Tank

Louis Cartier designed the Tank in 1917, inspired by the new Renault tanks he was watching advance on the Western Front of the First World War. The idea was to translate into a wristwatch the same geometric essentialism of those vehicles: a rectangular case flanked by two vertical bands, the so-called "brancards", which in the original design evoke the military vehicle's side tracks. A prototype was presented to American general John J. Pershing, commander of the U.S. expeditionary corps in Europe, before the model actually entered production in 1919 under the name Tank Normale.

The white dial with Roman numerals, the railway-track minute circle (chemin de fer) and the blued-steel sword hands immediately became the model's distinctive language, later adopted by almost all subsequent Cartier watch production. Over the years the Tank multiplied into numerous shape variants: the Cintrée, with a curved case that follows the wrist; the 1922 Louis Cartier, more squared and proportioned; the Américaine, the Française and, later in the twentieth century, the Anglaise and the Must de Cartier collection, which in the 1970s made the Tank accessible to a broader audience through gold-plated silver versions.

Over the course of the twentieth century the Tank became one of the most photographed and imitated watches in the world, worn by figures such as Jacqueline Kennedy, Andy Warhol, Yves Saint Laurent and, more recently, Diana, Princess of Wales: an iconicity that has crossed nearly a century almost unchanged, making the Tank one of the few watches recognizable even to those who know nothing about watchmaking.