Jaeger Lecoultre Reverso and Squadra

Two good watches which harken back to the 1930’s are the Jaeger Lecoultre Reverso and Reverso Squadra.

They are rectangle shape and actually flip so that the glass face is turned inward and a metal face replaces it. So if you have some high impact stuff to do you can reverse the face. You can also engrave the steel face. The reverso is usually a winding watch but you can get a self winding which is the one to go for. Self winding mechanical watches have a kind of rotor or pendulum that rotates with kinetic energy and charges the spring tension. No battery and no need to manually wind. What differentiates watch makes is if they make their own movement or if they buy a movement from a mass producer to power their watch. JL makes their own movement, an example of which is in the video below. Note that movement on the gimbles and all, is not in the reverso.