Cartier Santos

A current steel Santos de Cartier on display in a Cartier boutique. Louis Cartier first made the Santos in 1904 for his friend, the aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont, who wanted a watch he could read without taking his hands off the controls to reach for a pocket watch. What survived more than a century is easy to spot: the squared case with softened corners, the screws left visible on the bezel and carried onto the bracelet, and the Roman numerals on a railway-track chapter ring. Exposed screws as decoration became a whole design language later on, and this is where it started.