of confirming you are looking at a Telemeter 1938 and not some other Tissot chronograph with a similar air.

CollectingWhat collectors check

The argument about this model is size. The 1938 chronograph was around 37 mm and this one is 42; plenty of enthusiasts wrote it off as a missed opportunity. If you are coming from the period watch, be clear before you buy: the dial is faithful down to the detail, the proportions are not.

The box crystal is lovely and expensive to replace. Hold it against the light and look for marks on the flanks, which is where it meets door frames. Then check both counters return to zero and that the chronograph hand stops exactly on a graduation, because on a dial carrying three stacked scales any misalignment jumps straight out at you.

The leather strap is a consumable and shouldn't weigh on the negotiation. The display back should: check the rotor isn't catching and that the gasket shows no trace of moisture. At 30 metres this is a watch to keep away from the shower, and the ones that haven't been give themselves away from the inside before the outside.

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Close relativesThe ones it gets confused with