The greatest single design to spill forth from the pencil of the industry’s most highly acclaimed designer, Mr Gérald Genta. The Royal Oak is that rare thing: a truly disruptive design that, although it sold slowly to begin with, within a few years had transformed perceptions of what a luxury watch should look like.

Like the wedge-shaped supercars of the era, it ushered in a generation of angular, geometric designs, which not only defined the 1970s, but has permanently influenced watch design since. The Patek Philippe Nautilus, Vacheron Constantin 222 and Overseas, Girard-Perregaux Laureato and dozens of others have followed in its footsteps, to the extent that in the 2020s, a stainless-steel design along the Royal Oak’s lines has become a must-have for almost every brand.

Its radical boom in popularity over the past few years, leading up to its 50th anniversary in 2022, has elevated the Royal Oak’s standing even further. But even before that, it had become totemic for Audemars Piguet, one of Switzerland’s best respected watchmakers. And in the Royal Oak Offshore, it gave rise to a phenomenon that defined the 2000s and 2010s without ever quite eclipsing its older brother.

This list is not all about designs, but their impact should not be underestimated. The Tank was first became publicly available in 1919, with a square dial. It was a few years later that Cartier introduced the Tank Louis Cartier: two golden bars that carry between them a simple, two-hand dial, with that familiar sapphire-studded crown on one side. The shape has come to defined elegant, formal watchmaking for the past century.

The Tank is the exception to the rule that watches make the most sense in a circular form. Irreprovable in its simplicity and so pure, almost Platonic, in its form that few have ever even tried to imitate it. Like several watches on this list, it has become the hero product of one of watchmaking’s undisputed titans. Who could imagine Cartier without the Tank?

The watch has waxed and waned, ebbing to a trickle in the 1960s and 1970s before being recast as the Tank Must in the late 1970s. Cartier has stretched, shrunk, rounded and pumped up the Tank as it created other designs over the years, but it remains, 100 years later, the archetypal dress watch.

Few watch fans will know the name of Mr John Harwood. Many might not even be familiar with Fortis, a company with 111 years on the clock that, despite well-intentioned recent efforts, is yet to return to its glory days. But their names are permanently inscribed on watchmaking history for bringing to market the very first self-winding, or automatic, wristwatch, using a rotor that spins freely on its bearings to wind the watch’s mainspring.

It was long believed that Rolex, with its Oyster Perpetual – launched in 1931 – had brought this pioneering innovation to market, However, Harwood, a small-time British watchmaker, cracked it in 1926 and worked with Fortis to industrialise the invention. (He later settled matters with Rolex, which agreed to “correct the record” to acknowledge his role.)

You might take for granted that your mechanical watch winds itself up as your arm moves around. You might even be the kind of watch fan who prefers a hand-wound watch for that old-school connection. But until the invention of the quartz movement, nothing else made wearing a watch on your wrist so simple, so easy and so hassle-free. If Harwood hadn’t got there first, doubtless others would have, but he did, and in doing so it is no exaggeration to say he transformed the world of watches.

This may be our first contentious entry (it is unlikely to be the last). The IWC Schaffhausen Mk X was not, in fact, even really known by that name. It was one of 12 watches commissioned by the British Ministry of Defence in WWII to cater to the rapidly evolving needs of its servicemen. Several decades earlier, soldiers had improvised wristwatches with soldering irons and strips of leather, practically inventing the wristwatch in the process – certainly demonstrating the demand for it – but by the 1940s, both sides sought purpose-built timepieces.

The Dirty Dozen, as they were later dubbed by collectors, laid down a template that stood for decades after. They established the concept of the “field watch” with legibility, durability and anti-magnetism built in. IWC was one maker; so why choose its model? Because, uniquely, the brand’s contribution to the Dirty Dozen was descended from another truly significant watch, the “Special Pilot’s Watch”, made in 1936 that literally launched that entire genre of watches. And its successor, the Mk XI, was also something of a legend in its own right, produced for decades and the foundation upon which IWC’s modern Mk series is built.

The needs of the armed forces, and pilots in particular, have driven wristwatch design from the very beginning, and the Mk X is one of the most influential to have answered the call.

The Omega Speedmaster was first produced in 1957, and can rightly be hailed as one of the foremost products of the greatest period of chronograph watchmaking. Between then and 1969, the Breitling Navitimer, Heuer Carrera, Rolex Daytona and Zenith El Primero all came into being, to name just a few. But that’s not why it makes the list.

As a rule, we’ve argued that if a watch can be considered significant or influential, it should be the original version of that model that is honoured. But the Speedmaster’s history is unique. The story may be well-worn; the frequency with which modern-day Omega commemorates its milestones might be bordering on stultifying, but wave aside such cynicism and you have to acknowledge. No other watch has been worn on the Moon. It was the Speedmaster that Nasa chose to accompany its astronauts into orbit in 1962, and it was a Speedmaster that helped to save the crew of Apollo 13 in 1970.

It is on the shoulders of the Speedmaster that Omega has become a giant of the industry, and like the Tank, Royal Oak or Submariner, both the brand and the wider watch world are unimaginable without it.

It was obvious that Patek Philippe would figure on this list. But in what capacity? The incomparable brand has an embarrassment of riches to its name. It produced the first perpetual calendar wristwatch, all the way back in 1925. Its perpetual calendar chronographs, the 1518 and 2499 in particular, are among the most sought-after – and I would say, beautiful – of all timepieces. Its grand complications, such as the Sky Moon Tourbillon or Grandmaster Chime, are legendary. We wrestled with the choice. Many will spit and curse us for excluding the Nautilus, but for all that it costs more, we can’t help find it less impressive than the Royal Oak.

When it came to highly complicated watchmaking, we were torn. On one hand, it is the apotheosis of horological craft, and to master it is certainly significant. But such watches are produced in tiny numbers, rarely influence the mainstream direction of travel, and are the subject of constant one-upmanship. Nothing stays “most complicated” for very long. Instead, we chose the humble Calatrava, a watch that was as fresh and new in 1932 as it now seems comfortable and unthreatening.

This model embodies watch design’s mid-century modern period, is a faithful Bauhaus design despite rarely being credited as such, and is one of the pillars on which Patek Philippe rests. In part, it is on this list to represent all watches of its type and generation, as arguably the finest example of the genre. It happens to be a genre that has fallen out of fashion in recent years, but is no less significant for that.

There are many overarching stories to horology in the 2000s, but perhaps the main one is the rise of the avant-garde, independent watchmaker. Indie watchmaking did not begin in the 2000s – it was already well under way in the hands of Messrs Svend Andersen, Christophe Claret, Alain Silberstein, Philippe Dufour, Roger Dubuis, Gérald Genta, and many others. And it was, in places, already avant-garde: Mr Franck Muller in particular deserves credit for perhaps inventing the concept of the maverick, ambitious watchmaker-as-brand. But Muller – the man and the brand – experienced a somewhat volatile journey during the 1990s. Had things gone differently, it could have been his name that broke into the top five most profitable watch brands in the world despite producing a mere 5,000 watches a year. Instead, that honour went to Mr Richard Mille.

No other name encapsulates so fully the spirit of in-your-face, daring, iconoclastic and experimental watchmaking that has so excited collectors and breathed life into a once-conservative industry than Mille. His peers, particularly MB&F and Urwerk, have done their bit, but only RM has become a true phenomenon. Its creations are as audacious as they are expensive, as popular as they are polarising.

On the wrists of racing drivers, sprinters, tennis players and artists, they have become cultural symbols as recognised and desired as the Royal Oak and the Daytona. Meanwhile, their uncompromising approach to technical innovation has proved that mechanical watchmaking has plenty to offer the millennial world. And this, the RM001, is where it all began.

The Daytona – a watch that, like Madonna or Bono, is known only by one word – wasn’t the biggest hit of the 1960s chronograph scene. For years, dealers discounted it, and we sympathise with fans of the Heuer Carrera who would make the case for their candidate instead.

Arguably, Rolex is not even really one of the all-time great chronograph watchmakers, unlike Omega, Breitling or TAG Heuer. But the Daytona has achieved greatness in its second and third acts: the Zenith-powered reference 16520, launched in 1988 as the industry emerged from the doldrums, grew steadily in popularity. And in the 2000s and early 2010s it was new-found appreciation for vintage Daytonas that catalysed the entire vintage watch market. The sale of Mr Paul Newman’s “Paul Newman” Daytona in 2017 for $17.6m will forever be a moment in collecting history.

Today, few watches are as prized – far beyond its relatively commonplace mechanical attributes, and in defiance of its ready availability – as recognised or as minutely scrutinised by devotees. Like all the great Rolex models, it has been imitated and outright copied ad infinitum. And as the surprise announcement of a special edition to mark the 100th running of the Le Mans 24 hours showed earlier this year, nothing draws attention like a new Daytona.

Only Rolex has two models in the list of 12, and few would argue it does not deserve it. Such is the strength of the brand and the longevity of its designs that the Explorer, Day-Date, GMT-Master and Oyster Perpetual all figured in our thinking. However, the Submariner is, well, it is Rolex. Simple as that.

We have mentioned archetypes already. This is the watch you think of when you think of a dive watch, when you think of a Rolex and perhaps even when you just think of a watch at all. Pictured in its original form, it had yet to acquire some of the features that it is best known for, most notably the “Mercedes” hands. But the Submariner’s significance began with that first model in 1954 (some take its genesis as 1953, but it was first sold the following year).

No one needs to explain the lasting popularity of the dive watch since – far beyond actual diving, of course. With the Submariner, Rolex hit upon a formula that pretty much the entire watchmaking world has been influenced by. Its status, then and now, also relies on the strength of Rolex’s marketing machine, which is second to none – being worn by Sir Sean Connery’s James Bond doesn’t hurt, for example. Make no mistake, though, the Sub is no triumph of style over substance.

As we’ve already established, 1969 was an exciting year for watchmaking. After almost a decade of work, three separate efforts to produce a self-winding chronograph movement bore fruit: Zenith, a Heuer-led consortium and Seiko all unveiled watches that year that cracked what had been a seriously thorny problem. By the year’s end, however, it might have seemed like wasted effort thanks to another groundbreaking launch from Seiko: the Astron 35SQ.

Ignore the unprepossessing name, this was the first commercially available quartz wristwatch. If the purpose of a watch is to keep accurate time – and back then, that’s more or less all it was – the Astron obliterated the competition. Quartz-regulated movements are orders of magnitude more accurate than the best mechanical watches. They require almost no servicing to speak of and pretty soon were much, much cheaper to produce.

Their arrival contributed to an existential crisis for the Swiss watch industry, which lost around 60 per cent of its workforce. However, there is no denying the introduction of quartz was the single biggest technological advancement in timekeeping since, well, springs, wheels and levers.