A Brazilian aviator and a French jeweler walk into a bar. The year: 1900. The place: Maxim’s, the Paris clubhouse for the Belle Époque intelligentsia to discuss matters such as, How much absinthe is too much absinthe? On this day, the question was more practical: How does a pilot tell time on his pocket watch without crashing his airship?
Alberto Santos-Dumont was the son of a French-Brazilian coffee tycoon, and a dashing explorer and aeronaut. His pal, Louis Cartier—another nepo baby as the scion of the Cartier jewelry empire, and a brilliant designer in his own right—proposed a solution: What if a watch could be fastened to his ami’s arm, instead of kept in the pocket of his trousers?
